I will be blogging on three different blogs over the course of the next week.

OurWickedWeighs.com – Run by Erin and Queenie, it is a website targeted to those people looking to be healthy:

Our Wicked Weighs is not just any old diet blog. We have a multitude of people that are trying many different things in an effort to lose weight and get healthy. Some are losing, some are struggling.

My first post appears here today on Surviving in an Unhealthy Environment – how to eat and move on the go. I will also be talking about Movement v. Exercise and creating a diversified eating plan to make eating a pleasure.

Hesfit.com – part of The Final Sprint (TFS) Network.

TFS Media Network is a web-based publishing group dedicated to providing the highest quality content and interactive technology to support and promote participant-based sports and healthy, active lifestyles.

I will be talking about NEAT v. EAT, motion and exercise, cholesterol, water and improving sleep habits.

DietsinReview.com -

The Diet Column is about all things health and diet related. We bring you the latest diet news, reviews and helpful tips daily.

I will be talking about incorporating portion-controlled meals into your life, achieving optimal health, reaching a healthy weight, using an eating journal and using health coaches.

I encourage everyone to check back as I link to my guest posts – these sites have some great information, and I am excited to be invited to participate with such great sites.

I label it as a Habit of Disease because it causes a faster rise in blood glucose levels, stimulating insulin, and turning on fat storage. Carbohydrate foods, including many starches, breakdown quickly during digestion and have the highest glycemic indexes. Their blood sugar response is fast and high. Carbohydrates that breakdown slowly, releasing glucose gradually into the blood stream, have low glycemic indexes.

A study out of University of Massachusetts found that those who ate foods high on the glycemic scale weighed significantly more than those who did not. It is a great idea to know the glycemic index of some of your favorite foods. Below you will find a list of popular high medium and low indexed food.

o Low GI means a smaller rise in blood sugar and can help control established diabetes
o Low GI diets can help people lose weight and lower blood lipids
o Low GI diets can improve the body’s sensitivity to insulin
o High GI foods can help re-fuel carbohydrate stores after exercise

Glycemic Index Food Chart
Low Glycemic Index food (less than 55)
Medium Glycemic Index (between 55 and 70)
High Glycemic Index foods (more than 70)

For a great chart listing the glycemic index of some of the most prevalent foods, click here.

Every day our lives get more and more “efficient” and “stream lined.” We no longer have to get up and walk across the office to sharpen our pencil by hand. Now we barely lift a wrist and stick the pencil in the electric pencil sharpener on our desk. Or sometimes we just click our thumbs and the mechanical pencil refills itself. And we have lost the chance to expend more energy and burn a few more calories.

When we add up all of the ways we have automated our lives and made things quicker and easier, we can also add up all of the ways we stopped burning calories. We roll down windows with the touch of a button instead of cranking it down by hand. When we drive we don’t even have to reach for the radio anymore, instead it operates by voice commands, or with the buttons on the steering wheel.

All of these seemingly little movements that we have eliminated from our lives add up to fewer calories burned on a daily basis. In a simple math equation we can see that 100 calories not burned a day multiplied by 365 days a year equals twelve pounds of weight gained in a year.

After twenty years of age our muscle mass begins to slowly decrease. It takes a pound of muscle to burn 70 calories a day. It doesn’t take much to see that as our muscles slowly decrease we build up more stored calories in our body, which becomes fat.

Add it all together – fewer movements and lower muscle mass, and you get increased weight gain, all while you feel you “haven’t done anything to gain weight.”