Are You Spring Break Ready?

5 Tips on Quick Healthy Weight Loss

1. Double your vegetable intake and cut carbohydrates in half: Cutting back on starchy carbs (bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, cereal, crackers), and replacing them with vegetables helps you cut calories without cutting portion sizes, allowing you to feel full on fewer calories.
2. Make workouts more effective: Interval training is a great way to burn more calories. Consider walking or jogging for 1 min then jogging or running for 30 seconds a repeat for 30min.
3. Cut liquid calories: Decrease or restrict sodas, juice, energy drinks, sweetened water, lattes and alcohol. These are empty calories, and it is much more satisfying to chew your food.
4. Get a good night's sleep: set a goal to sleep for 7-8 hours. Less than 6 hours a night may increase hunger making it harder to make healthy choices.
5. Follow a specific meal plan: Make sure you schedule 3 meals and 1-2 snacks per day with good lean proteins and vegetables.

5 Tips to Avoid Fad Diets

Steer clear of any diet plans, pills and products that make the following claims

1. Rapid Weight Loss: Slow, steady weight loss is more likely to last than dramatic weight changes. Healthy plans aim for a loss of no more than 1 to 2 pounds per week. If you lose weight quickly, you'll lose muscle, bone and water. You also will be more likely to regain the pounds quickly.
2. Quantities and Limitations: Ditch diets that allow unlimited quantities of any food, such as grapefruit and cabbage soup. It's boring to eat the same thing over and over and hard to stick with monotonous plans. Avoid any diet that eliminates or severely restricts entire food groups, such as carbohydrates. Even if you take a multivitamin, you'll still miss some critical nutrients.
3. Specific Food Combinations: There is no evidence that combining certain foods or eating foods at specific times of day will help with weight loss. Eating the "wrong" combinations of food doesn't cause them to turn to fat immediately or to produce toxins in your intestines, as some plans claim.
4. Rigid Menus: Life is already complicated enough. Limiting food choices or following rigid meal plans can be an overwhelming, frustrating task.
5. No Need to Exercise: Regular physical activity is essential for good health and healthy weight management. Shoot for 30 to 60 minutes of activity on most days of the week.