Including healthy beverages such as Satisfi Tea and healthy snacks in your lifestyle and raising physical activity are at the heart of incorporating healthy habits in a healthy lifestyle in order to achieve a healthy body weight and ward off disease.

So now you got all obstacles and excuses out of the way and decided that enough is enough, you can’t take it any longer with that excess weight and you decided to embark on a weight loss journey. But what’s next? You’ve been bombarded with all sorts of commercials about “Diet Programs” that promise “you can lose 20 pounds in 20 days…”, or diet supplements that guarantee you can lose 30 pounds a month without “Dieting” and “exercising”. You also heard about “Protein Diets”, “Low Crab Diets”, “Low Fat Diets”, “Low Calorie Diets” and “etc…Diets” so which do you go for?

You may also associate “dieting” with deprivation of some foods or categories of food, getting hungry, counting calories, counting grams of this and grams of that. You get overwhelmed, stressed out and lost then you react in either one of two ways: First, you may fall for one or more of the quick weight loss traps mentioned above and embark on the wrong path of a “dieting” mindset and begin a “diet” that starts on Monday of next week then ends 4 to 8 weeks later. Then you regain all the weight right back.

You also set unrealistic weight loss goals such as losing 80 pounds in 3 months “to be in shape for the upcoming high school reunion”. The second path you might take, that tens of millions have, is to do nothing and keep in the same path of weight gain caused by consuming indiscriminately huge amounts empty calories coming from high amounts of fat, sugar and salty nutrient deficient food, snacks and beverages and becoming a magnet to all sorts of chronic diseases.

Low calorie drinks, high fiber, no sugar added, green tea, black tea, Aloe Vera, Acai Berry and no High Fructose Corn Syrup are all great nutrients, great for health and the waste line and they all happen to be in Satisfi Tea.

If you know the answers to these two questions then you will know the answers to all these dizzying and stressful choices most of us face every day. The questions are: “Can you put out a fire by pouring gas in one hand and water in the other?”  And the next one is: “If you touch fire and it burns your hand then if you touch it again would your hand not get burnt again?”

I am sure you answered “no” to the first question and “yes” to the next but in reality the majority of people are acting differently to their answers here. Let me explain.  Here’s what I witness people doing unknowingly every day; they drop off their prescriptions to the pharmacy for one or more of the following: Type 2 diabetes, pre diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and heart disease. Then they snack on potato chips, sugary beverages, and smoke, sit all day and drink alcohol in excess.

Those are the very same choices that are causing excess belly fat and all these deadly ailments. Then this vicious cycle is repeated day after day.  So will we be able to put out those raging fires that are affecting just about every family in our country unless we address the root causes of the problem; our behavior and lifestyle choices?

It all starts by setting a realistic small and achievable goal which starts by making the change to improved lifestyle choices one choice at a time and building new long term favorable lifestyle habits that will last a lifetime.

An ideal and achievable goal starts by abandoning the “dieting” mindset all together because a diet by definition starts and ends at a certain point in time and consequently is not a permanent solution. A permanent solution would be one to help you make balanced lifestyle choices where hunger, deprivation of any food, counting calories or grams of anything are NOT part of it.

But what would be an integral part of it would be learning how to create a balance between the food you love, the food and beverages that are good for your health and taste great at the same time, increasing physical activity, losing weight gradually and permanently, avoiding and controlling chronic disease and most importantly taking all the necessary steps to improve your quality of life.

What are a worthy and a simple weight loss goal that you can be confident in achieving?

Losing about 10% of your total body weight in about 6 months at a pace of 1 to 2 pounds a week. This is it. Don’t you feel already relaxed and relieved that you can achieve this goal? In the meantime you would be learning how to build those new lifestyle habits that will get you there. Small sustained actions get you priceless health benefits. Include Satisfi Tea to help your health benefit from healthful ingredients and to maintain a healthy body weight.

The next couple articles will focus on how to achieve and maintain that 1 to 2 pounds of weight loss per week without dieting. Below you’ll find an excerpt from my book titled Lifestyle Makeover for All Couch Potatoes outlining 9 habits of people who lost weight and kept it off that will help your mind in the right track.

Pharmacist George Tohme author of “Lifestyle Makeover for All Couch Potatoes”:

Here’s an excerpt from:

Lifestyle Makeover

For All Couch Potatoes

By George F. Tohme, Pharmacist

© Copyright Tohme 2012

All rights reserved. Except where indicated, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher and/or the author.

And Kept It Off Permanently

After analyzing the patterns of people who lost weight and kept it off permanently, The National Weight Registry Agency has revealed the common habits of those who lost more than 30 pounds and kept them off for more than 3 years. The National Weight Registry Agency is an agency where anyone who lost more than 30 pounds and kept it off for more than 3 years can register.

Apply these steps now and watch your weight shed, as well as shedding the probability of acquiring those uninvited deadly diseases. Those who lose weight and keep it off employ the following steps and habits:

1. They exhibit persistence.

2. They remain constantly active during the day, and they schedule 30 minutes to an hour of sustained bouts of activity of their choice (walking, cycling indoors or outdoors, etc.) several days a week.

3. They eat 3 main meals and 2 fruit snacks daily.

4. They increase their intake of water.

5. They reduce portion sizes of foods consumed.

6. They eat and enjoy a balanced variety of food.

7. They consume high-fiber food, eat fruits and vegetables several times per day, and consume little or no sugar or salty packaged foods and snacks.

8. They adopt a balanced approach and avoid dieting (this means there is no failure).

9. They weigh themselves frequently (once or twice a week).

Adopt these habits and start applying them now! Be in control of your weight, health and life!!!