Weight-loss tips for people with NO willpower – just in time for the New Year

Copyright (c) 2007 Derek Clontz/4-Page Media, Inc. All rights reserved. 

DIETING DOESNT have to be painful or an exercise in futility – here are 23 super tips that can help make yours easy to start and stick with.

Just be sure to consult a health care professional you know and trust before changing your diet in any significant way. He or she can help you optimize your healthy-weight plan and reach your goals even faster.

Here you go:

1. Eat foods that make you work for your meal. Bone-in chicken and “u-peelum” boiled shrimp are great because you have to dig, pick and fight for every bite, making it a chore to stuff yourself.

2. Chow down on a delicious salad before dinner or lunch to fill up BEFORE the high-calorie entree hits your plate. Watch the dressings, though. Many  are loaded with fat and calories. Read your labels. Even better, stick with a little lemon or lime juice. Not only are they good for you, they taste great, and they’re “thermogenic,” which means they actually burn calories.

3. Drink a large glass of water immediately before each meal.

4. Snack between-meals on nourishing, unprocessed, low-cal snacks such as apples, oranges, cucumbers, carrots, celery and the like. You can destroy a full day of successful dieting with a single high-cal, high-fat snack – so be careful.

5. Eat popcorn for snacks. Served plain, it’s just 25 calories per cup.

6. Spend extra time on your appearance. You’ll feel better about yourself and your motivation to lose weight will soar.

7. Listen to cassettes or compact discs in your car rather than the radio so that you won’t hear all those tempting food commercials on the readio. Watch less TV to cut down on commercials even more.

8. Keep busy. A full and fulfilling life will keep you from getting bored and turning to food to fill the empty spaces. Cultivate an interesting hobby to give yourself something to do rather than eat. Volunteer.

9. Use plain, low-fat yogurt in recipes calling for sour cream and save yourself calories with every tablespoonful.

10. Put stews, gravies, and soups in the refrigerator for a few minutes before eating them. Fat will rise to the top and you can skim it off for a huge savings of calories.

11. Eat hard-packed ice cream instead of soft to save about 90 calories per serving.

12. Try herbals such as dandelion and Brazilian cocoa to support your healthy-weight regimen.

13. Get plenty of sleep to boost your willpower. When awake, use simple relaxation tips such as closing your eyes, relaxing your muscles and clearing your mind to cut down on stress, which can lead to eating.

14. Eat slowly and savor every bite. In the end you’ll eat less.

15. Don’t taste foods while you’re cooking them. Get somebody else to do it.

16. Eat at the same time every day. A regular schedule helps you control how much and how often you eat.

17. Instead of drinking a glass of orange juice, eat a medium orange. It will last longer and save you 35 calories. And the fiber is great for your healthy colon and digestion. One more benefit: Oranges leave you with fresh breath!

18. Don’t wear baggy clothing when you eat. Roomy clothes make you feel you can eat more. Choose clothing with a tight waist so you’ll stop eating sooner.

19. At restaurants order all items a la carte. The main dish alone usually is enough.

20: Use small plates. They make healthy portions look big.

21. Always shop for food on a full stomach so you won’t be tempted to purchase high calorie “impulse foods.” This technique really works.

22. Drink club soda with a slice of lemon instead of soda pop and save 150 calories a can.

23. Give thanks before you eat. A simple prayer or meditation will give you pause to reflect on how fortunate you are to have food at a time when billions of people in the world are going to bed hungry at night.

These reflections can help you cut down on over-eating. If it helps, think about the plants and animals that gave their lives so that you could eat and thrive. An appreciation of the life you are eating to sustain yourself really can work wonders when it comes to helping you control how much and how often you eat.

NASA probe finds heaven – or something like it – on Mars

Copyright (c) 2008 Derek Clontz/4-Page Media, Inc. All rights reserved. 

FAST FACT: The Hubble Space Telescope photographed what appeared to be Heaven in deep space in 1992, but after a flurry of excitement and wild speculations, “Paradise” was proved to be a simple cloud of dust and gasses left over after a star exploded 600 billion years ago.

THE DISCOVERY of pearly gates, temples and streets of gold on the otherwise barren and lifeless surface of Mars has stunned scientists and clergymen alike, many of whom believe the items are dazzling new proof that Heaven not only exists, it’s just a hop, skip and a jump from earth – on the Red Planet.

Hundreds of top-secret, black-and-white photographs beamed back to earth by NASA’s hard-working Spirit rover beginning, sources say, on Nov. 14, 2004 show architecture reminiscent of the glimmering marble structures that were common in ancient Greece and also have appeared in descriptions of Heaven by people who have died and gone there while having near-death experiences.

And in many of those same photos, gigantic “pearlescent” gates can be seen in the distance connecting to what appear to be well-worn streets of hammered gold, several of which lead to a towering stone monolith that at least one NASA analyst has said “might be a throne.”

Equally intriguing are several images of golden feathers – some the size of yardsticks – that match up with biblical mentions of those that occasionally have dropped off of angel’s wings during their visits to earth throughout history.

“But here’s the capper,” says a NASA source who is heading up one of five independent teams charged with analyzing the photographs that have not been made public to avoid what one insider calls “confusion, angst and panic”  among non-Christians.

“Spirit is equipped with sensitive on-board microphones that have been detecting noises that, though faint, are unmistakable – and nothing like the simple rush of wind and ‘tic … tic … tic’ of blowing sand that we heard almost continuously since the rover landed in 2003.

“What we’re hearing now sounds like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir accompanied by the strumming of harps. It’s faint. It comes and goes. There’s room for error. We could be wrong.

“But most of us who have heard the tapes agree that whatever’s going on up there sounds a lot like what goes on in churches here on earth.

“The only things we haven’t heard are mothers shushing their babies, fire-and-brimstone preaching and the jingle of coins dropping into a collection plate.”

NASA spokeswoman Marcia Pendergast, in the space agency’s Washington office, declines to discuss the photographs or even acknowledge they exist pending what she calls “the outcome of a continuing investigation” that she admitted “may drag on for months.”

She was equally tight-lipped about speculation the space agency has, in fact, stumbled on Heaven – or something just like it – in its exploration of the Red Planet.

“We have to proceed carefully to avoid offending non-Christians and atheists who don’t believe in God and Heaven and, as we know from numerous political and sociological polls, that’s 48 percent of the country,” says a NASA administrator who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect her job.

“But the mood inside NASA is absolutely electric. There’s hardly a person here who’s seen the photographs and read the reports who doesn’t believe we’ve found Heaven.

“And I’m not just talking about scientists and bureaucrats, we’ve brought in a number of clergymen and theologians as consultants and they agree with us.

“We could explore space for a thousand years, send rockets and astronauts to the farthest reaches of the universe, and even fly forwards and backwards in time, and we’d never top this.

“Finding evidence of an afterlife … well, what else can I say? Surely this will change human behavior for the better, because now that we know there is a Heaven, surely the reverse is true – there must be a Hell.”

Rev. Dr. Paul Stack couldn’t agree more. The famed short-wave radio evangelist whose daily sermons reach an audience of millions in 73 countries believes God is using NASA and the Spirit rover as tools to warn mankind of impending doom.

“Judgment Day isn’t just near, it’s here,” he said in a telephone interview from his home in Hahnville, Louisana,. “I strongly advise every man, woman and child with ears to hear and eyes to see to get right with the Lord straight away.

“He’s shown us Heaven. What more proof do you need? Either you get down on your knees and pray for salvation right now or you accept the alternative, which is nothing less than a trap door falling out from under you at any moment – and dropping you straight into Hell.”

When – and if – NASA will go public with the pictures remains to be seen.

“The big boys want to make sure they’re right so they don’t wind up humiliating themselves,” explains a source who says NASA has always been reluctant to rush to judgment about any discovery in space.

“Can you imagine them trumpeting to the world, ‘We found Heaven! We found Heaven!’ only find find out a few months from now that all they really found were some odd rock formations and sandscapes that just happen to look like pearly gates, temples and angel feathers?

“Heads would roll and it wouldn’t be pretty – I’ll guarantee you that.”