Weight loss can be difficult, thats for sure, but like anything else – the more you know, the easier it is. Once you understand the basics, you’ll make constant steady progress, stay fit, make you look great and help you feel fabulous. The basics of being fit and fab are all about keeping your metabolism going strong. It is definitely a challenge to lose fat and maintain a healthy and trim body, but there are a lot of easy exercises and fun activities that you can engage in and a lot of supplements you can take for you to keep your metabolism running fast and steady.

It’s really important to build muscles and strength train regularly because this can maintain a high metabolic rate when trying to lose fat. If you lose muscle tissue instead of body fat, your fat burning capacity will decrease. The more calories you will burn, the more you use your muscles. Walking and high intensity interval training can burn can burn fat significantly than sleeping or watching TV. Exercising frequently, especially in the morning, also speeds up your metabolism and can still burn your calories even after the session. This is why it is advisable to take in calories post-exercise. You can try having interval training as often as possible. This will only take only about ten minutes and greatly improves fitness and metabolic levels. Mental exercises are also very important in keeping your whole body healthy. Avoid stress through relaxing activities such as yoga, tai chi or even writing.

In order to lose fat more effectively, you also have to remember that you should not reduce your calorie level too much. With too few food intakes, you can increase your appetite to an unhealthy level and start eating too much after your starvation diet. Avoid skipping meals and spread out calorie intake into four to five well-balanced snacks and meals for the day. It is very important to keep within your recommended calorie range and still keep the capacity of burning stored fat and have energy for your daily activities, too. Also, do not deprive yourself of sleep as studies show that this may slow down your metabolism as well.

There are also a lot of supplements that can help you lose fat. CLA or conjugated linoleic acid is a group of essential fatty acids that enhances metabolism by allowing lipids to be used as energy and reducing blood sugar. Research shows that CLA can help boost lean body mass, especially in the abdomen. Green tea with its antioxidant epigallocatechin gallate (ECGC) activates brown adipose tissue (BAT) to participate in a heat-generating metabolic process called thermogenesis. This heat induces loss of appetite and increases fat and calorie-burning, slows down release of carbohydrates, stops sudden rising blood-insulin levels, and lowers cholesterol. L-dopa is a mood stabilizer or enhancer that controls emotional or stress eating. This can also stimulate the secretion of human growth hormone (HGH), which increases lean muscles and decreases fats as well. You can lose fat and lose pounds immediately with these helpful tips and get that dream body you’ve always been aspiring for.

What is metabolism? It is the process by which our body burns calories for fuel. We should also be aware that certain food calories are broken down in different ways, but once they make it to their lowest common denominator it may not matter what the exact source of those calories really was. The process by which foods are broken down, and the rate at which this happens may influence how much calories is burned and how much is stored. For now, the focus will be on carbohydrate metabolism and why understanding the basic action can help you to lose weight.

Whenever we eat or drink something, our body must use energy to process the nutrients. In the case of carbohydrates, the actual amount left over after processing is 90% of the total calories. We burn about 10% of the carbohydrate calories just by digesting them. Our body takes the carbohydrates and breaks them down to a simple compound called glucose. The body is in a constant battle to maintain the delicate balance of all of its systems including its blood glucose level. This balance, also known as homeostasis, can be interrupted and thrown-off, by overeating and by extreme dieting. In most cases, the body is aiming for blood glucose numbers in the range of 70–110 mg/dL.

Whenever we eat or drink anything, our body releases hormones that help to digest and process the foods and beverages. Of these hormones, insulin is like the mother hen. It attempts to usher all of the sugar molecules into storage tanks. The body also releases glucagon that is like an older sibling. It tries to break the sugar molecules out of the storage tanks so that they can be burned for food. Glucagon will also try to hide the sugar by turning it into glycogen and stashing it in the muscles and in the liver. If there is no immediate need for the energy, the remaining calories will be stored either in the glycogen tanks to be burned off at another time or in the fat cells where it will be kept as body fat.

Certain foods upset the delicate balance and produce a huge tidal wave of insulin. These insulin spikes can then lead to faster, easier fat storage as the body starts to resist the insulin’s efforts. Insulin resistance is the inability or resistance of the muscles or liver cells to store glycogen. As a result of this resistance, even more insulin will be released. When more insulin is released, the body is more likely to store fat.

Total insulin released is usually equal to the total amount of blood glucose. However, the higher the initial flood of carbohydrates, the longer that the insulin will be at elevated levels. Again, the more insulin that is released into the blood stream, the more likely you are to have at least some body fat storage. It is better to eat foods that do not cause insulin spikes or at least those that cause smaller insulin spikes. It is also wise to eat smaller, more frequent meals.

If you are worried about your weight, or even just concerned about your BMI, you are certainly not alone.  Recent surveys have shown that over seventy percent of Americans are struggling with their weight.

One question that has been posed time and again still has researchers puzzled.  What is it that causes our population to have such a widespread problem with achieving and maintaining a healthy body weight, and how can it be overcome?

There are many pieces to this perplexing problem.   DNA can certainly play a part in an individual’s metabolism – if your ancestors struggled with weight loss, chances are high that you will, also.  Recent research has focused on the process of Mutagenesis, or changing the structure of DNA to assist individuals who have the genetic markers for inherited obesity and the associated problems that come with it.  Is it possible to change the body’s code for the better?  Scientists are hard at work to find the answer.  In the meantime, there are real breakthroughs that can help break the cycle of persistent weight loss and weight gain that such a large percentage of the population battles.

Some of the best tools for weight loss involve simple knowledge about how the body works and what to do to optimize the body’s energy balance.  One thing you can do is use a BMR Calculator to evaluate your body’s basic caloric need.  A Basal Metabolic Rate Calculator (BMR Calculator) uses information you provide to determine how many calories you would need to maintain your current weight even if you did nothing all day.  The second tool is knowledge about your BMI (Body Mass Index).   Using a BMI Calculator, you can determine the fat to lean ratio that makes up your body.  Standard BMI Calculators can help you to determine whether you are underweight, at a healthy weight for your height, if you are overweight, or if you are obese.  The knowledge you can gain from using these two important tools is enough to get you started down the path of healthy weight loss.

It is important to feed your body properly while losing weight.  When you decrease the amount of calories that you are taking in, it is essential to use high quality nutritional supplements to ensure that your body’s vitamin and mineral needs are met.  If the body is not receiving quality nutrition, it will fight to retain fat – again, that tricky DNA comes into play.  Centuries of struggle to find adequate nutrition have programmed our genetic codes to be thrifty and store fat.  Taking a quality supplement along with plenty of water can help to speed weight loss and restore balance to your body.

Healthy exercise is also important for weight loss.  Remember that if you have not exercised in a long time, you should start out slowly and work your way up to a more active lifestyle.  A high quality weight loss supplement can help you with exercise as well, giving you more stamina and helping your body’s cells to convert more easily.  Fat cells will shrink rapidly and muscle cells will show increased growth as long as they are fed properly – cells need micronutrients to operate efficiently.   So, remember that a body is a sum of parts and DNA is ultimately the key.  Until the mysteries are solved, a BMR Calculator, knowledge about your BMI, and a healthy diet and exercise plan paired with supportive supplementation remain the best tools for healthy weight loss.

To begin a diet without understanding where you are now and what steps will take you where you want to be is a plan – but it’s a plan to fail.  Instead, make a plan to succeed by defining where you are, what your goal is and what must be done in the areas of diet, exercise and health to reach your goal.

Any of us who have dieted know that the best intentions can be overcome by the first hunger pang.   We know it’s easier to think about exercise while sitting in our favorite chair.   We know that depriving our bodies of the nutrients it needs leads to fatigue and weakness and gives us an excuse to quit dieting.

Plan your diet by making a schedule for meals, defining an exercise program suited to you and add an excellent weight loss supplement that will support your health as you pursue your goals.   You will increase the likelihood of success drastically by spending a bit of time building a diet plan to suit your taste and your lifestyle.

Be realistic about where you are right now.   Begin by calculating your body mass index (BMI). Try these free weight loss tools courtesy of Liporidex.com. Lowering your BMI can have a significant impact on your life by decreasing risk of disease and improving overall health. The BMI measurement may be incorrect if you have a high concentration of lean muscle. Accuracy may also be affects for those at the extreme range of ages. Use this handy BMI chart provided to track your weight loss progress.

Other calculators are provided to:

-       Determine the caloric requirement that will help you lose weight, gain weight or maintain the weight when you reach your goal.

-       Design an exercise regimen based on caloric expenditure by activity

-       Access a database of foods and calories per serving to plan your meals

Choose your diet supplement carefully.   If you buy weight loss diet pills that leave you jittery you are at risk for nervous eating.   Choose a top weight loss supplement that targets the unique problems you face when dieting but also provides natural support for your overall health and well being.

As you create your diet plan, choose a date to start that will allow you time to clear your kitchen of foods that are not helpful and fill the refrigerator with fresh, healthy foods.  Outline a plan for exercise that is practical and will fit in with your schedule.  It does no good to have an ambitious workout plan if you have to skip it due to time constraints.

Set milestones for your progress.   Sometimes you will exceed your own expectations but if you fall short one week, just make adjustments and keep going.

Your end goal is to lose weight in a way that leaves you looking and feeling great.   With healthy food choices, regular exercise that suits you and the top weight loss supplement taken daily, you will feel better, look better and be able to continue your new healthy lifestyle long after your diet days are over.

Our body is a very efficient machine for the most part, but even the best maintained machine has its issues from time to time. For the body, this issue is free radicals. Free radicals are molecules that are responsible for tissue damage, again and certain diseases as well.

Our body relies on oxygen for every function that it carries out, from the smallest and most mundane to the most complex. It also relies on fuel in the form of calories from the foods that we eat, to have the energy to transport this oxygen to every cell. The entire process is carried out by thermogenesis which is a fancy term for heat generation.

Heat is created when we digest food and when we process oxygen. Of course, just like with other actions or processes, there are reactions or by-products. In this case, the byproducts are known as free radicals.

While some free radicals are generated by our natural processes and therefore can never be one hundred percent prevented, there are other, unnatural causes of free radicals that contribute to their build up in our body. Some examples of these unnatural causes are cigarette smoke, pollution, poor food choices, overexposure to the sun, and certain chemicals. Free radicals, even when they are generated from within our own bodies are dangerous and can be very damaging.

Free radicals are unstable molecules because they are missing an electron. Their goal is to seek a replacement for this electron and they do not care where they scavenge it from. Free radicals steal their missing electron from DNA, enzymes, protein, and from any other cell type that happens to be around them. They can damage the cell membrane in search of their electron. Cells sustain up to ten thousand free radical hits each and every day.

To prevent or at least lessen some of the damages caused by the unstable free radicals, it is necessary to incorporate antioxidants into the body’s line of defense. Antioxidants give up one of their own electrons to stabilize and neutralize the dangerous effects of the free radical.

Our body produces some antioxidants, but this natural production is often inadequate to handle the free radicals that have accumulated. This is especially true if we are at risk from external sources like our own environments, bad habits, and bad food choices. The more free radicals we have to deal with, the more antioxidants we will need to incorporate to handle them.

There are beneficial antioxidants in some foods as well as in some supplements such as vitamins. Natural foods are a good source of antioxidants, especially fruits, nuts, and vegetables. Hopefully, the antioxidants in the good foods that we eat, in addition to those our body naturally produces will be enough to help us win the ongoing battle against free radicals and their cell damage.

Asking your body to work without food is like asking your car to keep running once its gauge says “empty”. It is just not going to happen. Your car needs fuel in the form of gasoline to work properly; your body needs fuel in the form of calories to run properly as well. Giving your body good fuel will allow it to work properly and will allow you to achieve not only better health, but the slow and steady weight loss that is actually sustainable and realistic. Starvation diets do not work for weight loss because starvation throws everything in the body out of balance, everything including your metabolism

Your metabolism is the rate at which your body uses the fuel that it gets for energy. In simpler terms, metabolism is how fast your body burns calories. Nearly everything that you eat or drink has calories. Calories are the unit used to measure the amount of energy that it takes to convert and use food for energy. If you eat more calories than your body needs to maintain its systems and to move around, you will store what is left in your fat cells; you will gain weight.

If you burn off too many calories and do not replace them, your body will seek energy from other sources which could include your own lean muscle tissues. While you do want to burn your fat for energy, you do not want to destroy muscle in the process. Weight loss then becomes a delicate balancing act of learning what is and what is not the right amount of calories to take in each day.

Starvation is not a normal state for your body to be in. To survive, the body will sense that it is in danger and will start shutting down the metabolism – it will not burn any fuel for energy. What will happen instead is simple: the body will hold on to every single calorie it receives, and when you do eat, your body will continue holding on. If you slow or stall your metabolism for long enough, you may find it very difficult to get it started again.

While your body is busy storing all of the new calories it is taking in, the cells will still need energy, but will be getting it from other sources. Again, the muscle tissue will be in danger of being burned off to use as fuel. Consider it this way: You buy a home and fill one room with beautiful furniture and another room with firewood. When winter comes you are cold, but you do not want to have to buy more firewood so you burn your furniture instead. It does not make sense, does it? Starving yourself is the same thing. You have your beautiful and strong muscles that enable you to move and be active, but you are trying to lose weight as well. So, instead of feeding your muscles and moving around more, you starve yourself, and just like in the house with the fuel and the furniture, you burn off what you need to keep, and keep what you need to burn off.

Now we all know that’s not right, so….

No more starvation!!

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?

Environmental conditions and harmful diets can cause DNA damage and mutations that have been linked to many diseases including cancer. This damage is commonly caused by excited electrons knownas “free radical”. Individuals cannot alter their DNA, but diseases can be prevented and DNA can be protected with a proper, nutritious diet containing antioxidants and vitamins along with a healthy lifestyle including regular exercise.