Weight Loss Tip #88 Organize a supper club instead of going out to eat

From Doctors Orders: 101 Medically Proven Tips for Losing Weight

Get together with friends who like to cook healthy meals and are passionate about maintaining their own healthy weight (or are even in the weight-loss process like you are.) Exchange healthy recipes, eat wonderful food and enjoy a good companionship. At the end of the meal, you don’t even have to tip (thought you might want to off to help clean up.)

Healthy Recipe Suggestion:

Balsamic Glazed Pork Tenderloin and Red Pepper Grits (serves 4)

3 cups low sodium chicken broth
3/4 cup quick cooking grits, uncooked
2 tablespoons butter
1 clove garlic, minced
7 ounces roasted red peppers, drained and diced
1 pound lean pork tenderloin, cut into 4 equal portions
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons honey

Directions:

Bring broth to a boil. Add grits, butter and garlic, stirring with a whisk. Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, for 5 minutes. Remove from heat; stir in red peppers. Cover and set aside.

While grits sit, heat a large nonstick skillet coated with cooking spray over medium-high heat. Add pork to pan; cook 4 minutes on each side or until done. Remove from pan.

Stir in vinegar and honey, scraping pan to loosen browned bits. Bring to a boil; cook 1 minute or until thick, stirring constantly with a whisk. Return pork to pan; turn to coat.

To serve, divide grits into 4 equal portions and place on plates. Add 1 piece of pork and evenly divide the sauce over grits.

Nutrition Facts:

Calories 380 — Calories from fat 100 — Total fat 11g
Saturated fat 5g — Cholesterol 90mg
Sodium 290mg
Total carbohydrates 39g — Dietary fiber 1g
Sugars 13g — Protein 31g

For more information on Doctors Order: 101 Medically Proven Tips for Weight Loss Click Here, and don’t miss out on our Twitter and Facebook Contest happening through November 31’st.

Weight Loss Tip #16 Brush your teeth an hour earlier

From Doctors Orders: 101 Medically Proven Tips for Losing Weight

After dinner, when it’s time for your walk, or time to read or watch TV, about the time you change into your sweats or your pajamas and get comfortable, take a minute and brush your teeth. Who doesn’t like to have fresh, minty, clean teeth?

Once you’ve brushed your teeth, have nothing but ice water for the rest of the night. This simple step can help you avoid taking needless, mindless calories by snacking on popcorn or trail-mix, sweets or salty things that many of us crave in the evening. Most of the time we don’t need these calories; we’re not really hungry; we’re just watching TV or reading a book. Since these late-night calories are the most likely to be immediately deposited and stored as fat, they’re some of the most important calories to avoid.

For more information on Doctors Order: 101 Medically Proven Tips for Weight Loss Click Here, and don’t miss out on our Twitter and Facebook Contest happening through November 31’st.

Want to lose weight this year? Good for you. Finding and staying at your normal body weight can give you much more energy and protect you from a variety of health problems caused by or worsened by being overweight, including diabetes, heart failure, high blood pressure, aching back and joints, degenerative joint diseases, sleep apnea, asthma and more.

But setting out to lose weight this year can feel like an overwhelming goal. Whether you want to lose 10 pounds or a hundred, it feels like it’s going to take forever. Worse, it feels like you can’t do it in and around normal life. Surely weight loss requires eating specific foods and strict adherence to diet and exercise, and sure, those things help. But in your day-to-day life you can make a variety of changes and add activities (and decrease others) that can contribute significantly to your diet-and-exercise weight-loss efforts. None of them require a significant investment of time or money. All of them can offer significant improvements in health and weight. What do you have to lose?

Here are a few tips, culled from my book, Doctor’s Orders: 101 Medically Proven Tips for Losing Weight, to help you take a look at the ways you can restructure your days to lose weight this year and keep it off forever.

On the Job

Whether you work in an office, on the road or on a construction site, here’s a few tips for losing weight while working.

1. Eat breakfast, every day. Skipping a meal might make you feel virtuous, but eating breakfast turns on your metabolism and jump-starts your energy and fat-burning hormones. Not eating breakfast makes you sluggish and prone to overeat later on when you get hungry.
2. Eat protein for breakfast. Toss the old sugary, starchy breakfasts with cereal and toast or sweet rolls and juice. Breakfast is a great time for a healthy protein bar with 150 to 225 calories and 12 to 15 grams of protein. Look for bars with low carbohydrate content, or you can try liquid meal-replacement protein shakes. These are easy, no-fuss meals that don’t require cooking and fill you up without triggering hormonal surges of blood glucose insulin and leptin (regulatory metabolic hormones) which lead to weight gain.
3. Park farther away from where you work. Sure, that half block or couple parking spaces doesn’t seem like much, but if you do it consistently – and consistency is the key here – you’ll burn an additional 50 calories a day. That can add up to over 18,000 calories a year.
4. Take the stairs. At least one flight up or two flights down, saves time too.
5. Take the long way.
6. Take a protein bar. It will help you resist the temptations in the job trailer or the break room – or wherever temptation lurks.
7. Plan your day. Pack a lunch. Given 30 to 60 minutes to forage for food, the temptation of fast food that’s hot, cheap and satisfying is hard to pass up. Take the time in the morning or the night before to pack a lunch with high protein and low carbs and a zero-calorie beverage. Your waistline will thank you.

In my next couple of posts I will discuss some other tips for losing weight that can be applied to your life off the job and at home.

Today, November 1, we’re launching a 30-day campaign to give away seven (7) personally autographed copies of, A Sasse Guide: Doctor’s Orders: 101 Medically Proven Weight Loss Tips, plus a sample-pack of protein bars from iMetabolic.  There are three ways you can win.

Seven winners will receive a personally autographed copy of Dr. Kent Sasse’s newest book, Doctor’s Orders: 101 Medically Proven Weight Loss Tips, plus a sample-pack of five iMetabolic Protein Bars.  101 Medically Proven Weight Loss Tips was released in October 2009 as the second book in the Sasse Guide series and provides evidence-based, practical and effective tips for initial weight loss and long-term weight maintenance.

How to enter:

Option 1 — Twitter:

Follow us, weightlossmd, on Twitter.com and Retweet one of our medical weight loss tips from Doctors Orders: 101 Medically Proven Weight Loss Tips, including the hashtag #sasseguide. Enter as many times as you’d like by following me and Retweeting a different tip each time. On December 1st we will select three winners, announce them on our weightlossmd Twitter account and contact them via Direct Message. Some examples of our tips are:

• TIP #16 Doctor’s Orders: 101 Medically Proven Tips for Losing Weight by Kent Sasse, MD — Brush your teeth an hour earlier. #sasseguide http://ow.ly/uUrj
• TIP #31 Doctor’s Orders: 101 Medically Proven Tips for Losing Weight by Kent Sasse, MD — Bad days happen to everyone. #sasseguide http://ow.ly/vfN
• TIP #61 Doctor’s Orders: 101 Medically Proven Tips for Losing Weight by Kent Sasse, MD — Switch to diet soda and zero-calorie beverages. #sasseguide http://ow.ly/vfNX

Option 2 — Facebook:

Become a fan of Dr. Sasse and/or Medical Weight Loss on Facebook.com. Then, view the video of Dr. Sasse describing his upcoming book, A Sasse Guide: Doctor’s Orders 101 Medically Proven Weight Loss Tips and leave a comment on the video about something you like about the book or share one of your favorite weight loss tips with us. On Tuesday, December 1, 2009 we will announce two (2) winners from each page, Dr. Sasse and Medical Weight Loss.

Who is Eligible?

Everyone! All you need is a Twitter or Facebook account. Be a follower and a fan of our sites. You can enter all three ways and as many times as you’d like.

It is not uncommon for me to hear questions along the lines of:
“Will Having Weight Loss Surgery Guarantee That I Won’t Regain the Weight?”
or
“If weight loss surgery is so effective, why do some people need revision weight loss surgery?”

A recent large clinical study found that 89% of people maintained their weight loss after bariatric surgery over an eight-to-ten year time frame. That still leaves at least 11% of people regaining significant weight, and with well over 200,000 procedures performed every year, those with weight re-gain represent a large number of people.

At least five studies, three of them with large samples, have demonstrated a dramatic improvement in life expectancy and reduction in disease over many years among groups of people studied who underwent weight-loss surgery, as compared to people who did not.

But the surgery is far from perfect or a magic cure-all. The same temptations and drives, stresses and human behaviors are still at work, and can lead to weight re-gain in this high carb, high-calorie environment in which we live. Bariatric centers and surgeons have continued to look for ways to help people who re-gain weight.

Some of the new technology to shrink stretched pouches may offer hope to people who have re-gained weight. But my own view is that these attempts to improve, or “revise” the original surgery work best when offered in conjunction with education, coaching, support groups, counseling and a program of physical activity to change the whole way in which a person approaches eating and activity. Clearly the secrets to long term weight loss success lie in making sustained life changes in one’s approach to food and activity levels. Revision procedures can often help, but they represent only a part of the solution to this complex and challenging problem.

In this video short I discuss Type 2 diabetes and ways in which a medical weight loss program or weight loss surgery can help improve and in many cases cure type 2 diabetes.

Well this is it. I have finished my last training run before the Melbourne marathon. A little cool and a few rain drops here on the shore of lake Michigan but lovely and very pleasant for running. Not really on my training schedule for this race, too much work in the last month. I am hoping to finish the race in one piece! I’ll let you know how it goes, wish me luck!!!

One of the real interesting things that I see in my profession is the big gap between clinical, evidence based research and what typically appears in the popular press and media including books, articles and other published advise. After reading a mountain of journal articles about research trials and interesting investigative studies in the field of weight loss, I came up with the idea that the depth of these findings really needed to be translated to something that was easily readable and could be really put to use by everyone.

So began “Doctor’s Orders: A Hundred and One Medically Proven Tips for Losing Weight”. Each of them stems from research articles, studies, clinical trials and the like. Basically what I have done is distilled down the critical nugget of what has been a proven, successful strategy to help lose weight. I have just put it in practical terms that any of us can use in our own journey toward better health and healthier weight.

One of the proven concept I discuss in the book is the multiplier effect. Over time the calories you eat can add up to problematic weight gain. This concept can also work in your favor when you add up the calories you don’t eat and the calories you burn. Small changes to your daily routine can lead to dramatic weight loss over time. For example, taking a flight of stairs every day burns an extra twenty-five or thirty calories. This may not seem important, but multiplied by all the days of the year adds up to several pounds lost and there are countless examples like that which I point out in the book.

With 101 weight loss tips to choose from there are plenty of good tips that can lend themselves to anyone’s daily routine.

OK well maybe that title sounded more dramatic than it needed to be, but I do enjoy this recipe myself almost every morning. I know I say this often, but it is important not to skip breakfast. This is a quick and easy recipe that can help keep you on your path to better health.

Dr. Sasse’s morning secret shake recipe:

Using the Apollo Personal Blender and the larger size mixing container, which is the 12 ounce container.

1.    Fill the bottom quarter of the cup with ice cubes
2.    Add 1oz of 1% or 2% milk
3.    Add 2 heaping scoops of Chocolate Decadence iMetabolic whey protein powder (plus even a smidgen more for great thickness)
4.    Fill the remaining volume of the cup with cold water
5.    Tightly place the lid and blender blade with the ice crushing blade selection
6.    Blend to a thick, frothy consistency (about 30 to 45 seconds)
7.    Enjoy!

Not only does this have such a great thickness and consistency, frothiness, smoothness and flavor, but it is a powerful appetite suppressant throughout the morning.  It will give you a very satisfied, full feeling that makes it easy to pass right bye the scones, doughnuts and muffins that would otherwise be calling your name.

Made with whey protein this is an extremely low glycemic index morning breakfast meal replacement.  A great way to kick off the day and help you on your journey to a healthier new you.

In a wildly reported study in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. David Flum and his colleagues reported that the risk of major complications among patients undergoing weight loss surgery had dropped dramatically in recent years.  There study reported that for every 1,000 patients undergoing the surgery three died and forty-three had a major complication.  In an increasing number of similar studies the risk of death is similar or even lower.

Many health policy analysts and many of those outside the weight loss surgery field have begun paying close attention to the cost associated with treating obesity and conditions related to being overweight.  They also recognize that the danger of being overweight or obese now far exceeds the risks of weight loss surgery.  An accompanying editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine Dr. Malcolm Robinson from Harvard Medical School wrote that the weight of the evidence now shows that weight loss surgery is “safe, effective and affordable”, but “the expense of operating on the millions of potentially eligible, obese adults could overwhelm an already financially stressed health care system”.

Other news reports have described the burgeoning health care costs associated with obesity, perhaps because surgically solving the obesity problem will represent a large, up front and more immediate cost and health insurers are likely to balk at easy access to this important treatment.