Flypod

For the past two months, I have made the effort to lose weight and be more health conscious. But the lack of variety in my low-fat diet could send me back to the cookie jar. It's time for a shift to a leaner and healthier life.

Battling the bulge can seem like an endless war between low calorie meals and weight loss pills, especially if your diet lacks variety. There are more than 30,000 items in a typical supermarket, yet many of us restrict our choices to the same few items over and over again.

Here are some basic tips to put pizzazz into your meals and remind you that variety is the spice of life (and the trick to sticking to your diet!):

* Instead of white rice, cook brown rice or couscous (a fine semolina pasta) to fill up on low-fat carbs. You'll get your recommended fiber and nutrients with a low-cal exotic taste.

* Vary the whole-grain breads you serve at meals to keep your sandwiches and dinners exciting.

* Remember that there is life beyond broccoli. Be adventurous, and try some off-the-beaten-track veggies, like chard, celery root, golden beets, and kale.

* Experiment with different seasonings. Toss cooked baby carrots with a smidgen of real maple syrup for a sweet kick. Sprinkle green beans with a little bit of a bottled sweet-and-sour sauce for an oriental flair. If the Idaho baked potato is your steady spud, try a Yukon Gold potato. If you close your eyes and take a bite, you'll swear these baked potatoes taste like Mother Nature already added the butter. (Don't worry; she didn't.) Or switch to baked sweet potatoes -- it's like dessert on the dinner plate.

* Keep a selection of low-fat salad dressings on hand and a variety of salad ingredients -- fresh spinach, romaine lettuce, watercress, radicchio, and baby lettuce -- to give salads a new taste every night.

* Add spice to the protein department. Brush meats with a light coating of honey mustard sauce, barbecue sauce, or tomato sauce. Also try sprinkling chicken with part-skim mozzarella cheese before baking, or brush lean pork tenderloins with a prepared apple chutney or combo of apricot jam and Dijon mustard. Lean cuts of red meat -- top round or eye of round -- can be marinated in a wine sauce, or added in a stir fry. Try my Top Round In Red Wine Marinade: 1/2 cup dry red wine 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar 1 clove garlic, minced 1/2 teaspoon basil 2 tablespoons catsup 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce 1 pound top round steak Mix all ingredients except for steak. In a non-metal pan or bowl, place steak and marinade. Cover and refrigerate. Remove steak from marinade. Place on broiler pan or baking sheet. Grill under broiler or directly on hot outdoor grill. Grill for five minutes; turn steak over. Grill for another five minutes or until brown on outside and pink in the middle. control your weight

6:30 am – Rising early was something I didn’t expect to do in Las Vegas. I don’t know if it’s the one-hour difference from our regular time or just the anticipation of the excitement of the day to come. We decided to get breakfast at Paris and resume our tour of the strip there, so off we went in a cab. The driver was friendly. 7:30 am – Arriving at Paris was nice. Though other themed hotels tend to be overdone and tacky, this one seemed to agree with me. The setting was fresh and fun, and the staff there seemed to be happy (genuinely I’m not sure). We decided to go for the buffet. It was $26.00 for both of us. There wasn’t a huge line up that early, but there were still quite a few people. Overall I’d say the food here was very good. I especially enjoyed the crepe made in front of me, and chocolate croissants are a favorite of mine as well. Most of the food seemed to have a bit of a creamy base (especially the scrambled eggs, and even the hash browns tasted creamy), so I couldn’t eat a whole lot of it without feeling it, but it was definitely tasty. 9:00 am – Our next stop was Fashion Show Mall. We arrived a bit early before stores opened so we did a bit of stretching if you can imagine. The hotels in Vegas look a LOT closer to each other than they are, so walking all that way takes its toll. Trams are useful, but only offer slight relief between one or two hotels at most. 10:00 am – We walked around the mall for a bit and Q bought some more disks for the digital camera. I saw a shirt I liked at Neiman Marcus, but the price tag said $320.00 so we left with only the disks and some other small purchases. 10:30 am – We walked passed Treasure Island and thought that it was pretty neat from the outside. We didn’t see the actual pirate battle, but did appreciate the architecture and authenticity of the “outdoor set”. Inside we took the tram over to the Mirage. 11:00 am – Walked through the mirage and passed Sigfreid and Roy’s Tigers. They are beautiful animals and get a lot of attention from the passing crowds. 11:30 am – Moving along to the Forum Shops at Caesar’s we did a bit more shopping. I bought some clothes at my favorite American store Abercrombie and Fitch. After that, we went to a poker game at Caesar’s and lost a bit more money. Seeing as our dreams of striking it rich in Las Vegas were now fading, the focus of gambling became to spend time just having fun with the machines, hence the nickel slots. We played on $5.oo each for a good hour. We then took in the moving statue show at the Forum Shops and watched the fish in the giant aquarium while waiting for meeting up with some people for lunch. 1:00 pm – We met some friends through the Vegas.com message boards for lunch at the Cheesecake Factory in the Forum Shops. They were a very nice couple from Ohio. They were quite talkative and we exchanged experiences that we had in Vegas over the last couple of days. The food portions were huge here, and reasonably priced. The atmosphere is also nice, so I would definitely go back again. We didn’t have room for cheesecake though unfortunately! 2:30 pm – Seeing it was a very hot day, we decided to take advantage of Mandalay Bay’s pool area. Wow, talk about resort style relaxation! We swam a little bit, then rested on the chaises and waited for drinks. The waitresses were very busy, (seeing it was a Saturday afternoon) so I tried to get a Blue Hawaii and a Pina Colada for Q at the bar, but of course I forgot my ID upstairs and the bartender wouldn’t give me the drinks. Lesson learnt. We headed up to the room, changed, and then walked around the hotel taking pictures inside and out of the beautiful setting. 8:00 pm –We went for supper at Raffles, a café in the Mandalay Bay. I enjoyed my tuna croissant sandwich, but Q thought his hamburger was soggy. I enjoyed the setting, and prices were reasonable. 10:00 pm - We took the tram back towards the center of the strip and strolled in and out of casinos, playing a couple dollars here and there on our new found friend the nickel slots. We seemed to break even that night. We also stopped for Ice Cream at Hagen Daaz in Mgm and walked around outside for a while before heading back to the room. I wasn’t we had to check out the next day. Went to bed around 1:00 am. poker

Judy Mazel, formerly an aspiring actress, is the modern-day guru of food combining, a diet philosophy dictating that only certain foods should be eaten together. The wrong food combinations lead to inefficiently-digested food, which is the culprit of weight gain. Mazel calls this way of eating "conscious combining." Fruit, she says, is the "catalyst for weight loss." According to the diet, papaya softens body fat, pineapple burns it off like meridia diet pills and watermelon flushes it out of the body. After laying out the specifics of her fruit-based food combination diet plan, Mazel boldly promises not only that you'll lose weight, but that you'll be "skinny."

Entire days of eating nothing but grapes or watermelon, or a day where consuming two entire fresh pineapples is required, doesn't add up to a healthy weight-loss diet. Mazel insists that eating the foods in the exact order laid out is "vital," but then proceeds to offer ways to correct dietary indiscretions, such as eating pineapple after indulging in a greasy cheeseburger or grapes following sweets to burn off extra calories.

This is without a doubt, one of the most unbalanced weight-loss diets around. Not only can the overabundance of fruit become monotonous, but it also results in an inadequate intake of protein and fat and the nutrients found in the foods containing them, such as zinc, iron, vitamin B-12, calcium and essential fatty acids.