This is Part 3/Week 3 of the Weight Loss New Years Resolution articles.

I hope that everyone who has made their New Years resolution to lose weight, has started already. If you haven't yet, it's never too late to start and I recommend you begin immediately and don't put it off another day. Do it for yourself and nobody else. Do it for your body.

Each week I will give some new tips, suggestions and/or challenges to help you stay committed to losing weight. Remember it is commitment that will keep you successful. You have to have passion and a drive to continue to move forward. Without it, you will not succeed.

Exercise Tip
If you haven't already started an exercise program, now is also the time to incorporate this into your weight loss program. Exercising 5 days a week, at least 30 minutes will really help to speed up the process and let the pounds shed off. If you are not use to exercising, start slowly by doing short walks. If you drive somewhere, park your car further away and walk to your destination, instead of trying to find the closest parking spot to the door. If it's cold outdoors and you can get to an indoor mall, walk around the mall for 30 minutes. Any movement is going to help you. For those of you who are use to exercising, each week try something a little harder. It is good to do at least 3 days of cardio exercise and 2 days of weight training exercise. Rotating every other day. We need to build lean muscle in our bodies. The more lean muscle that we have, the easier we will burn calories.

Note: Before starting any exercise program, please speak to your doctor first.

Food Tip
Before going to the grocery store, clean out your cabinets of all of the junk foods that you find. Do the same in your refrigerator. Make sure that you've eaten before you shop, this will help prevent you from grabbing the wrong foods. When we're hungry and we're grocery shopping, it causes us to put all the unnecessary things in our shopping cart.

Water Tip
Make sure you get at least 8 cups of water per day. Water will keep you feeling full and it keeps your body hydrated. Additionally, it will also help to clean the toxins out of your body. When we have too many toxins in our body, our bodies will have a hard time losing weight. Remember that when you drink water, it means pure water with nothing else added to it. All these flavored waters, tea or coffee don't count. Drink pure filtered or bottled water only.

Tea
Many people love to drink tea all day long. Tea does not count as water. You also need to know that many times tea will constipate you. If you are constipated, you will have a hard time losing weight.

Constipation/Bowels
It is extremely important to have at least one full bowel movement every single day. If you are not having a good bowel each day, you will notice that the scale will have a hard time going down. Drinking more water will help with this, as well as eating more green leafy raw vegetables.

Vegetables
Try eating them raw as often as possible. Steaming, cooking, microwaving, baking, etc....will remove most of the nutrients out of the vegetables. Vegetables have a whole lot of nutrients in them and they will make you feel good and they will help you to lose weight. Be cautious on how much dressing and/or butter that you use on them. Try using a tablespoon of olive oil mixed with a little lemon juice to flavor your foods instead. If you still want to eat vegetables that are baked, steamed etc., this is ok, just try to get in the raw ones too.

So it's up to you now to keep moving forward. Keep your passion, keep your drive and tell yourself each and every day, that you can do it! Stay motivated, write everything down that you are putting into your mouth, so that you can truly see what it is that you're eating. You'll be surprised at the end of day, what you've put into your body that you forgot about. Every bite of anything you put into your mouth...counts!!!

If anyone has any questions, please feel free to write me.

Until next week. Have a great weight loss week.

Patty Pobanz

Some excerpts taken from..."Everlasting Peace In Your Life. God's Reminders to the World"