The answer is ‘Yes’ because eating at home or eating out, the guidelines are the same. You can continue to follow a portion control eating plan when you dine out because the choices you make about what you eat and how much you consume should remain the same. A balanced healthy meal is available to you when you dine out, provided you ask for it!

The obvious up side about eating in restaurants is that there is a wide selection of dishes available to you and some one else prepares your meal and even clears away dirty dishes! There are however some downsides for those managing their food portions. Restaurants often serve meals that are way too large. All-you-can-eat buffets are disastrous if you are unable to control and manage the portions you eat. Avoid this type of restaurant, at least in the beginning of your journey towards controlled eating.

Even if dining out provides some challenges to those just beginning to enjoy the benefits of portion control eating, restaurants do expect special requests from patrons with special dietary needs. You have these, so make sure you ask that they be accommodated. Ask your server to hold the sauce, substitute a salad for fries, or hold the bread. Some restaurants will allow you to order from the lunch or children’s menu, so don’t hesitate to ask.

When it comes to dessert, you have options that will see you keeping the integrity of your healthy eating without appearing that you are going without. Fresh fruit is a healthy alternative to a very rich caloric dessert so order this or just ask for a coffee.. If you crave a sweeter dessert make sure you eat only a small amount or share it with you partner or a friend.

As you dine out, consider these tips so that you can continue to lose weight:

• Only eat a main course
• Don’t fill your self with bread before the meal begins, one slice only
• Drink water before your meal and while you eat
• Restrict your alcohol, one glass can go a long way
• Make sure that you food is cooked healthily; baked, broiled, steamed or baked
• Skip fried foods, a couple of French fries only if you weaken
• Ask that sauces, sour cream or butter be served ‘on the side’ and use only a little
• Select food portion just as you do at home
• Request that no food is sautéed for you
• Fresh fruit for dessert
• Avoid any large meal regardless of the ‘value’
• Ask for the kid’s menu for adequate sized portions

Regardless of where you eat, take time to savor the flavors, textures, and aroma of your food. Enjoy eating this and allow sufficient time for your stomach to learn (from your brain) that you have eaten enough. Resist eating until you have over eaten because the damage will already have been done. As you begin to feel full, reduce your eating and then stop and push your plate to one side. This is an important step in the process of potion controlled eating and can be taken either privately at home or publicly in a restaurant.

Warm Regards

Rowena French

For The Team @MightyDigitalDownloads.com

Rowena French uses responsible portion control to successfully manage her own weight and her family’s health. Tired of dieting without success? Sign up to my free magazine to learn more about how to use portion control for healthy, permanent weight loss. If you haven’t already subscribed to my free product sample, watch my preview video for more information about the whole portion control package.

Whenever you start a new diet you generally discover that at some stage you will need to abstain from at least one food group- which ever one is deemed to be the ‘bad guy’ at the time. The greatest ‘weight gain’ culprits over recent years have been carbohydrates and fats. Portion control eating does not subscribe to abstinence from carbs, fats nor any foods as a means of long term weight loss. Instead it promotes eating the right sized portions of these and all foods.

The benefit of eating carbohydrates as part a weight loss program can be confusing as there are some carbs that should be eaten and others that should not. Highly processed carbohydrates typically raise blood sugar levels and eventually lead to you feeling ‘down’ once they are processed through the body. Complex carbohydrates pack the most nutritional value and promote appetite suppression. Brown rice and whole wheat flour are examples of good carbs and an important component in any portion control menu they will stave off your hunger longer.

The inclusion of fats in your portion control menu is important but the total amount of fat you eat should be monitored and generally less than 30% of your daily food consumption. As is the case with carbs there are healthy fats and not-so-healthy fats so it’s important to know the difference. Fat can be obtained from meats, dairy, nuts, and oils and knowing where to find the healthiest fats is important.

You can eat sugar or artificial sweeteners and still lose weight, it’s just a matter of how much. Using natural sugars may be more satisfying but either source should be used in moderation. Unlike most fad diets portion control eating is not restrictive – it’s a way of life, so there is a place for the inclusion of limited amounts of either natural or artificial sweeteners.

The jury is still out about the value or not of sweeteners in weight loss programs. However, they can be a useful strategy for reducing the amount of sugar in your diet, which does lead to better weight control. The important thing to understand is that the use of real sugar in your diet is not necessarily a bad thing when you practice portion control – unless you are diabetic or have some other illness that prohibits the consumption of sugar.

Take care when you select artificially sweetened drinks as these often contain empty calories and can promote hunger rather than suppress it. There is some value in a limited portion of something sweet rather than continually depriving yourself of a delicious sweet treat or cup of carbonated soda. This generally leads to overeating later. The solution is found in an underlying principle of portion control! A small taste of something calorific is MUCH healthier than prolonged abstinence and then binging.

You can lose weight without abstaining from the foods you really enjoy. Smaller portions of food from every food group Combined with physical activity, is a winning combination! If you eat 100 more food calories a day than you burn, you’ll gain about 1 pound in a month. That’s about 10 pounds in a year. If you reduce the same number of calories seamlessly by managing the size of your food portions through portion control and gradually increase your physical activity you WILL lose those extra pounds and keep them off. All without the agony of abstinence from entire food groups.

Take a look at what Connie Diekman, Director of Nutrition at Washington University, St Louis has to say about how to get healthy and stay healthy using portion control.

Warm Regards

Rowena French

For The Team @MightyDigitalDownloads.com

Rowena French uses responsible portion control to successfully manage her own weight and her family’s health. Tired of dieting without success? Sign up to my free magazine to learn more about how to use portion control for healthy, permanent weight loss. If you haven’t already subscribed to my free product sample, watch my preview video for more information about the whole portion control package.

]]> http://blog.mightydigitaldownloads.com/uncategorized/why-portion-control-is-not-about-abstinence/feed/ 0 http://blog.mightydigitaldownloads.com/uncategorized/debating-stress-for-sarah-john-barack-and-joe/ http://blog.mightydigitaldownloads.com/uncategorized/debating-stress-for-sarah-john-barack-and-joe/#comments Sun, 05 Oct 2008 17:05:11 +0000 The Team http://blog.mightydigitaldownloads.com/?p=53 Having watched the presidential and vice presidential debates, and having an interest in stress, I started to wonder about the effects of this debate on the four people on the two tickets. Sarah Palin, John McCain, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden are the four contenders experiencing the stress. But what about the stress during the televised debates?

The first major stressor during debates is the ultimate victory or loss. At the back of their mind must be the constant fear that they might make an incredible blunder. With the dual pressure of handling content intelligently and presenting oneself as a credible and attractive person comes great strain.

The four people on the two tickets all have different personal styles. You can be sure that in the background there were many public speaking experts coaching our four contenders. The requirement to adapt and become an adept speaker in a short timeframe must be a burden. How must each person change?

Barack Obama has a sophisticated but slightly professorial style. Because he is intelligent and well read, he tend to come across as somewhat remote and theoretical. The pressure for him is to appear as warm, committed, and in touch with the people and their dreams. His key appeal is the concept of change.

John McCain has the pressure of being seen to be too old and unwell. He has his long-term experience as a senator but he has to find a theme that will connect with people and earn their support. His reliance on his war record is useful but the tension for him is to capture the imagination of those less interested in war so his call to the masses is patriotism.

Joe Biden has 35 years as a senator so he has a huge amount of knowledge but perhaps too much to convey in a short time. As well, it is easy for people to see him as arrogant. Joe has to present himself as commonplace and one of the people.

Sarah Palin has to choose between being folksy and from a small community and being credible on the national and international scene. What makes her appealing is her cute mannerisms, her winking, her ‘doggones’ and ‘aints’ but these are also limitations. Her additional stress was to appear informed after some of her disastrous earlier interviews.

The debating stress for these four contenders came from trying to cover up their weaknesses and shine with strength. They had to overcome their personality and content differences to be successful. The real issue is whether they handled the debating stress sufficiently well to attract a popular vote.

Warm regards

Dr Jeff

For the team at

mightydigitaldownloads.com

 Dr Jeff Bailey, a psychologist, writes about stress. The TV debates of Sarah Palin, John McCain, Barak Obama and Joe Biden provided an opportunity to consider how much stress each nominee experienced. Did they manage stress well? Check out Dr Jeff’s free stress book.

Why am I writing about Sarah Palin? If Sarah Palin is qualified to comment on Russian affairs because she lives in Alaska, perhaps I too am qualified to comment on Sarah as I live in Alaska some 40 miles from Wasilla. But this is not the reason. I write about stress and how this affects people in the workplace and at home. Having read dozens of news articles about Sarah, I began to wonder how well she copes with stress.

I would love to interview Sarah and ask what her secret is for looking so continually composed, relaxed, excited, and on top of her game. As everyone knows, she is a wife, mother, Governor, and now vice presidential nominee. She has a five-month-old baby. She has been thrust into the international limelight in a way that few people ever have outside the entertainment industry. So what is her secret for managing stress?

There are two kinds of stress – distress and eustress. Stress can be either brief or sustained. Distress can create many dysfunctional characteristics: sweating, a nervous state, uncertainty, constant tension, lack of confidence, and a failure to be able to cope with daily life. Sarah Palin certainly doesn't fit this picture. Then there is eustress. This is an elevated state of excitement with increased neurochemicals, for example, cortisol and adrenaline. Eustress helps deal with pressures and new challenges. This is Sarah Palin's special brand of stress.

But stop and think for a moment. What exactly are the sorts of stressors confronting Sarah Palin right now? And how is she handing the stressors? These are the questions are prompted me to write this article.

 Cary Cooper, a British psychologist who has a huge research background in stress, recently reported on his study of stress in politicians. The study found that six months after taking up office, politicians were reporting elevated levels of stress. The signs included loss of confidence, sleeping problems, drinking and eating too much, feeling constantly under strain and showing increasing lack of motivation. The reasons for the stress were clear: a large workload, up to 70 hours work per week, a lot of travel, and very little time with family.

At this stage, Sarah Palin is not vice president but she is still Governor of Alaska. There is mounting criticism in the local press about Sarah's absence from the State and from her responsibilities as Governor. She is a very responsible and ethical person. This must be causing her some tension. She also has the spectre of Troopergate lurking in the background. She has had to hand over a lot of responsibilities to the McCain political team. She has her daughter's pregnancy and marital state to worry about. And a son has just been deployed to Afghanistan.

But there are other sources of stress as well. Sarah has been thrust on to the political and international stage. While there is no doubt that she has the background and skill to handle Alaskan issues, political journalists have questioned her credibility in national and international affairs. Given the current bailout and economic crisis, how competent is she to address major financial issues? Given Russia's recent incursion into Georgia, can she handle sophisticated diplomatic negotiations? Does she have enough understanding of the taxation system at the national level?

Questions about her political knowledge can undermine her confidence. They can put her in a defensive position at every interview. They can make her feel tense and uncertain unless she has in-depth knowledge of the issues at hand. Criticisms from all fronts can destabilize one's level of security and self-assurance.

So, how does Sarah Palin handle stress? What strategies does she used to manage the tension? These are the questions which would make for a fascinating interview. My educated guess would be that she uses many productive stress management strategies. Many of these strategies would derive from a high-level of emotional self-awareness and a strong sense of purpose.

She has a strong sense of family and personal values. She has an unshakeable belief in God's will and purpose. She relies on prayer as a form of stress reduction and to give her direction. She has the support of a huge number of people, not only the First Dude and her children, but many Alaskans. She has an extraordinary amount of personal ambition and drive. She is a competitor who loves to win and enjoys the challenge of competition. My guess is that she uses a range of very productive stress management strategies that will continue to help her manage stress in her public life.

Warm regards

Dr Jeff

For the team at

mightydigitaldownloads.com

 Dr Jeff Bailey, a psychologist, writes about stress. Given all the media attention about Sarah Palin as the VP candidate, he started to wonder about how well she manages stress. Sarah has effective stress reduction strategies. Check out his free stress book.

Our cute-as-a button niece Ally came to live with us this year. She is 18, has just started College and is living away from home for the first time.

She is trim, outgoing and lots of fun.  Her boyfriend is devoted to her. She’s smart, has a great sense of fashion and she’s very conscious of her appearance.  At first glance you think she didn’t have a problem in the world!

We’re discovering more about each other every day. We respect her privacy and want her to enjoy living with us. But we’ve discovered some things she’d rather not discuss have needed airing.

Not long ago her bathroom washing revealed an aspect of her life new to us.  All her towels were covered with white stains. They were ruined and needed replacing.

I asked her what might have caused the discoloring.  She looked embarrassed and vague, had no answer but said ‘I always used white bath towels at home’.  The towels were replaced with the requested white. As I was arranging this, the penny ‘dropped’. Peroxide was the culprit.

Ally was using skin care products containing peroxide to treat her acne.  No wonder she spent more time in her bathroom than any other room in the house! No wonder the towels needed replacing and no wonder white was the only colored towel she had used at home.

At first I was surprised at how hard she’d tried to hide this from us. Then I recalled how outbreaks of acne leave adolescents so exposed and vulnerable. Ally’s response to my question mirrored the deep embarrassment that most kids feel as they try to cover up or control their skin blemishes.  Just when they’re feeling most self conscious about their appearance and trying to fit in with others, acne can appear and ruin everything!

It is generally believed that our genes and hormones impact on our chances of developing acne.  Sometimes skin care products can impact on acne along with stress.  According to the American Academy of Dermatology, an estimated 80 percent of all people between the ages of 11 and 30 have acne outbreaks at some point.

We’re pleased that Ally has found a reliable guide to help control her acne.  Thankfully she didn’t follow the myriad of myths about remedies for skin blemishes.

We notice that even though she is well informed, Ally chooses not to discuss the prevention of her acne with us.  We’re OK with this. Our task is to ask no further questions, provide white towels, and allow her to keep doing what she seems to be managing well.

Warm regards

Rowena 

From The Team

http://mightydigitaldownloads.com 

To discover more about ways to prevent and treat acne and blemishes you will find help in The Complete Guide to Acne: Prevention, Treatment and Remedies.

 You don’t have to read lengthy books to help your child become a great reader. You don’t need to spend a huge amount of time reading with your child. You don’t have to spend a lot of money on books. You don’t have to take expensive classes to know what to do and how to get started.

 Let’s begin this article by talking about what you CAN do. Here are some practical and simple ideas. If you want to get some ideas about supporting the school’s reading program volunteer as a reading helper and talk with your child’s teacher about what to do at home.

 You can lay the foundations that will help your child become a lifelong reader. Their world will be expanded and enriched by reading experiences that you can provide with only a short, consistent time commitment each day. The benefits are immeasurable.

 The first thing to do is to stimulate your child’s interest in reading. There are many ways to do this, the most obvious being to read a book to them. Choose a book that is suitable for their age and interests.

 Start with a picture book, even big kids love picture books, particularly the ones by Graeme Base. Show them the pictures, discuss what you all see. Let them listen to your voice, and become aware that words convey meaning. They associate the written word with spoken language. If you are reading to beginning readers, track under the lines so that your child sees that you read from left to right. Turn the pages slowly and say, perhaps, what do you think will happen next.

 Parents need to model reading behavior and label it as such. Whether you read a magazine, technical manual, cook book, cereal packet or newspaper, capture your child’s attention by sharing a piece of information. Some simple ideas include: read the cereal box at breakfast time; read some words that have many syllables and clap their rhythm.

 There are many core skills and concepts that underlie reading, like word recognition, rhyming, starting and ending sounds of words, even joining in by looking at text. Have the kids help you prepare meals by reading recipes or instructions on packets and cans. When eating out or getting take out, find words and symbols that have meaning, like the golden arches of MacDonalds.

  Parents should read to their children even when the children have become independent readers. Everyone, even adults, enjoy listening to stories read to them. Listening to a poem, book or short text read stimulates imagination and builds vocabulary as well as expanding understanding of our world.

 Read to your children all the time. Read fiction and non-fiction; read poems and short stories. Read about real things- animals in Africa, Space travel – whatever interests you and your child. The advantage of reading to your child is that you can read books about things that interest them and stories that are beyond their reading level. This will motivate them to increase their reading skills so that they can read more complex text. 

Consider having a collection of children’s reading CDs for long travel time. Visit libraries and join up so that all the family can borrow books. Family reading time can be fun when each member reads independently. Endeavor to have a set time when everyone sits and reads, no TV no answering or using phones, no texting, no sitting at a computer, no drawing or writing.

 Vary the content of what you read to children. Read them a cleverly crafted poem and talk about the ‘mental pictures’ the poem creates. Select some of the most exciting words from the poem – the fun words or the mysterious words. Encourage your children to enjoy the intricacies and beauty of your language. Select from magazines, books, letters, emails, catalogs, mail from the mail box – anything. Words are magical. Reading is fun. If you believe this and if you spend lots of time helping your child read, your child will do brilliantly at school and love language and reading.

Warm regards

Columbia

For the team at

mightydigitaldownloads.com  

Columbia Lee is a passionate educator with 35 years of teaching experience. She knows parents can create exciting learning at home. Do you want to help your child learn to read? Want your child to read better? Get her collection of helpful books to increase learning at home. 

 Math learning is great fun at home. You don’t need specialized resources. Everything you need is in your home at this moment. You need enthusiasm and a creative mind to find math opportunities.

 Math doesn’t just happen at school; in fact math is every where.  Math is part of our world. Quick reasoning, problem solving skills and accuracy and speed in computation are vital skills in our technologically oriented world.

 We rely on math almost every minute of every day. From awakening when our alarm goes off to resetting our clocks for next day. We constantly perform math calculations during the day. Time: 2 minutes to get to the train, 30 minutes to get this job done, an hour before the school bus arrives, birthdays, Valentines Day, Spring Break, Thanksgiving. Money: cash, credit card transactions, bank balances, meals, pocket money for the kids, bills, bills and more bills. Measurement: traveling, exercising, building, cooking, shopping.

 Today’s children need to be able to problem solve, reason mathematically, use math language and apply math in almost every aspect of their lives. Our children have grown up with calculators and computers. Despite this they need to be able to know when an answer makes sense or is reasonable.

 Calculators and computers are tools. They do not have thinking power- they are able to perform complicated calculations at lightning speed but they rely on the accuracy of the data input. They are only as useful as the person who puts in the numbers. The user needs to be able to determine whether the answer given is reasonable- does it make sense? To be able to determine this you must be able to estimate the approximate answer and in doing so key in the correct operation (+,-, X, /).

 Start to find the fun in math with your child today. Help them to learn and enjoy applying math thinking to everyday situations. Make a game of it. Estimate the outside temperature and check with your thermometer. Guess the weight of your shopping and then weigh the parcels. Having fun with math with your child can develop a real love of number problems and thinking.

 It’s really easy. You’ll be amazed at how you will come up with great ideas and activities. Play counting games, recite number rhymes, cook, shop, and look for shapes in your home; the activities depend on the age of your child. Read and create timetables, use tallies to find out how many cars pass your house, count the letters you get, add the numbers in the zip codes. 

 Interesting math travel activities keep the kids occupied when traveling long distances. Try adding the numbers in 10 car and truck license plates and compare which is greater/smaller. Tally the number of red cars that pass your car, continue to subtract distance traveled from total length of journey, and record the cost of gas and food and total at end of trip, estimate the time it will take to complete a trip, even record temperatures every 20 miles. Real life activities such as these help kids to see how math skills are used constantly and this helps them understand the reasons for learning math.

Encourage your children to talk about how they solve math problems. Help them to think about their math thinking. This is called metacognition – thinking about thinking. Think what processes and strategies they used to reason out a solution. Even very young children can do this. Build a positive attitude to math by incorporating math tasks and thinking into everyday activities. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how quickly your child will develop a love for math.  

Columbia Lee

For the team at

mightydigitaldownloads.com  

 The US National Institutes of Mental Health alert us to the characteristics of PTSD. These include a sustained and disruptive set of feelings that occur after a particularly traumatic event. These unpleasant episodes recur at frequent intervals.

 One feature is constant video replays, that is, remembering and replaying the event for months after. This repeated and recurring stress means we have trouble sleeping. Some people have very dramatic and violent nightmares, and most wake feeling that their sleep did not refresh or re-energize them. 

The constant worries mean that relationships suffer as the person experiencing PTSD pulls away from loved ones. Some suffer guilt that they returned from the war – and that their comrades did not. Emotions are volatile, some people becoming very edgy and short-tempered. 

Most of these victims have attentional problems and find it hard to stay on task and be productive at work. There is a constant theme of remembering and agonizing. Even the notion of having these recurrences and being unable to concentrate can cause people to worry even more. 

Unfortunately, around one in 12 people in the US will experience PTSD – though the degree of stress varies significantly from person to person and even from race to race.

 Fortunately, for most of us, we do not experience this level of stress, though if you are stressed at the moment many of these symptoms will probably apply to you. The question that arises relates to the degree and continuity of the stressors that are causing us to feel tense and unhappy. How long do they last? Will they end? What can be done to overcome these recurrent worries?

 Stress is a normal part of every day life. We live in a fast-paced, modern society where the demands and challenges are great. Most of us have complex lives. We have a social, relationship, financial and occupational responsibilities that ensure that we will have a degree of stress.

 The issue is not whether we experience stress – the real issue is how we manage stress. Stress management is not a complex science. It is a matter of knowing ourselves (self-awareness), understanding our impact on others (social perspective) and being able to communicate effectively with our colleagues and loved ones so that we reduce the threats, challenges, tension, and stress.

 The best way to start to manage and reduce stress is to gain as much information as possible about this syndrome. Knowing the stressors and how to deal with them is an essential first step – whether it is a serious psychological condition like PTSD – or a less debilitating but still worrisome disorder – elevated stress. Once you know you enemy – then you know how to manage stress and overcome the worry and anxiety.

Warm regards

Dr Jeff

For the team at

mightydigitaldownloads.com

 Dr Jeff, psychologist, helps stressed patients. Why put up with stress? Learn stress management skills now.  Click here for the free What is Stress by Dr Jeff. Don’t waste another minute stressed and burnt out. Act now – learn how to relieve stress.

A recent vacation provided us relief from work and our busy schedule and another opportunity to reflect again on the connection between our lifestyle and our health.

We’ve made good progress since the start of the year with healthier eating and regular exercise.  We’ve been able to lose weight and our body shape, cholesterol levels and blood pressure have all improved markedly. Not surprisingly though, despite taking some long walks with excellent pedometer readings across the past 10 days we fell into the trap of vacation = more eating and drinking than we needed. 

One helpful incentive for us to resume a healthy lifestyle was a letter to the editor of Thursday’s USA TODAY from Dr Steven V. Edelman, Founder and Director of the organization, ‘Taking Control of Your Diabetes’.  The connection that we knew existed between obesity and diabetes was reinforced in this open letter.  Dr Edelman added that both these medical conditions are affecting Americans at ‘epidemic’ levels.

Like increasing numbers of our friends and workmates, we both have a family history of stroke, high cholesterol and lipid levels as well as recently diagnosed diabetes.  We know that to avoid the same medical problems as our parents we must continue to maintain our new and healthy lifestyle .

Dr Edelman’s view about the value of weight management as part of diabetes treatment is important to both the lives of diabetics and to our own.  It prompts us to follow our healthy diet and exercise on a daily basis.  We read with interest his comment ‘Weight loss, even a modest amount, has been found to significantly help diabetes patients control their disease and live healthier, longer and more active lives’. 

We don’t suffer from diabetes and are working to avoid this, however as losing weight helps diabetics to live healthier lives, we feel sure that it assists people like us reduce the likelihood of developing diabetes.  The statistics referred to by Dr Edelman, suggest that weight loss can also improve the health options and the well being of many others suffering from either diabetes or obesity.

So our vacation was fun and a relaxing break, but it was also another reminder to us that our decision to take control of how we eat and keep our bodies in good shape is likely to be one of the most important that we’ll make. It's one that everyone can make!

Warm regards

Rowena and Antonio

For The Team

http://mightydigitaldownloads.com 

How You Can Fit Exercise Into Your Busy Schedule - A Compete and Practical Guide Burning Calories During the Day shows How Easily You Can Fit Simple, Quick Exercises Into Your Daily Life

Tired of Exercising Without Results?" Is Your Workout Routine Useless For Your Body Type? The Missing Link: The Best Type of Exercise for Your Body Type is a Complete and Practical Guide To Finding the Perfect Exercise Routine For Your Body Type