Dr. Phil McGraw once published a book entitled "The Ultimate Weight Solution: Seven Keys to Weight Loss Freedom" in which he introduced the world to his new diet, the "Shape Up Plan". This popular diet (allegedly top 10 in the USA) is based on 7 main foundations, namely:-

• Right thinking for self control
• Healing feelings as the key to emotional control
• No fail environment
• Mastery over food and impulse eating
• High-response cost / high-yield nutrition
• Intentional exercise
• The circle of support

Dr Phil is a realist - he reminds us that dieting is never easy. but then again, nothing worth having ever is! The Shape Up Plan is a balanced approach to weight control. You will essentially be eating high fiber foods such as complex carbohydrates, whole grains, fruits and vegetables plus lean protein and "good" fats.

Dr Phil explains that you need to focus on eating only "high-response-cost, high-yield foods." - a perfect example would be sunflower seeds - your body needs to do a lot of work to process these kinds of food before the calories in them actually become available to you. This is in direct contrast to "low-response-cost, low-yield foods" like burgers or tacos which are easy to eat and digest. Dr Phil believes that the extra steps the body needs to take to process these good foods mean that they are leass likely to be converted to fat. Unlike some diets, you can eat most things in moderation. This is because Dr Phil believes restrictive diets don't work - banned food make dieters unhappy, and they tend to become obsessive about them leading to sudden binges, and dropping of the diet. Instead, Dr Phil recommends you watch portion sizes, eat mostly foods that are high in nutrients and fiber, stay away from salts and fats, and choose foods that involve some work when eaten (such as broccoli, peanuts and fish).

Food to avoid include avoid fast food, and any easily consumed food - the phrase he likes is to avoid eating anything that will turn you into a human "wood chipper." For this reason, you shouldn't buy cookies and potato chips. Instead you should stock up on vegetables and other healthy foods bought from a list. A full list of good and bad foods is available at http://www.supadiet.com/.

Like a lot of sensible diets, the Shape Up Plan incorporates exercise. Dr Phil suggests the standard 3 times per week, for at least 20 minutes a time. Following the Doctor's recommendations can lead to weightloss of between one and two pounds per week - slow steady loss, of course, being easier to maintain than loss acheived via 'crash diets'. Once you hit the target weight you want, the rules slacken considerably, although you still need to remember the 7 keys to success, and base your eating habits on them.

Ever thought of, known someone, or gone on a diet? You probably have. The word diet seems like a common word for someone who is unsatisfied with their current physical condition. The problem is that most diets usually end up failing…in the long run. Going on a “diet” usually refers to eating alot less food, in the hope that it will make us lose those unwanted pounds of fat. Although there are different types of diets, 90% of them stress a strong reduction in calories one way or another.

Everyone has a certain amount of calories that they require per day to keep themselves alive and to perform bodily processes. This requirement of calories is known as Resting Metabolic Rate or RMR for short. For the purpose of this article, we will use my body as an example. My RMR is about 2500 calories/day. I will eat about 2500 calories to just keep myself alive. Note: You can calculate your RMR at http://www.weight-loss-resources.com/calculators/rmr.html

On another note, our bodies adapt to the stimuli that they are exposed to. For instance, when one lifts weights their body adapts by growing muscle, when one runs long distances their bodies adapt by building more capillaries to enhance blood flow, when one is exposed to cold temperatures their body begins to shiver in an attempt to create heat through muscle contractions, etc. The point is our bodies adapt to essentially everything that they are exposed to, including how many calories we eat per day.

So, when our bodies are exposed to a calorie deficit (a lower number of calories than our RMR) they must adapt. Let’s say that I want to go on a diet and I begin to eat 1000 calories a day instead of the normal 2500 (Actually, I eat more than 2500 calories because I exercise and perform daily activities. 2500 only accounts for the calories needed to keep my body alive. Although for the sake of simplicity, we are only using the RMR. If the message within these parentheses confused you, simply ignore it.) One of the first ways my body is going to adapt is by using up my fat stores to make up for the lack of calories. This is why most diets seem to work in the beginning. The thing is, the body does not want to keep using its precious fat stores for energy. The human body does not see fat as a bad thing; it is a backup mechanism for when a calorie deficit is introduced.

Now here’s the kicker. Since my body is not going to want to keep using up its fat stores, it is going to adapt by lowering how many calories my body needs per day to keep itself running (RMR). One of the main ways it accomplishes this is by eating away at it’s own muscle. Instead of requiring 2500 calories a day to keep my body running, my body will eventually adapt over a period of time and only require 1000 calories to keep running. Back when our ancestors lived they needed this calorie adaptation to survive when food was short and they were starving. The trouble is, the body cannot tell the difference between starvation and dieting.

Now that my body’s RMR has adjusted to the new number of calories that I’m are eating, it no longer needs to use its emergency fat stores to keep itself alive. This is when your fat loss stops from a diet. In addition to this, if I decide that I want to go off of my 1000 calories a day diet and begin to eat 2500 calories a day again then there is a calorie surplus. The body does not need these extra calories so it will store them as fat. The exception to storing them as fat is when the body needs to build muscle because it has been exposed to some type of exercise or weight lifting, and even then all of the calories are not used for muscle growth.

Now that I have changed my RMR to 1000 calories per day, I have really wrecked my metabolism and it’s going to be harder to get to my goal of actually losing fat. That is, unless of course If I want to stay on my diet forever.

So what is the best way to lose fat without messing up my metabolism (RMR)?

A calorie deficit is required to lose weight, but eating less is not the only way to create a calorie deficit. Another safer way is to exercise. More detail can be found on this in Tom Venuto’s book “Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle”, which is located at http://www.weight-loss-resources.com/. You can also calculate your RMR at http://www.weight-loss-resources.com/calculators/rmr.html

Disclaimer: This information is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace medical advice from you’re a physician or your health care provider.

ROME (Reuters) - Excessive text messaging may be bad for you, or at least for your fingers.

That's what some Italian doctors think. They are telling people, particularly the young, that furious typing on mobile phones could lead to acute tendonitis.

Italian newspapers La Repubblica and Il Messaggero dedicated about half a page each to the problem on Monday.

A 13-year-old girl in the northern Italian city of Savona needed treatment from an orthopaedic specialist after typing at least 100 short message services (SMSs) a day.

She was prescribed anti-inflammatory medicine and ordered to rest her hands.

According to a recent study conducted for children's rights group Telefono Azzurro, some 37 percent of Italian children are "cell phone addicts". Irritability and mood swings were other symptoms linked to very frequent cell phone use among the young.

The message is clear: MayB U shd stop B4 its 2 L8.