Q & A

Q. I often get headaches when I eat only 1000 calories a day. What should I do?

A. Your headaches may be caused by going longer than three hours between meals or snacks. Try spacing your meals and snacks where there are fewer hours between them.

Some people who are used to drinking regular coffee with caffeine notice headaches when they stop consuming coffee for several days. If this is the case with you, you might want to ease off the coffee more gradually.

Q. I don’t like red meat. I notice that the Lean Cuisine Lasagna with Meat Sauce contains beef. What can I substitute for it?

A. Lean Cuisine has many other frozen dinners that you may substitute for Lasagna with Meat Sauce. Try to find one that contains the same calories, with approximately 15 to 20 percent of the calories coming from fat. Some of the Lean Cuisine dinners actually have too little fat for my nutritional requirements.

Q. May I have dinner for lunch and lunch for dinner?

A.Yes.

Q.I tend to get a headache when I drink cold water. Can I drink water without it being chilled?

A.Yes, but you won’t get the 123 calories or more thermogenic effect from warming the cold water to core body temperature. Try a more gradual drinking of the cold water. You may have been consuming it too quickly.

Q.Is it possible to drink too much water?

A.Certainly. To do so, however, you’d probably have

to drink four or five times as much per day as I’m recommending. There are a few ailments that can be negatively affected by large amounts of fluid. If you feel you have a problem, check with your doctor before starting the program.

Q. Is bottled water better than tap water?

A. Research shows that bottled water is not always higher quality water than tap water. The decision to drink bottled water or not is usually one of taste. If you dislike the taste of your tap water, then drink

your favorite bottled water. But first you might want to try a twist of lemon or lime added to the water from your tap. Some people say it makes a significant difference in the taste.

Q. I’m a middle-aged woman who gets black and blue marks on my legs when I diet. Am I doing anything wrong?

A. I doubt you are doing anything wrong. Such black and blue marks are usually the result of an increased level of estrogen circulating in your body, which weakens the walls of the capillaries and causes them to break under the slightest pressure. When this happens, blood escapes and a bruise occurs. Estrogen is broken down in the liver, and so is fat. When you are dieting, your liver breaks down the fat, leaving a lot more estrogen in the bloodstream.

It may be helpful to supplement your diet with a little extra vitamin C each day to help toughen the walls of the capillaries.

Q.I’m a 40-year-old woman with a teenage son and daughter. My husband and I both want to lose 10 pounds (4.5 kg) and the children would also like to lose some weight. Can I put the whole family on the program?

A.It would be great if you could, but you cannot.

The number of calories per day is the problem. Teenagers require significantly more calories each day than 1500, which is the highest level. Check with a registered dietician (RD) for appropriate recommendations.

Your teenage son and daughter, however, could follow the Bowflex exercise routines.

Q. I’m afraid that I might get large, unfeminine muscles from some of the Bowflex exercises you recommend in this course. What can I do to prevent this from happening?

A. You are worrying about large muscles unnecessarily. Building large muscles requires two conditions. First, the individual must have long muscles and short tendons. Second, an abundance of testosterone must be present in the blood stream. Women almost never have either of these conditions.

Under no circumstances could 99.99 percent of American women develop excessively large muscles.

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Bowflex ElitePlus manual Is it possible to drink too much water?, Is bottled water better than tap water?