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BMR stands for basal metabolic rate and is the rate at which you burn calories while doing nothing at all. That’s right; you burn calories just by sitting there on the couch watching television. Of course, you are not really “just” sitting there, are you? You are blinking, which involves moving tiny muscles in your eyelids to open and close. You are breathing, which means that your lungs are inflating and deflating, your diaphragm is moving up and down. Your heart is beating, contracting and expanding, beat after beat after beat. And all of these complex processes are happening because your brain is sending out billions of electrical impulses, neurons interacting via synapses making it all happen. All of this major activity, whether you realize it or not, is going on or not, takes energy. Your BMR is the amount of calories that you burn to simply maintain life.

But, why, you might ask, is it important to know your BMR in the first place? First, you must know this number so that you have a baseline to work with, when you are trying to decide how many calories you need to eliminate from your diet each day. Too few and you will never lose any weight. Too many and you will never lose any weight. It is a game won and lost by inches, and too often people just blast for the bleachers when all they need is an in-field bunt to get the job done.

If you cut too many calories out of your daily diet, your body will become convinced that it is starving to death and will send up the panic flags. All non-essential systems will be slowed or stopped. The metabolism will slow to a crawl- all fuel that is being brought in now will be considered essential and will be immediately stored to protect against impending doom.

On the other hand, if you are eating too many calories, the body will be overwhelmed. Storage systems will be overwhelmed with all of the food that is being brought in- the body will start storing everything for future sorting. Sadly, the body is not so great at file retrieving and new foods just keep coming in every day. Keep flooding the body this way and your metabolism will walk off the job in utter frustration.

Trying to lose weight requires a lot of information. You need to know how much your maintenance is costing you in terms of total calories. Once you know what your BMR is you can experiment by reducing your total daily calories by 500 for a week or two. If you do not lose any weight at all, you can go up to 1000 calories. At no point should you drop more than 1200 calories per day without a doctor’s express notice to do so. Steady weight loss is what you are aiming for, not dangerous weight loss. The faster you lose it, the faster you will regain it is the old adage – aim for a slow and steady weight loss of two pounds the first week and then one pound every week thereafter.

Every new diet program, book or weight-loss guru eventually mentions water, but only after touting their program, book or own personal fabulousness. They have the order backwards, I am afraid. Water is important to your weight-loss efforts, no matter what you are using, eating or doing. In fact, water should be mentioned at the start, middle and end of every diet book and program, regardless of who wrote them or what they are suggesting. Yes, water is that important.

Quick! What is the difference between feeling thirsty and feeling hungry? It may be harder to tell than you think and you may be reaching for a snack when all you need is a nice, big glass of water. The feelings of thirst and hunger may be similar because they are similar signals; they are both ways for the body to tell the brain that there is a need. If you cannot tell the difference between the two, stop and ask yourself a few questions.  When was the last time that I ate something? Did I eat enough then? Have I been exceptionally active between that meal and now? Should I really be hungry?  If you cannot say yes to most of those questions, start with some water and see if you still feel the same way.

Not drinking enough water will slow the digestion. In turn, the slower digestion will slow down the metabolism, which leads to stalled weight loss efforts. The body is in a constant state of searching for a very delicate balance called homeostasis. One thing thrown off kilter could put an entire system out of whack.

Digestion starts in the mouth. We chew our food, moistening it with saliva as we do. If you are not drinking enough water, you will not make enough saliva to lubricate your food and the result will be more work for the stomach to do. The stomach receives the food and churns up the stomach acid to further break down the food. The more work it must do, the more stomach acid must be produced and the longer it will stay in the stomach which could lead to heart burn and acid reflux. Not drinking enough water could lead to heartburn? Who knew?

If you are trying any kind of weight loss program, you do not want to do anything that will slow or stall your metabolism. Your body will take longer to digest the foods that you have already eaten. Your brain will not receive a signal for new food (hunger) for a while, so the fat burning furnace known as metabolism will be shut down. You will not lose weight at all, and in fact, you may gain as your body strives to hold onto every single calorie that comes through. A slowed metabolism is a dieter’s worst enemy, far worse than that chocolate cake you feared.

Drinking water keeps the body’s systems working in proper rhythm, including digestion and metabolism. In fact, consider this: you burn calories just by drinking water. Not a lot of calories mind you, but you do get the action started as your body works to use the water. If you drink ice cold water, you increase this calorie burn because your body must first work to warm the water before it can use it. The more you rev up your metabolism, the more efficiently your body will burn those calories, regardless of where they came from.

Did you know that Women between the ages of 20-55 have nearly double the Iron requirement as their male counterparts! While the daily requirement for males is 8mg/day, this can be as high as 18mg/day for women.

Another important fact is that the absorption of dietary iron is influenced by many factors – namely whether the iron is bound to hemoglobin, the concentration of iron and/or the presence of cofactors which can enhance or hinder iron absorption.

What do you think the best sources of iron are?

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