As you go through the day, you eat many things. It’s almost impossible to remember them all. When you are trying to change your eating habits it becomes important to keep track of what you are putting into your mouth. Try using a food journal.

Before you say a word, it will be hard to get used to at first. The number one complaint is that keeping a food journal is too much work for a busy schedule or that it makes you think more about food. Anything worth doing will take some effort to become a habit that you don’t have to think about.

However, there are many benefits to keeping a food journal. And, all of those benefits are going to help you accomplish your goals, whether it is to lose weight or to manage your health. Here are some of the main advantages of having a food journal:

1. You know what you eat or don’t eat. Many people skip breakfast. With a food journal, you can see what skipping breakfast does to your eating habits throughout the rest of the day. You may be eating more high calorie or high fat foods to compensate for a lack of energy.

2. You can discern emotional issues. Some people eat more when they get emotional. No one wants to admit that they are emotional eaters, but keeping a food journal may bear out that you are one. Once you know, you can get help to overcome it and learn to deal with any issues in a more constructive way.

3. You can make changes in your diet that stick. With a food journal, you can take what you are currently eating and make substitutions that are better for your health. For instance, if you eat a lot of pasta, switching to whole wheat pasta and lowering your portion size can lower your cholesterol and your weight. You can change one thing at a time and evaluate how well it is working for you.

4. You can see what nutrients you are lacking. Sometimes it is not how much you eat but what types of foods you are eating. You can be thin and still have an unhealthy body. If your food journal shows a lack of green vegetables, you are probably missing out on several nutrients like Vitamin E, zinc, folic acid, B vitamins, magnesium, iron and others that your body needs to function properly. Lack of certain vitamins and minerals can cause hair to fall out or skin to look pale.

Try keeping a food journal for a week. In just seven days you can find out a lot about your typical eating habits. With that information, you can make changes in your diet that will help you to lose weight, get healthy and reduce your risk of certain diseases.

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Heart disease is the number one killer out there. We often hear about women and heart disease but what about men? It is number one for them too.

Heart disease affects not only the heart but the entire cardiovascular system. When someone has a heart attack it is because blood couldn’t reach a certain part of the heart through the coronary arteries. There can be congenital defects that affect the heart as well as stenosis in the aorta and other blood vessels of the body.

When it comes to your heart, there is no playing around. Heart disease doesn’t develop all at once but over time. But the risk can be reduced and many risk factors may be reversed with proper care of your heart and the rest of your body.

Here are a few ways that men can improve their chances of avoiding heart disease in their life.

1. Eat a healthy variety of foods. This goes without saying. When people worked the land and stayed active from sunup to sundown, they could eat plenty of meat and potatoes to keep them going. Nowadays that is not the case. Protein doesn’t have to come from meat sources alone. Eating a variety of plant proteins as well as fish and poultry reduces the amount of saturated fats ingested. Saturated fats play a big role in the cholesterol levels in the body.

2. Manage your condition. If you have high blood pressure, high cholesterol or heart issues already, take your medicine as directed. That, along with a healthy diet can improve your condition and may result in you being able to stop the medication in the future.

3. Keep your weight within prescribed limits. Maintaining a healthy weight is important to reduce the risk of heart disease. A healthy weight also reduces your risk of metabolic conditions that contribute to diseases like diabetes.

4. Reduce stress. Increased levels of stress can lead to overeating or lack of proper nutrition, which in turn can lead to obesity and an increased risk of heart disease.

5. Avoid high fat and high calorie foods. Some of our favorite foods are high in fat, but that can lead to clogging of the arteries because of cholesterol plaques that stick to vessel walls. This is not only normal vessels throughout the body but also the coronary vessels.

6. Get physically active. Regular exercise not only helps with weight control but also cardiovascular health and stress management. Strong muscles work more efficiently.

7. Stop smoking. Smoking can reduce the elasticity in the vessels of the body, including those that feed the heart.

Heart disease is an immediate threat for men as well as women. Take steps each day to lower your risk factors.

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Men usually don’t consider it a big deal to carry a few extra pounds on their frame. However, if those extra pounds are around the middle, then you could be sporting a problem bigger than your waistline. Excess belly fat can affect the health of the rest of your body.

What do you know about belly fat? Well, for men, extra abdominal fat occurs as you age. In women, during child-bearing years, fat accumulates in the hips, thighs and also in the abdomen. For them too, extra belly fat is a concern.

With men, belly fat is usually a result of lifestyle and age. As a person ages, they lose muscle unless something is done to preserve it. After the age of forty, muscle is lost at a faster rate. What replaces that muscle is usually fat. Our lives grow more sedentary and the pounds begin to pack on.

One way to tell if you have too much belly fat (besides your pants) is to take a measurement of your waist-to-hip ratio. Your waist measurement should not be larger than your hip measurement. Your waist measurement is taken at the level of your abdomen above the hipbone. Even without the hip measurement, a waist measurement above forty inches is a sign that you may need to lose a few pounds to come back into a proper waist-to-hip ratio.

When you have extra belly fat you are at greater risk for certain conditions like:

* Diabetes (Type 2)
* Heart disease
* Stroke
* High blood cholesterol
* High blood pressure
* Sleep apnea
* Cancer

These conditions can be treated with proper diet and exercise. Foods which are lower in fat and higher in fiber are more filling. Insoluble fiber helps to clean out your digestive system and takes a bit of fat from your food along with it. Fiber is also instrumental in lowering your blood cholesterol levels.

Stroke is caused when a blood clot or piece of plaque breaks loose and travels to the brain. Eating plenty of fruits, vegetables and whole grains can increase your levels of good cholesterol (HDL). Good cholesterol helps to prevent dangerous plaques from forming in your blood vessels in the first place.

Sleep apnea is the cessation of breathing during the cycle of sleep. Your airway closes off several times during the night. People with sleep apnea often snore a lot as a means of keeping their airway open. Returning to a healthy weight often resolves the situation.

Belly fat is a health concern, especially for men who are more likely to gain weight around the middle. Several conditions can arise from carrying too much belly fat, but they can be dealt with successfully once the weight is lost.

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It is not easy to lose weight. Before you know it, the scale has crept right back up again. For that matter, it is not easy to keep it off.

There are many benefits to losing weight. First of all there are the health benefits:

* Lower your risk of certain diseases – Those who maintain a healthy weight are at a lower risk of getting heart disease, high blood pressure, having a stroke, high cholesterol and other conditions.

* Increase your energy level – When you are not carrying around fifty or a hundred pounds of extra weight, you find that you can move a lot freer. This means playing with your kids and having fun in your own right.

Everyone wants to live longer. You stand a better chance if you maintain a healthy weight. Gaining weight has a profound effect on your internal systems. Metabolic issues like diabetes come into play when you are overweight. Women who are overweight are at risk for PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) which can make it hard to get pregnant.

If you want to lose weight, here are some ways that you can stay motivated enough to do it.

1. Use the buddy system. Ask a person that you trust to help keep you accountable for your health. This can be in the form of daily calls or chats when you feel unmotivated to exercise.

2. Online dietary tools. There are many resources online to help you to eat right and make the necessary substitutions to enjoy some of your favorite foods. Sites like SparkPeople are free to sign up and use. You can even join forums and chat with others with the same issues to find help.

3. Join a weight loss group. For a fee, you can join Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig and others. You may be the kind of person who needs help getting started. It is hard to lose weight if you don’t know where to start. These programs provide face-to-face help as well as plenty of tools. If you have a busy schedule, programs with meals help you to stay on track when you have no time to cook.

4. Cook more. For people with families, losing weight can be a challenge. When you cook at home, you know what is in your food. Using fresh ingredients not only tastes better but also provides more filling foods to keep the hunger bug away.

Weight loss and maintenance are not easy goals but they are so worth the effort. Knowing the benefits of losing weight and the drawbacks of gaining it back, helps you to decide to take the plunge. The four points above are just a few ways to help you stay motivated to realize your goals.

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