5 Quick and Easy Exercise Routines to Stay Healthy

Staying fit can be a challenging endeavor that involves a healthy, nutritious diet, and regular exercise - at least half an hour a day as advised by the Food and Drug Administration. Though healthy eating can truly be a test of one's will power, getting regular exercise also proves difficult for people trying to lose weight. This isn't just a matter of laziness, as you may be tempted to believe. A lot of people feel they simply don't have the time to commit to it. Dr. Michael Feiz understands it can be difficult to set aside time when you live a busy lifestyle. With that in mind, here are five quick and easy exercises you can do, that add up throughout the day, to hit the half hour sweet spot.

1. Try a session five or ten minute session of jumping jacks. They aren't too rigorous, but they'll get your pulse up, and you can burn up to ninety calories or more in a single ten minutes session.
2. After dinner go play active games with your kids, friends, or family. Get a game of tag going, or shoot some hoops.
3. Do a few sets up push ups, crunches, or situps before bed.
4. The next time you're cooking  a meal in the kitchen, if you're waiting for the pot to boil or food to cook, do standing push-ups while you wait. Stand an arm's length from the counter and push in and out to tone your arms and shoulders.
5. Work out while watching your favorite TV programs. During commercial breaks run in place, do armchair dips or squat thrusts.

Finding time to exercise can be tricky, but multitasking, or breaking workouts into small chunks, makes it much much easier. Keep at it, and contact Dr. Feiz & Associates for weight loss treatments!

Beyoncé's Lemonade Diet - Does It Work?

The reason many of our clients see us for weight loss surgery in Los Angeles is because most diets do not work. But we wanted to check out this Lemonade Diet/Master Cleanse because celebrities including Beyoncé have used it.

The diet is a liquid-only diet consisting of three things: a lemonade-like beverage, salt-water drink, and herbal laxative tea. The claim is simple: Give it 10 days (or more) and you’ll drop pounds, "detox" your digestive system, and feel energetic, vital, happy, and healthy. You’ll also curb cravings for unhealthy food.

It all started with Stanley Burroughs’s book, The Master Cleanser. There are many variations, and Peter Glickman continues Burroughs’s legacy with his own book, Lose Weight, Have More Energy and Be Happier in 10 Days, and web site.

Does It Work?

Because you're getting so few calories, you'll probably lose weight.  You’ll also be losing muscle, bone, and water.  And you're likely to gain the weight right back. It’s far from the principles of  healthy eating, and the results aren't likely to last.

There's no proof that detoxifying leads to long-term weight loss. Plus, you don't need to detox your body -- your liver takes care of that. For lasting change, you're better off eating a healthy diet of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat dairy, and lean proteins like fish, skinless chicken or turkey, and healthy fats like olive oil.

If eating healthier still doesn't help you lose weight, give Dr. Feiz & Associates a call at 310-855-8058 and we'll discuss what methods, including weight loss surgery, will work best for you.

It's a Family Affair

More than once, we've performed obesity surgery on multiple family members...spouses, parents and children, and so on. However, whether or not more than one member of family or relationship are actually having a procedure, in a sense we're always treating more than one person.

As the saying goes, none of us is an island and the risk of health problems like type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease don't simply impact the patient, they impact everyone to whom the patient is important. If you've had a loved one whose obesity resulted, sooner or later in life, in a life-threatening heart attack, a stroke, or kidney failure, you know that it's impossible for your own life not to be seriously impacted.

Whenever we take on a  weight loss surgery in Los Angeles or at any of our Southern California locations, we make a point of taking into account a patient's family and/or relationships. We try to make sure that spouses/significant others, children, parents, and other close relations understand the procedure and the likely results. Weight loss is a journey and a bariatric procedure is a new beginning, not an ending. Patients are going to need the help of the people who will be on that journey with them.

If you're ready to learn more about what weight loss surgery can really do, please call Dr. Feiz and Associates at 800-868-5946.

Healthy Diet Tips You Will Like

We know how hard healthy eating can be, that's why we wanted to share some tips you'd like!

#1.You need some fat in your diet; just get it from the right places.

Swap out saturated fats (butter, cheese and high-fat meat) in favor of healthy fats like olive oil, canola oil and the kind found in nuts and fatty fish. Try topping your salad with a few nuts instead of cheese, use peanut butter instead of cream cheese on a bagel, and replace mayonnaise with avocado on a sandwich.




#2. Fruit is naturally sweet, delicious, whole and unprocessed.


It is chock full of vitamins and fiber. Eat it fresh whenever possible. Frozen and canned fruit are other good options—just look for the kind with no added ingredients. Add fruit to protein drinks; eat it with peanut butter or yogurt for a snack.




#3. Salad Dressings for a healthy lifestyle that taste yummy.


In both the “regular” and “health food” sections of the market, we found that these brands of dressings didn’t contain any bad oils. BRIANNAS (all flavors), Cains Naturally Delicious All Natural Dressing (some flavors, including Asian Sesame Vinaigrette), Drew’s All Natural (all flavors)





#4 Pasta Sauce !

It was fairly easy to find pasta sauces that omitted the bad omega–6–rich oils. Still, many brands include these oils in some flavors but not others, so make sure to read ingredient lists. Bertolli (many flavors, including Marinara with Burgundy Wine), Classico (some flavors, including Tomato Basil), Dell’Amore (all flavors).



Dr. Feiz also knows that sometimes diets and exercise do not work. Luckily there is an option! To find out more about surgical weight loss and to see if you are a candidate, give Dr. Feiz a call anytime!

Fighting the Weight Loss Doldrums

We talk a lot on this blog about how weight loss surgery in Los Angeles at one of our clinics can place patients on the path towards a far more positive lifestyle. It's definitely true that such procedures as the gastric sleeve and lap band can make it far easier to make the adjustments severely obese people need to begin a lifelong habit of truly healthy eating.

Of course, it's equally true that patients are still required to work at developing the drastically altered eating habits they will need to permanently lose their excess weight. Moreover, sometimes patients make significant progress and then start to plateau. Depending on how much weight has already been lost, this might be an issue that has to be addressed. In many cases, a patient and doctor might decide that the original procedure simply wasn't sufficient.

At Dr. Feiz & Associates, we perform a number of revision procedures that can correct issues with earlier bariatric operations that might have been performed elsewhere. If you have had a weight loss procedure elsewhere and are facing lackluster results that appear to be immune to your best efforts, we're here to help. Consider calling us at 310-855-8058.

There's Never a Perfect Time

With the obesity epidemic continuing to impact so many of us, more and more people are coming around to the idea that weight loss surgery really may be the right approach for them. Indeed, with more and more information coming out regarding how bariatric procedures can actually reverse type 2 diabetes and help numerous other conditions, there's never been more reason for people to seriously look into working with a first-rate board certified bariatric surgeon like Dr. Feiz.

The problem for many people, however, is simply getting started on the road to a procedure. As the saying goes, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step...but that first step is often the hardest to take. The tendency for many is to try and wait for "the right time." With work, family, and other responsibilities facing the majority of us, however, the "right time" never seems to arrive.

If you are considering weight loss surgery in California, it might be time to simply stop considering and start acting. That perfect moment, truly, will likely never arrive...unless you realize that the best moment to do something good for yourself is right now. If what we've been saying makes any sense at all, please contact us at 310-855-8058.

NFL Training Camp Spotlights a Lap Band Success Story

With Wimbledon over, the World Cup coming to a grand finale and Major League Baseball's All Star game on deck, it can seem Americans are up to their necks in sports. However something major still looms: the start of training camp for the upcoming National Football League season.

American football, with the NFL as its showcase, is arguably the most popular sport in the nation. With training camps set to start at the end of the month, players and most involved with the professional league will have the spotlight shined brightly on them.

Fans can wonder if their favorite player did anything special over the off-season to gain an edge once real games begin in early fall.

Someone who made the news recently was New York Jets head coach Rex Ryan, who had a lap band surgery in 2010. Since then, he says he's lost 130 pounds.

Before the surgery, a doctor asked him how many people he knows who weigh 350 pounds who are over 50 years old. "Not many," Ryan responded.

The doctor replied, "Yeah, because they don't exist." Ryan told CBS Sports that it was then he knew he had to do something.

That something was lap-band surgery for significant weight loss and the associated health benefits.