It's summer, and time for those tank tops and shorts, not to mention bathing suits, to come out of mothballs and into your clothing rotation. If you've decided that it's time to drop a few pounds, you will discover that there are some excellent online tools available that will make it easier to reach your weight goals. Most doctors recommend losing weight slowly, and it is considered healthiest to lose usually no more than one-half to one pound of weight per week. Losing the correct amount of weight each week, over a particular length of time, requires some careful monitoring of your food intake as well as exercise routine. Many who have been successful at losing weight have found that best weight loss often requires the use of a calorie counter as well as an exercise log.
Most of us are busy and might not have time to keep an accurate written diary of our food that we consume daily. Keeping track of this, however, is essential so that you get enough needed nutrients without overeating. An online calorie calculator takes most of the work out of this vital task. A good online food diary will have you enter the type of food and the amount that you ate at each meal. That is the end of the work on your part, because the online calculator takes over at that point. What you get in return is tremendously helpful. Your calculator will tell you the number of calories consumed, along with the number of grams of protein, carbohydrate, and fat, both for each meal as well as daily totals. Along with carefully recording your food, you can also keep track of how much water you are actually drinking each day. Water consumption keeps you hydrated, especially when you are exercising, and it has the additional benefit of adding no extra calories yet helping you feel full.
Along with calorie counting, people who have lost weight successfully also utilize exercise journals. An exercise journal can have several parts. One component is determining a weekly plan that helps you start out slowly and gradually improve your fitness. You will want to devote a portion of your time to cardiovascular endurance, strength training, and increasing your flexibility. An online exercise log allows you to select the exercises you like, and sets up a program that is customized to your particular fitness needs. Another aspect of an exercise journal that is useful for healthy weight loss is recording the amount of exercise you do and how that counts as calories burned. Exercise allows you to eat a bit more food than you might otherwise be able to on a weight loss program, and yet still lose weight. This helps many people stick with a program, and achieve results. It also provides a great motivation, because you can see for yourself that your program is working, and that you are assuredly reaching your goal of your ideal weight.

AP Photo (2); Getty Images
First we obsess over stars’ “baby bumps,” then we shame the new moms into squeezing back into skinny jeans as quickly as possible. Katie Gentile on the double standard that hurts women.
Sarah Michelle Gellar is back in her “skinny jeans” just four weeks after giving birth to her daughter, reports Us Weekly. Ditto Ellen Pompeo, I read in People. Twice, Heidi Klum walked the Victoria Secret runway just six weeks after having a baby. Natalia Vodianova topped them all, taking to the catwalk a mere two weeks after giving birth.
In 2010, God help the celebrity who fails to shed the baby weight immediately, as she may end up on the wrong side of one of those ubiquitous “best and worst post-baby bodies” pictorials. It is chilling to watch the culture become more and more obsessed with babies, while the evidence of how these babies are created is removed from public view. The supermarket tabloids obsessively scope out “baby bumps,” cooing each time a C- or even D-lister conceives. But the second the bumps become bouncing bundles of joy, the pressure is on for the new mom to squeeze back into her skinny jeans. The post-baby body must banish the bump, or risk ridicule.
It’s as if we should actually believe the baby dropped from the stork, from the sky, from anywhere but that toned, buff body.
It used to be that People magazine confined news about pregnancy and babies to its “Milestones” section. Now baby obsession has changed the very structure of the magazine, giving us features such as “Mommy and Me Fashion,” “Celebrity Family Albums,” and the ever-popular rush to publish the first photos of celebrity spawn. Similarly, celebrity gossip magazines and blogs now devote entire sections to bump patrols, moms and babies (only occasionally dads), and a parade of post-baby body photos. In this “new” culture that seems to mix domestic ideals of the 1950s with the expanded opportunities of the 21st century, baby bumps—expanding breasts and bellies—are celebrated, photographed, tracked, and made an endless source of speculation. But we ignore the less attractive, yet all-too-real aspects of pregnancy: There are no swollen ankles, plump thighs, or puffy faces allowed on the red carpet.
Of course, intense scrutiny of women’s bodies is not new, and celebrity antics have long made for profitable media fodder, but the obsession with postpartum weight control is something new. These days, we rarely see a picture of a pregnant celebrity without the requisite estimation of weight gain, called “baby weight,” as if it is somehow separate from the mother’s body. The best way to get rid of it is breast-feeding, the tabloids tell us, claiming that lactation magically and effortlessly melts away pounds.
Yet as The New York Times recently noted, research is conflicting as to whether breast-feeding actually promotes weight loss. Breast-feeding may burn calories, but it also stimulates appetite, leading many women to eat more. The Mayo Clinic advises normal-weight, healthy women to exercise moderately and eat about 300 more calories per day while pregnant, gaining between 25 and 35 pounds over the course of the nine months. And Mayo advises women to lose only 1 postpartum pound per week in order to maintain solid nutrition. La Leche League advises that women not diet for the first 2 months after delivery to help their bodies recover and establish good milk flow.
Contrast this information with Us Weekly celebrating Ashlee Simpson-Wentz for sticking to her 1,500-calorie-a-day post-pregnancy diet, People discussing Liv Tyler’s postpartum fasting and colonics, or Ok magazine’s “Baby Weight Secrets,” which advise women to stick to fat- and carb-free diets and spend hours exercising daily.
It would be easy to see this obsession with post-baby weight control as just part and parcel of the usual misogynistic obsession with women’s weight. Female celebrities are under constant pressure to stay thin. But look at it another way: When women shed the baby weight, they are not merely getting back their pre-baby body, they are obliterating all the evidence of ever having had a baby in the first place. This means the one thing that only women’s bodies can do is expected to be immediately erased. The post-baby body is wrung of its recent life-giving feat. Sagging milk-filled breasts must appear perky; the once-swollen abdomen is made concave. It’s as if we should actually believe the baby dropped from the stork, from the sky, from anywhere but that toned, buff body.
You can lose weight without changing what you eat or doing one minute of exercise! It's a bold claim. And don't get me wrong: Nutrition and exercise are important! But there's another key to weight loss — and most people don't even know about it. It's sleep.
In fact, besides eating whole foods and moving your body, getting enough sleep is the most important thing you can do for your health. On the flip side, sleep deprivation makes you fat — AND leads to depression, pain, heart disease, diabetes, and much more.
That's why in today's blog I want to talk about the impact sleep has on your health and give you 19 tips you can use to get a good night's rest and enjoy all the health benefits sleep has to offer. Let's start by talking about a rather serious sleep condition called sleep apnea.
The Dangers of Sleep Apnea
Sleep apnea is a condition where your sleep is interrupted all night because your airway closes and your body startles you awake so you don't suffocate. This is a very common and extremely under-diagnosed problem. It affects 18 million Americans and most are NOT treated for it.
Let me tell you about one of my patients who was in that same predicament. He was so tired that he had to stand up at his computer to work during the day so he wouldn't fall asleep! His wife reported hearing his horrible snoring and gasping episodes at night. He would fall right asleep as soon as he sat down to watch TV at night.
Most frightening, he had fallen asleep at the wheel when driving. Then he came to see me. When we got his sleep apnea diagnosed (with a sleep study in a sleep lab) and got him treated with a device to keep his airway open at night, he lost 50 pounds, his blood pressure turned to normal — and he got his life back.
But people with sleep apnea are not the only ones in trouble. It is estimated that 70 percent of Americans are sleep deprived. The era of Starbucks has been surpassed by an era of prescription stimulants to keep people awake and functioning, like dexadrine and Ritalin — otherwise known as “speed” or amphetamines.
Surprisingly, I see an increasing number of patients prescribed these “uppers” by their psychiatrist because coffee is not enough to keep them energetic. It seems we believe that if you can't do ten things at once, something must be wrong with you. But this is preposterous.
Your biological rhythms keep you healthy and produce cyclic pulses of healing and repair hormones, including melatonin and growth hormone. When those rhythms are disturbed by inadequate or insufficient sleep, disease and breakdown get the upper hand.
We evolved along with the rhythms of day and night. They signal a whole cascade of hormonal and neurochemical reactions that keep us healthy by repairing our DNA, building tissues and muscle, and regulating weight and mood chemicals. The advent of the light bulb changed all that.
When you are sleep deprived, your cortisol rises — and so do all its harmful effects, including brain damage and dementia, weight gain, diabetes, heart attacks, high blood pressure, depression, osteoporosis, depressed immunity, and more.
The reality is that most of us need at least eight hours of restful sleep a night. But meeting this goal has become more and more difficult. Partially because good sleep is not something that just happens (unless you are a baby or teenager). There are clearly defined things that interfere with or support healthy sleep. Here is what you need to do:
19 Tips to Improve Sleep
First, you have to prioritize sleep! I used to think that “MD” stood for “medical deity” and meant I didn't have to follow the same sleep rules as every other human being. I stayed up late working long shifts in the emergency room, ignoring the demands of my body to rest. It wasn't until I learned that shift work (like I did in when I worked in the emergency room) leads to a shortened life expectancy that I quit.
Unfortunately, our lives are infiltrated with stimuli — and we keep stimulated until the moment we get into bed. This is not the way to get restful sleep. Frankly, it's no wonder we can't sleep well when we eat late dinners, answer emails, surf the Internet, or do work, and then get right into bed and watch the evening news about all the disaster, pain, and suffering in the world.
Instead we must take a little “holiday” in the two hours before bed. Creating a sleep ritual — a special set of little things you do before bed to help ready your system physically and psychologically for sleep — can guide your body into a deep, healing sleep.
We all live with a little bit of post-traumatic stress syndrome (or, I should say, traumatic stress syndrome, because for many of us there is nothing “post” about it). Much research has been done on the effects of stress and traumatic experiences and images on sleep. If you follow my guidelines for restoring normal sleep below, your posttraumatic stress may become a thing of the past.
Here's how restore your natural sleep rhythm. It may take weeks or months, but using these tools in a coordinated way will eventually reset your biological rhythms:
• Practice the regular rhythms of sleep – go to bed and wake up at the same time each day
• Use your bed for sleep and romance only – not reading or television
• Create an aesthetic environment that encourages sleep – use serene and restful colors and eliminate clutter and distraction
• Create total darkness and quiet – consider using eyeshades and earplugs
• Avoid caffeine – it may seem to help you stay awake but actually makes your sleep worse
• Avoid alcohol – it helps you get to sleep but causes interruptions in sleep and poor-quality sleep
• Get regular exposure to daylight for at least 20 minutes daily – the light from the sun enters your eyes and triggers your brain to release specific chemicals and hormones like melatonin that are vital to healthy sleep, mood, and aging
• Eat no later than three hours before bed – eating a heavy meal prior to bed will lead to a bad night's sleep
• Don't exercise vigorously after dinner – it excites the body and makes it more difficult to get to sleep
• Write your worries down – one hour before bed, write down the things that are causing you anxiety and make plans for what you might have to do the next day to reduce your worry. It will free up your mind and energy to move into deep and restful sleep
• Take a hot salt/soda aromatherapy bath – raising your body temperature before bed helps to induce sleep. A hot bath also relaxes your muscles and reduces tension physically and psychically. By adding one-and-a-half to one cup of Epsom salt (magnesium sulfate) and one-and-a-half to one cup of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) to your bath, you will gain the benefits of magnesium absorbed through your skin and the alkaline-balancing effects of the baking soda, both of which help with sleep
• Get a massage or stretch before bed – this helps relax the body making it easier to fall asleep
• Warm your middle – this raises your core temperature and helps trigger the proper chemistry for sleep. Either a hot water bottle, heating pad, or warm body can do the trick
• Avoid medications that interfere with sleep – these include sedatives (these are used to treat insomnia, but ultimately lead to dependence and disruption of normal sleep rhythms and architecture), antihistamines, stimulants, cold medication, steroids, and headache medication that contains caffeine (such as Fioricet)
• Use herbal therapies – try passionflower, or 320 mg to 480 mg of valerian (valeriana officinalis) root extract standardized to 0.2 percent valerenic acid one hour before bed
• Take 200 to 400 mg of magnesium citrate or glycinate before bed – this relaxes the nervous system and muscles.
• Other supplements and herbs can be helpful in getting some shuteye – try calcium, theanine (an amino acid from green tea), GABA, 5-HTP, melatonin, and magnolia.
• Try one to three mg of melatonin at night – melatonin helps stabilize your sleep rhythms.
• Get a relaxation, meditation or guided imagery CD – any of these may help you get to sleep.
If you are still having trouble sleeping, you should be evaluated by your doctor for other problems that can interfere with sleep, including food sensitivities, thyroid problems, menopause, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, heavy metal toxicity, and, of course, stress and depression. Also, consider getting tested for a sleep disorder.
Sleep Testing: What You Need to Know
There are many medical sleep disorders, the most common (and most under-diagnosed) is sleep apnea. If you experience excessive daytime sleepiness, fatigue, snoring, and have been seen to stop breathing in the middle of the night by your spouse or partner, then you could be one of the many people with undiagnosed sleep apnea.
People with sleep apnea have a higher risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, and sudden death, so diagnosing and treating it is imperative. High blood pressure is a clue, because half of all people with high blood pressure have undiagnosed sleep apnea.
Get an overnight sleep study done in a sleep lab. It may the best thing you ever do for yourself. It might just save your life!
And remember — don't skimp on sleep! It is one of the most powerful healing treatments available if you want to achieve lifelong vibrant health.
For more on sleep, I recommend The Promise of Sleep by William C. Dement MD, PhD (Random House, 1999).
Now I'd like to hear from you…
How much sleep do you typically get each night? Do you think it's enough?
If you are not getting enough sleep, what do you think is the cause?
What healthy sleep habits to you plan to start?
Have you noticed a connection between your weight or health and how much sleep you get?
Please leave your thoughts by adding a comment below.
To your good health
Mark Hyman, M.D.
Mark Hyman, M.D. practicing physician and founder of The UltraWellness Center is a pioneer in functional medicine. Dr. Hyman is now sharing the 7 ways to tap into your body's natural ability to heal itself. You can follow him on Twitter, connect with him on LinkedIn, watch his videos on Youtube and become a fan on Facebook.