Cellulite is just the visibility of subcutaneous fat cells. It is as simple as that.

It isn’t caused by too much fat, or isn’t about trapped toxins of inflamed subcutaneous cells – it is just the visibility of them.

Cellulite is predominantly a female issue. Not many men seem to have this problem and this is because fat cells in women are clustered in sacs as well as the fact that we carry twice us much fat as men do.

Despite needing fat to fill fat cells, cellulite isn’t caused by being overweight. Have you noticed that many skinny women also suffer from the dreaded sight of cellulite? So losing weight isn’t necessarily your answer to ridding it. You can’t avoid having some fat anyway – it’s important for health to have some fat. So even though you may be able to reduce the visibility of the cellulite by losing weight (half filled fat cells will be less pronounced than full fat cells), you still will have cellulite, because as mentioned it is about visibility not how much fat you have.

So if most women have cellulite isn’t it natural?

Cellulite, despite most women suffering from it, is NOT natural. It can be considered normal by today’s standards to have it, especially when roughly 90% of us in the Western world have it. This is simply down to the health and junk foods we consume in the Western world and also the extra protein we eat. Our protein consumption is excessive!

OK, but what causes those fat cells to become visible?

Cellulite is categorized by the bulging of fat cells into the outer skin and this is caused by an increase in concentration of damaged proteins that have very high water-attracting properties. This leads to a rise in the amount of water the skin retains, which causes the fat cells to extrude. [1][2]

So if you retain a lot of water, then it is most likely you are consuming too much protein and too much damaged protein. A likely sign of this would be cellulite!

So cellulite is caused by:

1. Consuming too much protein! If you are eating a lot of cooked protein (rather than plant protein which will not cause this issue) then you are contributing to your cellulite issue. The heat from cooking the protein damages the amino acids and creates new substances within it. This creates amino acids that are much harder for our bodies to separate and utilized. As a result they aren’t utilized immediately and end up in the skin, making you retain water and making your fat cells visible.

But it also can be caused by:

2. An impaired hormone metabolism. One of the reasons you have impaired hormone metabolism can be contraceptive pills. The only way the pill can work is by dominating your hormone metabolism and if it didn’t you would get pregnant. It is known that contraceptives can cause water retention thus cellulite.

What about genetics?

No, cellulite isn’t hereditary at all, even though many sources seem to claim that it is. I think this is down to making people feel better by putting the blame on something that is out of ones control. Well I am sorry, but cellulite IS in your control.

The only way that cellulite can be even seen as remotely hereditary is that you possibly have picked up your parents eating habits. If you have become accustomed to eating a high protein diet from birth, then in that sense it is hereditary. This is something that can be very difficult to overcome because it has been a life long habit.

Conclusion

Cellulite maybe normal for society but its only because of all the health and junk foods we consume on a daily basis. It is a sign of ill health and nothing about it is natural. It isn’t hereditary, only in the sense of what your eating habits may be as a result of your parents.

You can get rid of it and it comes down to beating your addictions to wheat and dairy based products and high protein cooked foods. If you decrease your intake of cooked protein you will see a decrease in cellulite. If you want to have good looking skin then you must change your diet.

Upcoming posts on cellulite:

Cellulite and the Skin

Cellulite and How to Treat It

References for this article:

[1] Rosenbaum, M. et al, An exploratory investigation of the morphology and biochemistry of cellulite. Plast. Reconstr. Surg. 1998 / 101 (7) / 1934-1939.

[2] Lotti, T. et al, Proteoglycans in so-called cellulite. Int. J. Dermatol. 1990 / 29 (4) / 272-274.

[3] http://www.waisays.com

Previous Post: Weight Loss Goals Part 2: The 3 Beliefs You Need For Weight Loss Success

Now that you have set up your outcome or goal to something more you can work towards, you now need to believe in 3 things in order to be successful.

You need to believe:

1. POSSIBILITY: It is possible for you to get a slimmer body.
2. ACHIEVEMENT: You are able to lose weight or to get a slimmer body.
3. WORTHINESS: You deserve to lose weight or to get a slimmer body.

Possibility

Possibility is almost always mistaken for competence. We think that something isn’t possible, that we aren’t able to lose weight when really we don’t know how to do it – we don’t have the knowledge or resources to be able to lose weight. This is especially true in people who have tried countless diets with little or no success.

It is possible though, regardless of your situation. You can’t prove that it isn’t possible – you can only say that you haven’t achieved it yet.

Beliefs are not fact.

Beliefs are just our best guess at something and we often sell ourselves short. Do you think you have put a mental ceiling on your achievements? Do you think you have hindered your weight loss success through your beliefs about yourself?

Ability

Most of us tend to make others aware of our short comings, when we can’t do something. If you take a day out and observe people and what they say, you should notice how often people say they can’t do this or they can’t do that. We all think this is being modest, when in fact its not. Modesty is not boasting about what we can do, it isn’t boasting about what we can’t!

Once you become aware of yourself voicing your inability to lose weight, you can stop yourself voicing it. If you continue to voice your inability to lose weight, it will hold you back from achieving your weight loss goals. If you find it difficult to stop voicing your inability, a good alternative is to add the word “yet” to the end of your statements.

“I haven’t been able to lose weight…yet”

“I can’t lose weight…yet”.

It is also important not to make excuses for your weight loss failures. If you do not have the knowledge to lose weight, go out and get it. Set tasks that you need to do in order to achieve your slimmer figure.

A general belief that you should try to hold is:

You have not yet reached the limit of what you are capable of.

Keeping this in mind will help you to achieve your weight loss goals.

Worthiness

Do you deserve to lose weight? Does it make you feel uncomfortable to say you deserve to? If it does, this should help you figure out any obstacles that are in your way to achieving your goal. List them and work out how you can overcome them.

e.g. I don’t have the correct knowledge to lose weight – to overcome this I am going to do some research and find a suitable diet program or expert to help me.

For Help To Combat Cravings & Create Your Perfect Vision: CLICK HERE

Weight Loss Goals Part 1: Creating A Positive Weight Loss Mindset

Weight Loss Goals Part 3: Weight Loss Planning

Your weight loss outcomes can depend on many things but at the core of it all you need to believe in 3 things in order to successfully lose the battle with the bulge. But before I go into the 3 beliefs you need (which will be in tomorrow’s post), I would first like to address the term “losing weight”.

When saying to yourself you want to lose weight, you are setting yourself up for failure to begin with. When you say you WANT to lose weight, you won’t do so because you are concentrating on what you cannot do while still trying to do it instead of willingly doing the task i.e. I CAN lose weight. When you say you can lose weight your goal becomes focused.

However there is still a problem in the goal “to lose weight”. When you say you want to lose weight you are describing a negative outcome – to lose, when what you need to be doing is describing something positive. Not positive in the sense of being good for you or positive feelings, but positive in the sense that you want to work towards it rather than something you wish to avoid or to lose!

So instead of making the goal to get rid of excess weight or to lose it, try to change your goal into something more positive. I want to be slimmer or I want to gain muscle or I want a better physique. Making your goal positive and something to work towards is the first step in creating a successful campaign against the excess weight! It is your end result and if you keep this in mind instead of focusing on the negatives (the losing weight part) then you will have much greater success in your weight loss endeavours.

For Help To Combat Cravings & Create Your Perfect Vision: CLICK HERE

Weight Loss Goals Part 2: The 3 Beliefs You Need For Weight Loss Success

Weight Loss Goals Part 3: Weight Loss Planning

Previous Post: The Dangers of Low Carb Diets: A Quick Overview

UPDATE: For some great articles on high carb diets and interviews with athletes who follow them I strongly urge you to check out the FoodnSport Blog here

Low carb diets are everywhere. Everyone seems to be doing them and everyone is supposedly losing weight and feeling great. I don’t believe it for one second (especially the “feeling great” part).

I have scoured many resources and listened to many people try to convince me that a low carbohydrate diet can be healthy, yet the very same people trying to convince me of that are tired all the time, moody, struggle to make their days work out and struggle to stay on the diet (if you are struggling to stay on a diet then its not going to help you long term so why put your body and mind through it? Struggling to stay on a diet means something is wrong).

Many people do lose weight using low carb diets, that can’t be denied. However, Dr Michael Greger who wrote Atkins’ Facts, states that the only reason people lose weight this way is because they eat less calories.

Eating fewer calories may be a good thing if you are over consuming on calories but if you are eating a low carbohydrate diet and fewer calories, you will feel terrible.

I mean, if low carbohydrate diets are so great then why is it we are still struggling to lose weight? Why is it that 2 out of 3 Americans are either overweight or obese?

Just like most other diets available or putting in the limelight, low carb diets work well in the short term. In the long term they fail because you are either too tired, exhausted, moody or you have serious health issues.

When we don’t eat enough carbohydrates we rely on fat for fuel. This creates toxic by-products like acetone/ketones. The kidneys use minerals such as potassium and calcium to help rid the body of these toxins. So by going on a low-carb diet you urinate out essential minerals, which lead to low levels in our bodies. This can result in fatal cardiac arrhythmias. Ketosis (the process in which your body converts fats into energy) is a potentially life threatening condition and can also cause other problems due to the unnecessary stress put on the liver (resulting in potential liver damage).

When there are insufficient carbohydrates present to convert to sugar, the body will transform fat and protein into sugar, but at a higher cost: more time and energy spent on digestion with the creation of toxic residues.

Unpleasant side effects to low carb diets also include bad breath, constant cravings for sweets, irritability, constipation and low energy (As mentioned several times). Is it really worth the outcome of being slim for a short period of time when there are healthier, more long-term ways of losing weight?

A number of independent medical studies have also shown that a low carb, high protein diet can be dangerous to your health and even life threatening. This danger increases over time – so the longer you stay on it, the greater the risk.

Another problem with low carb diets is that they require people to eat an unnaturally high amount of protein every day, and generally high-fat protein as well.

The American Heart Association recommends getting 10 to 15 percent of your daily calories from protein. High protein diets overload the body by cramming their menus with meals that deliver 35 to 50 percent of the daily calorie intake as protein.

According to the John Hopkins Hospital, a leading medical research institution, high protein low carb diets cause the body to excrete calcium, and are associated with increased risk of heart disease and risk of kidney failure.

According to a University of Chicago study done in 2002, participants who were on a high protein low carb diet for a mere six weeks had a sharply elevated rate of calcium excretion, which leads to an increased risk of osteoporosis (thinning bones). They also had a high “acid load” in their blood streams, leading to an increased risk of kidney stones.

A study published by the American College of Nutrition found that the long-term use of the Atkins Diet would result in a 25 percent increase of blood cholesterol levels.

And – as if that’s not enough – the low carb diet tends to lead to constipation and other health problems associated with low fiber diets, because high fiber cereals, fruits and many vegetables are eliminated from the meal plans

People who stay on low fiber diets long term are also at increased risk of diverticulosis – a condition in which areas of the intestines weaken and bulge outward. This condition is virtually unheard of in societies that have diets rich in fiber.

Yes, people do tend to lose some water weight right away on high protein low carb diets. But they also get fatigued, grouchy, and crave carbs constantly. And as we’ve just demonstrated, staying on those diets long term can be life threatening – AND as soon as you start eating normally again you will gain that water weight right back, at an alarming rate!

But here’s the good news: it is absolutely not necessary to risk your health with a high protein diet.

Eating a high carb is important to your health. For example, we all know that fruit is good for us. A typical item of fruit contains around 80-90% carbohydrates, 1-10% fats, 1-10% proteins. This should be evident enough to not risk your health.

Previous Post: Stop Binge Eating One Step At A Time

I came across a great article today about mindfulness and health. Being in the present moment, having self awareness is crucial to weight loss success and also to live a harmonious balanced lifestyle. If you are forever running around, if time flies by before you know it and you don’t really acknowledge what you are doing whether it be driving to work or stuffing your face with food, then you will find it extremely difficult to move forward with your weight loss.

Step back, take a moment to access the situation and you will reveal to yourself things you may never have noticed if you hadn’t of stepped back and looked at your life. The only way I truly was able to get to a weight I was comfortable with (and to continue to this day to achieve the healthy lifestyle I had always wanted) was by stepping back and spending the day observing myself. It revealed to me so many things I really hadn’t consciously acknowledged before, one being how food was a comfort blanket for me, a LOT of the time.

Anyway the article I came across talks about mindfulness being a form of meditation in which you: “…disengage yourself from strong beliefs, thoughts, and emotions, and increasing feelings of relaxation and well being”.

Being truly present is just something most of us live without, to our detriment, and something I feel strongly about introducing back into people’s lives for good!

The article talks about 5 strategies you can use to improve your mindfulness and subsequently your health and wellness. They are:

1. Consider what’s right with you.

Everyday take a moment to give thanks to the things that you do like about yourself and the things that do function correctly e.g. I am thankful I can walk, I am thankful for breathing easily etc.

2. Love yourself unconditionally.

Whether you give in to a piece of chocolate cake or if you end up eating a whole pizza, you must love yourself unconditionally. Don’t hate yourself for giving in, just embrace and accept this as a hiccup in your journey to where you want to be and learn from it. Being down on yourself or negative about yourself will only lead to failure. You are essentially setting yourself up for it by being negative.  So remain positive and when you feel yourself slipping into negativity thinking, focus on being in the present moment – dart your attention around the room to specific objects if this helps prevent you from taking your negative thinking further.

3. Live in the present moment.

When you live in the present moment, everything seems to make so much more sense. Living in the moment gives you the ability to grow, to learn and change. If you are dwelling on a past binge or worrying about the future, you aren’t living in the moment and you won’t truly enjoy life and those moments where you can grasp pleasure from it. Living in the moment also allows you to look at your life from a clear perspective. In the midst of a craving or a stressful situation, if you step back and access how you feel, you will ultimately be able to give yourself the breather you need instead of bundling along in some other dimension!

4. When life gets tough don’t take it personally.

While it is important to accept responsibility for your actions, you shouldn’t dwell on it.  The best way to deal with it is to look at what you are doing differently now, now what you could have done better in the past.

5. Put the “being” back in human.

If you fill every moment with manic activity you never give yourself a chance to simply be.  Just sitting for a moment and contemplating is a great stress reliever and calms you.  I usually spend my mornings in this way.  I awake and lay for a few moments or more in thoughtfulness before getting out of bed.  It sets my day up nicely especially after my morning smoothie

To read the full article : http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/living-well-usn/2009/03/02/5-ways-to-be-mindful-and-achieve-optimal-health.html

Previous Post: How Much Water Should I Drink?  8 Glasses A Day?

The fuel to emotional eating is emotional hunger. Unfortunately, no matter what you do, you will always have emotional hunger. It is what makes us human but this doesn’t mean we have no hope of dealing with it. The emotional hunger isn’t the problem; it is how you deal with it that really counts.

At the moment, the only way you may know how to deal with emotions is to eat or you may be the type who uses food on certain occasions to deal with an emotion. You may even be someone who doesn’t think they use food for comfort but doesn’t really know if they do or not.

For me, I was really unaware of the way I used food for comfort. When I started stripping my diet down and eating low fat foods, I really started to see that I did use food for emotional comfort and a LOT of the time too. I still have moments now where I struggle to keep awareness of my feelings. I am lucky though to have some great support through it.

When you eat for emotional reasons, you can become so attached to dealing with the ups and downs of life with food that any suggestion that you can actually stop this makes you nervous. In Part One: An Introduction to Emotional Eating I mentioned people going into a blind panic and bingeing, this is what I am talking about here. You are dependent on food for comfort. It is like security to you, no wonder it makes you nervous if that was to be taken away! Many people simply cannot imagine being able to handle a bad day without food there for comfort.

When you are an emotional eater, you really do feel truly hungry and when the craving grips you, you can’t tell its not really hunger. People who are not emotional eaters usually eat less when they are troubled by emotion hunger. Their emotional hunger doesn’t feel like physical hunger.

Emotional hunger and the feeling that you are truly hungry, has so much power over you that it drives you to go to almost any lengths to satisfy it. Have you driven to the store late at night just to get some junk food?

There is such power in emotional hunger that if you do not deal with the underlying issues to it, you will always be at its mercy. It will control you.

Some signs of emotional hunger:

• It results from something emotionally upsetting.

• It has a quick onset. It comes on rapidly.

• It demands food immediately.

• It doesn’t notice how why or what is being eaten.

• It can even demand more food even after a person is stuffed.

• It demands particular foods to be fulfilled (like cake and chocolate).

If you are compelled to eat in this way and cannot be patient, then you know it is most likely an emotional issue you are dealing with.

Are you an emotional eater? Do you feel compelled to eat in stressful situations?

Below I have put together some questions you may want to take the time to answer if you feel that you could be an emotional eater. These will help you get a better understanding of yourself and your eating.

• Is it hard for you to see emotional eating in your life?How hard do you find it to see it?Describe the instances where you think you emotionally eating.Do you think that this is an obstacle to your weight loss?

• Do you think you can tell the difference when you are experiencing emotional hunger versus physical hunger?

• Have you ever mistake emotional hunger for physical hunger? Do you eat out of boredom for example? Has it become such a habit that only on reflection you can see what you are doing, as opposed to in the moment it happens?

• Why do you think you use food rather than address the emotion directly? Do you always use food to deal with emotions?

Activity: During your day be more aware of your eating habits and notice when you eat out of true hunger versus emotional hunger. Note down whether your feelings on this. Were you surprised at how much you used it to numb yourself?

For A Complete Guide on Cravings Click Here

Part One: Introduction to Emotional Eating

Part Three: Food Addiction & Its Origin

For many people, simply following a balanced diet and exercising is not enough to lose weight. Many find it impossible to stick to a diet and to control what they are eating, despite their best efforts. Maybe you are one of these people?

You already know how to lose weight – you know you must eat more nutritionally but you seem to slip up at every turn. So what is getting in your way?

The answer is most likely a mix of physical addiction to food and emotional eating. Emotional eating is the hardest part to overcome and is what I will discuss below (physical addiction will be discussed in a later blog post).

The thing I have found is that a lot of the information available out there (including diet programs) is that they do not addresss this issue and if they do, they just touch on it.

However this issue is a big one and can stand in the way of someone achieving the healthy lifestyle changes they want. Especially if you are following a diet that restricts you in anyway. For some this can lead to a blind panic and before you know it you will have just engulfed a large chocolate cheesecake and will still be wanting more.

Food is a security blanket for many and to be restricted can make us feel vulnerable and exposed, even if we aren’t completely aware of it (which we usually aren’t because by the time we have become rational again, after a good old binge, we are too numb to feel anything).

What is emotional eating?

Emotional eating means to eat to satisfy emotional hunger. You eat food for comfort or a way to help you cope in life. You eat for reasons other than nutritional.

We all do this. Emotional eating is part of our culture. We use food to celebrate, to deal with upset, to deal with a hard day at work and even boredom (ever sit in front of the TV eating mindlessly?) It is a part of our culture. The problem with this is, it isn’t really seen as a problem in society, but it is one.

We spend so much time numbing ourselves, that when we do not have an opportunity to do so, we don’t know how best to deal with the emotions that arise in us. Food also has physically addictive properties within it that can affect our mood as well (I will discuss this later in a blog post) so everything can be very overwhelming. When we don’t live in the present moment and allow emotions to flow through us, but instead numb ourselves, we carry a lot of baggage around unknowingly. Sometimes this can surface in a bout of aggression or other form. The thing is, if we don’t face it, don’t learn to deal with our emotions then we just continue to live a life of numbing, of bingeing or craving. You miss out on the potential of life, of embracing emotions.

People suffering with this way of eating are driven to eat so they don’t have to face what is bothering them internally. They become addicted to the way they handle life. This is why dieting and calorie restriction doesn’t work. And since most diets do not teach you about emotional eating, we never become fully aware of it and think it is something wrong with us.

If others can do it, why can’t I?

Unless you learn to stop emotional eating and deal with your emotions in the present moment, you will find it impossible to lose weight and keep it off. Not to mention you will find it pretty hard to enjoy life fully if you are constantly battling with this issue with your weight loss.

If this resonates with you, then you are not alone and you can overcome it.

I will be writing about emotional eating this week and next, so stay tuned.

For A Complete Guide on Cravings Click Here

Part Two: What Fuels Emotional Eating

Part Three: Food Addiction & Its Origin

I am forever seeing the question “What are some healthy snacks for someone trying to lose weight?”. I have even been asked this question time after time and always answer with the same thing time after time. Unfortunately many seem to be disappointed with the answer but I think this is more due to lack of understanding than not wanting to eat what I suggest.

The answer I give is very simple but is often overlooked because people see this food as insufficient or not filling. So what is it I suggest?

FRUIT!

We have had it drilled into us that it is important to have our 5-a-day. We have had it drilled into us that a fruit snack is something like 1 banana or 1 apple. This is exactly why people do not wish to turn to fruit for snacking purposes. It doesn’t fill us up, it doesn’t provide nutritional satisfaction or emotional comfort.

Fruit is, along with greens, packed full of essentially all the nutrients our body needs, but it is not calorie-dense, so in order to be fulfilled nutritionally we need to be eating much more than 1 banana or 1 apple. Fruit is also not heavy like other foods such as grains and meat, or packed full of addictive substances, so we do not get the emotional fulfilment many of us want from food from fruit. We may not even realize that we want emotional comfort from food. I didn’t realize how much I used food as an aid to emotional issues until I started becoming aware of my eating habits. I still now find it sometimes difficult, but I find comfort in my husband, distraction or exercise.

So how much fruit should we be eating? A lot! If you find yourself hungry, eat 5-6 apples or 5-6 bananas or even more than this (or less) depending on how you feel. Listen to your body and stop eating when you are satisfied. If you incorporate fruits (as well as greens) into your diet more and more, your cravings for unhealthy snacks will decrease and you will feel much better physically and emotionally.

If you are out on the run, and lugging 5 plus bits of fruit about seems a bit big annoyance, take some dates out or maybe some sun-dried fruits. Make sure though that if you take dried fruits out with you, you have plenty of water. Whereas if you have 5 apples, they will help keep you hydrated, you need to replace the water missing from dried fruits with drinking water.

The more fruit you eat the more you will learn to love it and the more you will miss it when you don’t have it. Fruit is very good for you – it will satisfy that sweet tooth for you much better than a chocolate bar or candy will and won’t leave you moody or tired.

Previous Post: Calorie Counting: Determining How Many Calories You Need

There are lots of programs advocating the use of counting the calories you consume – some even have point systems. Although I don’t agree with such programs, as I believe we should listen to our bodies to determine *true hunger* over cravings or boredom, I think it can be useful to begin with to see a rough estimate of how many calories you need to eat as opposed to what you are eating. It can also be helpful if you are choosing to eat a high fruit/greens diet because it can be hard to get enough calories.

In order to determine the calories you need to consume, first take your ideal weight (not your current weight but the weight you want to get to) in pounds and times this by ten. This is your base need. So if you want to weight 130lbs then your base need would be 1300 calories. Add to this roughly 200-300 calories or maybe more depending on how active you are through the day. If you just sit at a desk all day you may not need anymore over 200. Then if you exercise that day add another 300-500 depending on intensity.

So for someone who wanted to be 130lbs (1300), had a fairly active day (300 calories) and had an intense work out (500 calories), this person would need to consume around 2100 calories that day.

This is a rough estimate and it isn’t strict. If you feel like eating more than you probably need to, if you feel that this is too much it may very well be. The best way to know whether you are hungry, truly hungry, is to try the fruit test. If you don’t want to eat fruit then it is probably a craving/emotion/boredom.

Try not to be strict with the calories but try to be more intune with your body and what it NEEDS. This will help you maintain your success at losing weight and will be much better in terms of not only being able to listen to your body effectively, but not having to keep a diary of how many calories you have had and if a food goes over them!

However to begin with yes working out rough estimates can be helpful and you can see if you are doing well listening to your body or not. Useful sites to help you count calories are www.nutridiary.com and www.fitday.com. It is free to set up accounts with both.