Is Diet Food Delivery a Good Option for Losing Weight?

Posted on June 26, 2010
Category: diet | Leave a Comment

With the proliferation of plans and programs for losing weight available in seemingly endless streams both online and in the real world, it must get confusing to people who really only want a simple yet effective means of getting rid of those excess pounds. To the rescue come even more weight loss companies with diets that are made so convenient that you’d think it would be almost impossible to fail with them. But are these so-called diet food delivery plans a good option for losing weight? Let’s look at how they wok and see why they may or may not be right for you.

The winning formula with companies such as Nutrisystem lies in their system of packaging up a whole month supply of food to cover every single meal that the customer is meant to eat for that time and then deliver it straight to their door. The customer then stores the packages away for use as and when the instructions say so. What in effect is happening here is the complete removal of all responsibility on the part of the customer for the running and planning of their diet. It is all done for them and all they have to do is open a package, take out the meal and either eat it or heat it in a microwave first, then eat it. It doesn’t come any simpler than that!

But is this the best way to go about dieting?

That depends on the individual, as it does in all cases of weight loss. What works for one may not work for another and what suits one may not suit another. We already know this and so it comes down to whether you want to work on your diet your self, or whether you want someone else to do it all for you and you just eat and watch the pounds fall off. Os so the theory goes.

So where can this fall down?

Well, when you take away responsibility for doing anything for yourself, you also remove all self blame for it going wrong. If the customer of the Nutrisystem diet plans can stick rigidly to their diet and NOT eat anything else, then they really should not fail to lose weight. How much weight depends on many factors, such as initial weight, body size, shape, physical makeup, previous diet, amount of exercise undertaken every day, amount of water drank etc. But as long as the diet is adhered to, the weight should drop off because the diet is based around a calorie restricted set of meals that are balanced and contain the nutrients you need to be healthy. It falls down when the customer, who remember does not have any responsibility in this because everything is done for them, cheats. They will not tell anyone, of course and may even not admit to themselves that they have cheated. The odd pack of potato chips here, the sneaked king size chocolate chip cookie there… no one will notice, right?

Wrong! One person will notice and that’s you when you get on the scales at the end of the week and not see ant reduction in weight despite the diet. What is your immediate reaction? The diet has failed, or is rubbish and you are going to complain and then write about how bad the company is in every blog and forum you can find! Of course the diet did not fail the customer did, but when you remove personal responsibility, you provide ammunition for the customer to blame anyone else but themself. The company usually gets the brunt of that.

So you could say that these diets are perfect for people who don’t have the time for conventional or alternative diets, which is who they were initially designed for. They may also be effective for anyone who has the determination to stick to the diet and despite the convenience of it all, have the balls to take responsibility for their own health. Otherwise, if you don’t think you can stick to a diet that does everything for you, then you best avoid them and go the more conventional route.

Terry Didcott
Alternative Cures

Natural Remedies for Arthritis

Posted on November 28, 2009
Category: healing | 3 Comments

Natural remedies for arthritis do exist and can be found in a variety of everyday things, when you know where to look. But before you go getting too excited, there are a few things you need to know about arthritis and how it affects the body before you can go about and try to cure it yourself.

natural remedy for arthritis

Natural Pain Relief Spray

Xritis is an all-natural pain relief spray product. Whether you suffer from arthritis or related inflammatory conditions, stiff joints and muscles or aches and pains, Xritis can help relieve the pain. It is 100% natural and safe to use and has a pleasant menthol scent.
This product features:

Is There a Cure for Arthritis?

The first thing you need to know is no matter what you may have heard from well meaning friends or even professional people, at the present time there is no known medical cure for arthritis, in any of its forms. This is something you will come up against when you try to get some relief from your doctor. Doctor’s are equally frustrated at this and have no real solution to give you, often resigning to the fact that it is just something that you will have to live with. Sure, they can prescribe painkillers to reduce the pain and NSAIDs (Non Steroidal Anti Inflammatory Drugs) to help reduce the swelling,but these are only acting on the symptom and do not do anything to work on the cause.

Working on the cause of arthritis is the way to bring about relief and even a cure, but you have to know what the cause is. Want me to tell you?

Its your diet. Plain and simple.

What you eat, depending upon your own physical and metabolic makeup, can bring about a whole collection of problems, not least of those being arthritis. The rub is that certain foods will affect different people differently so you need to find out exactly which foods or food groups are directly affecting your physical makeup to cause your body to over-produce the uric acid that is the underlying cause of your arthritis. It’s quite complex, which is why there are probably as many different schools of thought on this as there are cases, but the lowest common denominator is uric acid and the body’s inability to get rid of enough of it.

When there is an excess of uric acid in the bloodstream, it leeches out to the joints and in some cases the muscle tissue. It does this because acid will always seek out an alkali substance to neutralize itself. The joints contain high levels of alkali tissue in the protective synovial membrane and fluid, which are attacked first, then the ligaments and the bone itself, all of which are alkaline.

With gout, which has the same cause but more intense albeit more short lived symptoms. Gout sufferers, of which I was one for several years, tend to have fluctuating levels of uric acid in the bloodstream. When it goes above a certain level (which can differ in different people) the excess finds its way into the joints and crystallizes, causing the intense pain and swelling associated with an attack of gout. When the levels of uric acid later reduce below the critical level, the same acid flushes the crystals out of the joints and the pain and associated swelling goes down.

With arthritis, the symptoms are continuous and cumulative because uric acid levels remain high, although they still do fluctuate but not enough to bring about the removal of the acid from the joints. In arthritis, the uric acid in the joints first destroys the synovial membrane and fluid and forms a hard, eggshell like membrane in its place. This causes great pain when the joint moves which causes the body’s immune system to attack the joint, flooding the area with histamines, which cause the painful swelling (the same as with gout).

Anti-inflammatory drugs can reduce the swelling but relief is only temporary as the drugs wear off the pain and swelling returns. Over time, the body comes to become accustomed to the drugs, so stronger drugs need to be taken to achieve the same level of relief. This is a terrible situation as the body cannot cope with sustained levels of these drugs, which themselves become as problematic as the arthritis they are being used to treat.

So what is the cure?

As your doctor has probably already told you, there is no medical cure. But there is a way to try and reverse the damage as long as you can catch it early enough, before too much irreparable damage is done to the affected joints. You have to find out what, in your diet, is causing your body to create such high levels of uric acid and then cut out those foods (or drinks). You need, in affect, to reduce your body’s overall level of acidity. There are many ways to do this, but that will be the topic of a future post.

An Alternative Remedy?

Magnetic Bracelet for Arthritis

Hematite Powerful Magnetic Bracelet for Arthritis Pain Relief

Magnetic therapy is a very natural method that is used to relieve pain, restore energy and also to enhance sleep! This kind of therapy has been proven a safe and effective form of alternative pain therapy. The idea is thousands of years old, yet today researchers are discovering that it holds great promise for the future as the cost of traditional health care increases. Magnetic therapy is important for its economic simplicity and effectiveness. Magnets are scientifically proven to provide the body with the ability to naturally regain its self-healing electromagnetic balance and has a very high success rate. Magnetic therapy as an arthritis pain remedy is well documented to work for many people without any side effects or harmful properties. If you haven’t tried this, then you have nothing to lose apart from the cost of the bracelet which can be purchased online for as little as $11 from Amazon by clicking the link or the image above to go straight to the info page of the magnetic bracelet pictured.

Terry Didcott
Alternative Cures

NutriSystem Reviews

Posted on September 21, 2009
Category: diet | Leave a Comment

Sometimes there are diet alternatives that are useful to know about even though they don’t technically fall into the “alternative” category. NutriSystem Reviews are of great benefit to those individuals who are thinking hard about losing weight by trying this product. I wanted to come back in this blog with an interesting article that looks at the many pluses and minuses of this well known diet food delivery system to bring the reader an impartial view of Nutrisystem and how it works as well as how it might help you to lose weight. Now, I know this isn’t exactly an alternative way of doing things and in reality, it does push the limits to what is natural and what is artificial. This diet food plan is made up of ready meals that are pre-processed for convenience, which pretty much makes them about as unnatural as can be! But there is more to it than that, which is why I’m writing about it here.

The first thing about Nutrisystm you should know then is that the system revolves around those pre-prepared, pre-processed, packaged and frozen meals that are meant to substitute all of the meals you normally eat. There is a plus point coming here in that it is aimed at people who are overweight. People usually get overweight because their diet is crap. Its usually crap because the people who eat that stuff are usually too lazy to prepare and cook proper, nutritious and balanced meals for themselves. So by substituting Nutrisystem’s set meals, you are providing at least well balanced and nutritious meals that provide your body’s health needs while at the same time being low calorie.

This should be the first step to losing weight, at least for lazy people!

But here is a minus (or a plus depending upon your point of view) You should prepare and cook some fresh vegetables to supplement the Nutrisystem meals. Why? Because it will bulk them out so you won’t risk becoming hungry too soon after eating one of their meals on its own.

If this looks like a minus point to you, then you are probably one of the real lazy ones. If it looks like a plus point, then you have some determination to want to make it work, while being able to see the obvious benefit in adding some low calorie bulking matter that is also nutritious and good for you! What you don’t want to happen is by avoiding this extra step in the process you’ll feel like snacking in-between meals. And what do people like to snack on? Yep, potato chips, cakes, biscuits etc. Better to eat the veggies, no?

Another minus that some people are going to experience is a possibility of getting gas. Yep, if your body has been so used to consuming crap, then once you start eating food that is actually doing you some good, its going to take a while for your digestive system to get used to it, with the result that your are going to get wind and fart more!

Either you can complain about it or just laugh it off!

So, the gains are there if you stick to the diet food, add some vegetables and don’t cheat. You’ll lose weight for sure because you’ll no longer be eating all that garbage that was making you fat in teh first place.

The Nutrisystem meals are pretty easy to prepare. Its a simple case of taking them out of the freezer, popping them in the microwave and hey presto! Instant meals that won’t make you fat. That’s a definite plus in anybody’s book.

Ok, the last thing that people are going to whine about is the Nutrisystem cost. What is that cost exactly?

Well, you could simply look at their website and see the charge for the month’s supply of meals and for what they are, which is currently around $8 a meal, you might think that’s not cheap but neither is it expensive. What would it cost to eat out at a fast food restaurant every day? Probably a lot more than that.

But that’s not the whole cost, is it?

You already spend some money on all your presently crappy food that you eat at meal times. So work it out. What do you already spend on meals each week? Multiply that by 4 to give you a monthy figure. Then take the total away from the monthly NutriSystem cost and you have the real cash amount that it costs. Now I bet it looks pretty cheap, especially considering that you’ll be losing some weight by eating those meals in place of your old unhealthy diet.

Is that the final cost? No it is not. The final cost is in doing something positive not only to lose weight but to improve your health. The cost of good health is priceless! Because without your health, what have you got?

Does NutriSystem now look like something you might want to try?

Visit their website for more details and see how you can lose weight for not as much money as you might have thought and its easy!

Terry Didcott
Alternative Cures

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