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Whether it’s bloating and swelling that makes you remove salt from your diet or high blood pressure or other coronary scare, just donating your salt shakers to a non profit charitable organization or hiding them in the cupboard won’t be enough. It’s not the salt itself that’s your enemy but the sodium in the salt. If you eat processed food, you’re getting most of your sodium from it, rather than the salt you add to the food.

Today’s processed foods are high in salt.

I admit it, I happen to have a “thing” for beef jerkey. A friend knew that and gave me a huge container of it, without considering my passion for whole foods…or maybe he did and thought it was funny. I ate half the container before my family came home. When my daughter found out, she said in a sarcastic voice, “Why didn’t you just open a bottle of soy sauce and drink it? Or grab a tablespoon of salt?” She’s right jerkey has soy and soy sauce is loaded with salt. There are other foods that you might not guess have high amounts of sodium. Cottage cheese, flaky croissants, salad dressing and some breakfast cereals.

It’s time to start reading labels.

Check the nutritional facts on the labels and boxes of food before you purchase. For instance, you might think that Raisin Bran is a healthier choice over Frosted Mini Wheats. Frosted Mini Wheats contains sugar, after all. A mixture of raisins and bran, well, how could that not be healthy? It even sounds healthy. Guess which one is loaded with sodium and which one isn’t. The Raisin Bran has an amazing 262mg sodium in just one cup, while the Frosted Mini Wheats contains just 5mg for the same amount. Since the recommended daily allowance is 2,300 mg, the Raisin Bran is more than 1/10th your recommended daily amount.

What does sodium do to make your blood pressure rise.

Sodium attracts water, which is why you get thirsty after a salty meal. If you have a lot of sodium in your blood, it causes blood volume to increase and blood pressure to rise. Your heart has to work hard to pump the blood when that happens. The increased force also causes arteries and organs like the brain, kidneys and eyes to be damaged.

• Take the guesswork out of shopping and even the reading by using whole foods, not processed foods.
• Drain and rinse canned foods before you heat them if they contain sodium in the liquid.
• Eat more potassium to counteract the effects of sodium.
• Food that contains higher amounts of potassium include bananas, carrot juice, pomegranate juice, sweet potatoes, spinach, potatoes, white beans and tomatoes.

I’m constantly asked about special workouts for fat loss after 40 and I always respond that the workouts that build muscle tissue and burn fat work no matter what your age. I love boxing as a workout for fat loss because it provides total body conditioning. You’re working more than just one muscle group at a time, which burns more calories than isolate exercises, such as body twists, leg extensions and etc. The more muscles you move, the better the workout for fat loss.

You can’t exercise away a bad diet.

No matter how long you workout in the gym, how strenuous the exercise or how frequently you go, you simply can’t offset a bad diet with exercise. You have to do a full 20 minute kettlebell workout, one of the best calorie burners, to work off one jelly donut. Throw in a burger, fries and soft drink and you’d be at the gym all day to work off that heavy lunch. Eating healthy meals that are rich in nutrients but lower in calories is part of the weight loss program. YOU MUST CHANGE BAD EATING HABITS AND LEARN NEW ONES TO LOSE WEIGHT. It’s the combination of healthy eating and regular exercise that does the trick.

Strength training is the primo workout to lose weight.

You want more muscle tissue to help you maintain weight loss, but diet alone won’t do it. Aerobic exercises actually use both muscle and fat tissue for fuel, so they won’t provide the long term help you seek to not only take off pounds, but keep them from returning. Strength training is proven to burn fat tissue while building muscle tissue. The more muscle tissue you have, the more calories your body burns even when you’re not exercising. While cardio burns more calories while you’re doing it, strength training provides after burn. The muscles continue to burn calories up to 24 hours after the workout.

Create a workout schedule and healthy eating plan and stick with it.

It’s really not magic. Creating a plan to workout three times a week and eating healthier whole foods is simple. Sticking to the plan, well, that’s a different point. I have a client that started out extremely out of shape and not ready for a tough workout. He read an article called the nitric oxide dump, where you do ten each of four simple exercises, squats, tin soldier, jumping jacks without the jump and air pullups, three times a day at least two hours apart. He did it for one month. He could cope with the four minutes. He next added weights and then came to the gym. He wasn’t prepared at first to devote a full hour at a time, but doing something, got him ready for the big workout.

• Start increasing your activity every day to burn fat. Go for walks, park further from the store, take the stairs. These mini daily life workouts help to burn fat.
• Never do strength training two days in a row. Your muscles need time to recuperate.
• Put on some gloves and shadow box. If you can’t go to the gym, throw some punches at home. The exercise will help your body and releasing that aggression will help both your body and your mind.
• HIIT workouts burn tons of calories. Since they are nothing more than working your hardest for a minute or two and then backing down the effort to moderate for several minutes, it’s a great deal like boxing. It’s just another reason boxing burns fat.

There’s been a lot of talk about losing weight with intermittent fasting and the information can be quite confusing. Intermittent fasting has to do with when you eat. It is a pattern where you eat little or nothing for a specific time, followed by a period of normal intake of food on a consistent basis. You can choose three different types of intermittent fasting. Whole day fasting is one or two days with no or minimum caloric intake, Alternate day fasting means you fast for a day, followed by eating normally the next day and then begin the cycle again. Time restricted fasting is often the most popular. You fast for 16 to 20 hours, then eat the other 4 to 8 hours of the day.

There’s some research that shows intermittent fasting can improve health and help you lose weight.

If you’re a lab animal, rejoice! Most of the studies have been on mice and other lab animals that show fasting can extend life, slow aging and reduce disease. However, for those of us that aren’t rodents, the information is inconclusive. There simply are broad human studies on the topic, but there are some. The studies that have been completed point to health benefits, such as reduced oxidative stress, improved biomarkers and protecting memory. There is a call to do studies on how intermittent fasting can help improve cardio health and brain health.

Intermittent fasting helps shed pounds.

According to two studies, you might be able to lose weight easier with a program of intermittent fasting. One study had overweight subjects with asthma alternate and eat only 20 percent of their normal caloric intake on one day and their normal intake the next. Not only did the subjects lose 8% of bodyweight, their asthma improved and they also had other health benefits. Another study of overweight younger women also showed improved weight loss and reduced insulin sensitivity plus other healthy changes.

There are changes at the cellular level.

Your body continues to adapt to the conditions it faces. Fasting, even for as short as 16 hours, urges your body to make changes. The fasting triggers processes for cell repair, while also making changes to various hormone levels to unlock the fat stores. Insulin levels in the blood drop, HGH—human growth hormone—increases as much as five times and it triggers changes in the genes that help protect the body from disease and improve longevity.

• Using intermittent fasting, you’ll reduce the amount you eat. If you narrow your food intake to a 4 or 8 hour window, it makes it harder to intake as many calories.
• You’ll lose more belly fat with intermittent fasting. One study showed it reduced waist circumference by 4-7% and another showed it caused less muscle loss than traditional low calorie diets.
• The big plus to this type of eating pattern is the lowering of insulin levels, increased HGH levels and noradrenaline. That helps break down fat for energy and boosts your metabolism.
• No matter what type of intermittent fasting you use, you still need to consume your normal caloric intake on the days you eat. It won’t work if you gorge yourself on the days or times you eat.

It’s more than just the food you eat that puts on weight and ruins your health, what you drink also affects good health. Here in Stamford, there’s a renewed interest in eating a healthy diet. I’m always happy to see that. However, when I’m in a restaurant, I often see people with a plateful of salad and other healthy foods and a carbonated drink. I don’t care if it’s diet or regular, that can throw off the entire meal, no matter how carefully the food is selected. There are other drink choices that also are just as unhealthy, but manage to find themselves at the table of people who otherwise have the perfect diet.

Soft drinks contain tons of sugar.

Healthy drinks are definitely not carbonated drinks like soda. In fact, when you drink a twelve ounce glass of soda, you’re consuming 10 teaspoons of sugar. That’s huge, especially since sugar can have such a detrimental effect on the body. People trying to lose weight intake 150 calories for every 12 oz serving. The sugar it contains is high fructose corn syrup that not only adds calories, but also affects the hormones that tell your body you’re full. It contains phosphoric acid that can affect mineral absorption and lead to osteoporosis. Besides raising the risk of obesity, it raises the risk of diabetes, heart disease, tooth erosion, kidney disease and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

Diet soda is almost as bad, worse in some cases.

While diet soda doesn’t have the sugar, it can make your waistline grow. In fact, one study showed that people who drank put on weight around their middle. The subjects were over 65 and followed approximately 11 years. Those who drank diet soda frequently increased their waistline by three inches more than those who didn’t. It can reduce kidney function, increase the risk for metabolic syndrome and diabetes, heart attack and stroke, tooth erosion, COPD and asthma.

Fruit juice is better, but not good.

While you do get the advantage of the nutrients in real freshly squeezed fruit juice, there’s still a lot of fructose in the drink and none of the filling fiber. In fact, it contains about eight teaspoons full of sugar, half of which is fructose. The real fox in the hen house is the “fruit drink.” Some of these are just 5 percent real fruit juice and the rest sugary water with artificial flavoring. They harm the liver, lead to diabetes and are a leading cause of obesity.

• People who consume soft drinks on a regular basis have a 20% higher potential for heart disease.
• Drinking diet soda on a daily basis increases your risk of type 2 diabetes by 67%.
• Sugary drinks, whether soda, fruit drinks or fruit juice, may be one reason there’s a huge increase in obesity in the United States. In an effort to boost nutrition, parents unwittingly get fruit drinks for their children, thinking they’re healthier.
• The best type of drink is always water. If you want more flavor, squeeze a quarter of lemon in it.

It’s often easier for most people to gain weight than to lose it. Some of the reason is the misinformation that’s everywhere on the internet with mistakes that can add pounds. Some of the advice actually can make you gain weight. For instance, those “miracle” shed 10 pounds in 10 days diets that consist of magic elixirs made of juice from grapefruit, cabbage or other foods, may actually help you lose some weight in a short period, but lowers your metabolism. The minute you go back to eating normal meals, you put it all back on and sometimes more.

Eating a low fat diet might be one error.

Sure it’s fat and it only makes sense that if you eat fat, you’ll get fat, but that’s not how it works. The type of fat that you eat is ultimately important and the amount of fat in your diet is also important. Fat has been given a bum rap. It actually can help you shed pounds. It fills you up and makes it a lot less likely that you’ll overeat. It boosts your metabolism, balances hormonal activity, stops cravings and even aids in reversing heart disease. It’s not just any type of fat, however. Some foods with good fats are meat and butter from grassfed cows, avocados and whole eggs.

You’re eating processed foods that are labeled diet foods.

Special diet foods are everywhere. If you read the labels of most of the dishes, you’ll notice a chemistry lab of ingredients, which includes fructose. It’s sugar that, while natural, plays havoc with your brain and is in everything. It isn’t metabolized like other sugars and goes directly to fat. Eating refined sugar is the real enemy of dieters and it tends to be in all processed products. Stick with whole foods, organic if possible, and you’ll watch pounds fall off quicker.

You forgot to include exercise, particularly strength training in your weight loss regimen.

Exercise is so important when you’re trying to lose weight. It burns extra calories and provides many other benefits. It can burn off the hormones of stress, like cortisol, which is associated with abdominal fat—the most dangerous type. Stress hormones make other changes in your body and can also lead to “stress eating,” a real diet danger. Strength training helps build muscle tissue. That extra muscle tissue can boost your metabolism, since it requires more calories to maintain than fat tissue does.

One huge mistake is snacking on “diet treats.”

You think you can eat more if the package says low calorie, low fat, low sugar or any word related to diet and weight loss, but that’s not true. One study at Cornell University let overweight people choose their snacks. Those who opted for the lower-fat or sugar-free version actually ate twice as many calories as the ones who ate the regular snacks. It’s all about portion control. Let yourself splurge occasionally, but in small amounts.

• One big mistake is not getting enough sun, which means, not getting enough vitamin D. Start working on a protective tan that prevents sun damage. Vitamin D can help you lose weight and it’s free.
• An imbalance of beneficial bacteria in your body can add pounds. Lots of things can cause that, but one definitely does. It’s antibiotics. Farmers often use low doses to help fatten cattle. Need I say more?
• Make your goals about improving your performance in the gym and eating healthy, rather than actual weight loss, and you’re more likely to stick with the program and get results.
• Don’t just depend on the gym for exercise, get up and move around frequently. Walk to work, park further away from your destination or climb the stairs. Put more exercise into your daily life.