Before you try to lose weight, you need to understand why you gained weight in the first place. Unless you are suffering from certain complex medical conditions which could make a person overweight as a side effect, I am sure you have gained weight as a result of consuming excessive amount of calories.

Your body needs a certain amount of calories daily, and if you feed it more than it needs, what would it do? Since energy (calorie) cannot be destroyed, it would deposit the excess calories as fat so that they could be used for future energy production, and you gain weight as a result.

It is therefore quite obvious that you are not going to get rid of your fat belly unless you learn to control your calorie intake. There are many ways to achieve this end and one popular way is by concentrating on a “low-calorie” diet. Read the rest of this entry »

Looking to make a change and lose some weight? I have reviewed the top diet on the internet and you can go and read over 200 comments people have made about why this diet has worked well for them, as well as some of the problems.

Calorie here, calorie there. Every time we try to lose weight, we are asked to monitor our calorie intake. Now what the heck is this calorie? Well, as a matter of fact, each of the foods and drinks we consume contain a certain quantity of calories. Once food enters our body, those calories are transformed into energy. In turn our body uses this energy to perform its day-to-day operations.

Now our body requires a certain minimum level of energy to be able to function properly. If the current energy level is below this minimum requirement, we would suffer from fatigue, weakness, and a host of other maladies. On the other hand, if our body receives more energy than required, it would deposit the extra energy as fat for future use.

As you can see, if you want to get rid of fat, you need to control your body’s energy production, which can be done only by reducing your daily calorie intake level. One way to do that is by controlling your food intake by dieting. Dieting of course means eating balanced, healthy meals rather than fasting. Another way to keep the energy levels at normal level is by burning the excess calories with the help of workouts. Read the rest of this entry »

When it comes to weight loss almost all experts would unanimously agree that there is no better way to achieve your goal than following a diet. However, they don’t seem to be focusing much on the workouts! I am sure you have heard of several fad diets but do you ever get to hear the words ‘fad workouts’ or ‘fad exercises’? I haven’t heard of one in the past four years I spent in researching weight loss!

Remember that while dieting is important, building a strong muscular body is equally necessary, something which diets cannot offer you. In this article I will tell you how a strong body could help you burn more fat than what you are burning now!

As a matter of fact, a strong body is one which is built upon strong lean muscles groups. I am not sure if you already know about it, but the more muscles you have, the faster you are able to burn fat and lose weight. Plus muscles also make weight maintenance easy for you.

For example, most of the conventional dieting programs would restrict your carbohydrate intake to a very low level. With no carbs around, your body would burn your muscles for the purpose of energy production. The more muscles you lose, the more difficult you would find it to keep the fat way. Eventually your metabolic rate would be so low that you won’t be able to lose weight no matter how hard you diet!

However, this problem won’t occur if you have a muscular body. People with strong and well-built bodies usually find it easier to maintain their lost weight and keep the fat from returning when they start eating normally. This is because muscles help them burn fat even when they are not dieting! That is the advantage of building strong lean muscles. And only intense workouts could help you acquire lean muscle mass within a short period of time!

The other day I was advising a friend on how to start the workout regimen on a step-by-step basis. Here is basically what I told him:

1. First off, there are two types of workouts: one which helps you lose weight by burning your fat deposits, and another which builds strong lean muscles for you! For optimal results, you would want to achieve both goals and as such, you shouldn’t focus on any one type of workout!

For the purpose of losing fat, you can start lifting light weights but make sure that you do several repetitions of this workout every day! The purpose of this exercise program is to boost your body’s metabolism to such a high level that you would be burning fat like crazy!

2. For the purpose of building a strong muscular body, chin-ups, ab crunches, squats and dead-lifts are pretty good. The purpose of these workouts is to make your body so strong that you could lift almost four or five times the amount of weight you are currently lifting!

But on a simpler level, the stronger your body is, the easier it would be for you to keep the pounds away! Plus you would feel a lot more energetic than before!

I would strongly discourage you from doing long boring cardios as they do nothing except wasting your valuable time and energy!

Note that having a good meal is as important as doing the correct workouts! I recommend a protein-rich diet. Protein is available in foods such as eggs, lean chicken meat, etc. You can even take protein supplements if you want!

Along with protein, your body also needs fat, which you could get from nuts, fish oil, etc. In order to get rid of hunger, you should include raw vegetables and fruits in your diet as well since they are high on fiber and complex carbs.

At no point of time should you even think of eating junk foods, as they would spoil all your hard work!

The vitamin B-complex refers to all of the known essential water-soluble vitamins except for vitamin C. These include thiamine (vitamin B1), riboflavin (vitamin B2), niacin (vitamin B3), pantothenic acid (vitamin B5), pyridoxine (vitamin B6), biotin, folic acid and the cobalamins (vitamin B12).

Where do B Vitamins Come from?

“Vitamin B” was once thought to be a single nutrient that existed in extracts of rice, liver, or yeast. Researchers later discovered these extracts contained several vitamins, which were given distinguishing numbers. Unfortunately, this has led to an erroneous belief among non-scientists that these vitamins have a special relationship to each other. Further adding to confusion has been the “unofficial” designation of other substances as members of the B-complex, such as choline, inositol, and para-aminobenzoic acid (PABA), even though they are not essential vitamins. Read the rest of this entry »

Most experts would tell you that there is no other way to lose weight except by starving for days! Now if you have ever starved you know only too well that it is easier said than done! Even if you are able to keep up with the hunger pangs, your body won’t tolerate it.

If your body notices that it is not getting enough nutrition, it will store existing fat (instead of burning it) for the purpose of energy production! This is the reason that you don’t lose much weight with starving, and you gain back whatever you have lost once you get back to your normal eating habits!

Fortunately however, you don’t need to starve at all in order to lose weight. There are five special foods out there that can help you lose weight easily and quickly! If you can lose weight by eating, then why starve? Read the rest of this entry »

Fad diets such as Atkins recommend an almost total abstinence from carbs. Apart from that, even many experts believe that carbs are the real culprits behind the rising cases of obesity. They recommend a carb-free diet as the ‘healthy’ way to lose weight. Truth however, is that this is an ‘unhealthy’ weight loss method!

Carbs are needed by your body for producing energy! You use this energy for performing your daily activities. This energy also helps your body in performing its ‘bodily’ functions. If your body doesn’t receive an adequate amount of carbohydrates, it will start burning off your lean muscles for the purpose of energy production. This is known as ketosis.

If you are a pregnant woman or a diabetic patient then ketosis can result in your untimely death! As you can see, carbs are your friends and not enemies. A healthy diet is one which contains a healthy dose of all nutrients, including carbs. Read the rest of this entry »

If you are struggling with weight loss, you should be already aware of this basic truth: weight loss can only happen when a calorie deficit occurs in your body. When you eat foods, you consume calories, and when you work, play sports or exercise, you burn off calories. When the number of calories you burn exceeds the number of calories you consume, a calorie deficit occurs in your body, resulting in weight loss. Note that if you have a high Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) then you would be able to burn fat fast even at rest.

In this connection, let me acquaint you with the term Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). BMR is the rate at which your body burns calories at rest. There are a lot of BMR calculators available online, most of them free, that would tell you your BMR. All you need to do is to input your age, height, gender, and weight in these tools, and you would get back your Basal Metabolic rate.

When losing weight, you should always keep your BMR in mind, for it would give you a fair idea of how many calories you need to burn in order to create the necessary calorie deficit, and keep in mind that weight loss would not happen until this calorie deficit is created.

With that said, here are tips for successful weight loss:

1. While you should definitely cut down on your daily calorie intake, you must provide your body with the minimum amount of calorie it needs to perform its day-to-day operations. If your body doesn’t get the required amount of calories, it would go into the ’starvation mode’.

While in starvation mode, your body would start storing food in the form of fat deposits instead of burning them for energy production. This is not a good thing, as you would gain even more weight in the process. To be on the safe side, you should consume a minimum of:

a) 1,800 calories, if you are a man

b) 1,200 calories, if you are a woman

DO NOT cut your calorie intake level beyond the above limits.

2. Do not try to lose weight too fast by starving. Lots of people think that starving would result in a huge calorie deficit and the body would be forced to burn fat in order to make up for the deficit. Actually, the opposite happens.

To be on the safe side, you should not create a calorie deficit of less than 500 calories and more than 1,000 calories. If you follow this rule, you would be losing weight at the rate of 1-2 pounds per week. This is not only normal and healthy, but also permanent weight loss.

The most important tips for successful weight loss therefore are calorie and portion control and exercise without starving yourself.

Tom Venuto of Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle has written this great article on the shrinking of fat cells. Here is part one of the article.

Earlier this week someone in our discussion forum wrote, “I haven’t “LOST” any fat… I know EXACTLY where it went! I got a chuckle out of that because I “got” the joke, but truth is, most people really don’t know how fat cells work, how the fat burning process takes place or where the fat goes when it’s burned. It’s actually quite a complex biochemical process, but I’ll explain it as simply as possible, so by the end of this article, you’ll be a “fat burning” expert!

When you “lose” body fat, the fat cell (also called an adipocyte) does not go anywhere or “move into the muscle cell to be burned. The fat cell itself, (unfortunately) stays right where it was – under the skin in your thighs, stomach, hips, arms, etc., and on top of the muscles – which is why you can’t see muscle “definition” when your body fat is high.

Fat is stored inside the fat cell in the form of triaglycerol. The fat is not burned right there in the fat cell, it must be liberated from the fat cell through somewhat complex hormonal/enzymatic pathways. When stimulated to do so, the fat cell simply releases its contents (triaglycerol) into the bloodstream as free fatty acids (FFA’s), and they are transported through the blood to the tissues where the energy is needed.

A typical young male adult stores about 60,000 to 100,000 calories of energy in body fat cells. What triggers the release of all these stored fatty acids from the fat cell? Simple: When your body needs energy because you’re consuming fewer calories than you are burning (an energy deficit), then your body releases hormones and enzymes that signal your fat cells to release your fat reserves instead of keeping them in storage.
Read the rest of this entry »