I’m sure you, like me, keep hearing all this stuff about boosting your metabolism as a way to hasten your weight loss. That sounds like a good thing but how does a body go about that? In this series of short posts, I’m going to discuss a bit about this.

Your metabolism is simply the amount of energy, or calories, your body needs to do what it needs to do. And the higher your metabolic rate is, the less likely you are to have excess body fat. In fact, increasing your body’s metabolism is one very effective way to lose weight.

Your body uses calories for everything. It uses calories to process and digest foods you eat. It uses calories to maintain your body’s muscles, keep your heart pumping, keep your organs functioning properly, and even to make your hair and nails grow. And when your body uses more calories than it consumes, you can lose weight.

Now, there are many ways to boost your body’s metabolism. In general, the healthier your body is, the better it will utilize the calories you consume. In fact, with proper nutrition and exercise, your body’s metabolism rates can actually be increased enough to allow you to be able to eat almost anything you want, within reason of course.

People who restrict their calorie intake severely actually lower the body’s metabolism though, and this is a phenomenon many people have a difficult time understanding or believing. When you severely restrict your caloric intake, the body automatically decreases its energy expenditures to the bare minimum, because it thinks you’re starving. That’s why you don’t see very fast weight loss after the first couple of weeks on those very low calorie diets. You’re miserable, you’re not healthy and yu’re not losing weight hardly at all after a while. That’s why we don’t recommend them at all.

One easy way to start boosting your metabolism, is to continuously feed your body.

When we say continuously feed your body, we don’t mean that you should nibble on piles of junk food all day long. You should eat a small meal every three to four hours, but it should be more healthy foods which force your body to work harder when processing them.

Protein for instance, takes more work for your body to digest and process. Many raw fruits and vegetables are the same. And when the foods you eat force your body to work harder at processing them, you automatically boost your metabolism just with that one small change.

Exercise is another way to boost your metabolism, particularly if you build and tone your body’s muscles. Muscles take more energy for the body to maintain, so you automatically burn more calories, and have a higher metabolism, when you have more toned muscle on your body. To keep your metabolic rate high, and thus burn more calories, it’s good to do something active, something that brings your temperature up, frequently. Every hour or so, for instance, you could take a brisk walk or do some lunges or some “executive pushups” on your desk.

Boosting your metabolism not only helps you lose weight though, it also helps give you more energy. Essentially, when you start working to increase your body’s metabolism, you are teaching it that you need more energy throughout the day. And since it’s using more energy to keep you maintained, it will step up the process and actually provide you with more energy too. And that’s a great feeling!   –Di

boosting metabolism, frequent exercise, frequent meals, lose weight, metabolism, Weight Loss

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Doesn’t that sound like a great weight loss tip?

What to do when you feel that craving for a huge bowl of ice cream, preferably with chocolate syrup and pecans and whipped cream and a cherry on top, comes into your mind? Or perhaps it’s a “works” pizza that is beckoning to you. Just site there for a moment and imagine how good that would taste. Imagine the cool sweetness of the ice cream with the crunchy counterplay of the nuts, and the tart sweet flavor of the cherry. Really think about the interplay of flavors from the hot rich pizza. The crust and the cheese and the sauce and the meats. Imagine how wonderful it will taste. Imagine that slightly full satisfied feeling in your belly. Use all your senses.

Then imagine what it would be like to wake up in the morning feeling full of energy. Imagine that all your clotes are loose on your body and the most stylish designs look really good on you. Imagine looking into a mirror before your bath and seeing a trim figure. Imagine feeling lightness in your step. Imagine seats and seatbelts in airplanes having lots of extra room. Imagine admiring glances coming your way. Imagine all the possibilities of your trim healthy body. Imagine in great detail how that would be. How would you feel about that?

Which craving do you want more? Go for it! –Di

inner game, manage cravings, The Inner Game, Weight Loss

Chocolate is a favorite of many, many people. The popular idea is that it has mood-enhancing compounds in it that make us enjoy it so much. But researchers at the University of Bristol asked people to take capsules with either cocoa or starch in them without telling them which was which. Guess what. No big difference, although the cocoa group did report feeling a bit more alert. That was possibly from the little bit of caffeine in it.

Come to think of it, if the reason we crave chocolate is the natural substances in cocoa beans, then the most undiluted, darkest chocolate would be the most popular. Actually, it’s the chocolate made by the alkalai process that removes more constituents that is then diluted with lots of sugar and milk or just coats some other nice thing, like nuts or caramel, or whatever, that people like most in Europe and most of the U.S. So another favorite idea bites the dust.

The researchers say it’s the total sensuous experience that counts. I’ll go along with that. I believe you can eat anything on a healthy diet. Just not very much.

Take heart, though, researchers at Queen Mary, University of London, has found that flavinoids in dark chocolate at good for the heart. You need about an ounce of 75-85% chocolate a day. They will be running clinical tests to prove this and I would definitely volunteer for that, even at roughly 165 calories. –Di

You can check out the BBC’s article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6991289.stm

chocolate, dark chocolate, Weight Loss

My second round of the Fat Loss 4 Idiots computer-generated diet is now complete. This improved version is easier to tolerate since it allows more than one food per meal. It’s still pretty limited, I think, for a person who likes to have carbs and proteins and fats in the best proportions at most meals. And the days of fruits only and veggies only make you crave even the blandest cottage cheese or anything with some protein in it. Still, this is better than monomeals and the overall plan isn’t likely to cause malnutrition even if you did it repeatedly.

But how did I fare on it? Keep in mind that I have been following a fairly conscious plan of eating for some time so I will not show the huge water losses that some people do when they first start a restricted eating plan like this one. In short, your results may vary, as the legalese goes. I lost 4 pounds on the 11 days of eating exactly what was on the list every day. Even though the plan says no exercise, I did take 40 minute walks on about five of those days, in addition to my usual 2 miles or so that I put in just doing the daily things. I gained one of those pounds back back after a weekend that included some yummy carbs like whole grain bread, brown rice, and pizza dough. So, in two weeks I lost 3 pounds. Not exactly the 9 lbs promised on the website, but a noticeable loss nontheless. Read the rest of this entry »

Fat Loss 4 Idiots, Review of Fat Loss 4 Idiots, Reviews

Obesity is “socially contagious” and so is thinness. A new article in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine with lead authors from Harvard Medical School and the University of California at San Diego says so. They studied data from over 12,000 adults covering a period of 32 years. Seems like a pretty good sample size to me.

They found that if a person becomes obese, their friends and family, especially those of the same sex, have a greater chance of becoming obese themselves.

If your friend puts on the pounds, your own chances of doing the same go up 57%. If two or more of your mutual friends are large, your chances go up 117%! If your brother or sister or spouse is obese (a score of 30 or more on the Body Mass Index scale), your likelihood increases around 40%.

It wasn’t that the obese or non obese people were just finding similar types to hang out with. Nope, there was a causal relationship. This was also not just due to similarities in lifestyle or environment, like eating the same things or exercising (or not) together. People, especially friends, who lived a long way away from each other were just as likely to share being obese or non-obese. The researchers wrote that the effect might be from how we establish/confirm our idea of what is “OK and “normal” with respect to body size.

“What appears to be happening is that a person becoming obese most
likely causes a change of norms about what counts as an appropriate
body size. People come to think that it is okay to be bigger since
those around them are bigger, and this sensibility spreads,” said
Nicholas Christakis of HMS.

“This is about people’s ideas about their
bodies and their health,” James Fowler, of UCSD, said. “Consciously or unconsciously,
people look to others when they are deciding how much to eat, how much
to exercise and how much weight is too much.”

A lot of what we have been reading about in the past has dealt with looking at the physical processes involved in becoming obese or thin and looking for genes that might have some effect. Now we know we also have to look at a person’s social networks - their friends, their friends’ friends, and their immediate family. (Didn’t see anything in this article about parents. Wonder what effect their weight state might have.)

The good thing is, that when one person moves out of obesity, they also help a lot of others do the same thing. So now we owe it to our friends and family to become the healthy, active, slim person we all are, deep down inside.  –Di

To read more about this: Obesity Is ‘Socially Contagious,’ Study Finds

technorati tags:obesity, weight, loss, social, networks, obese, friends

In my recent series of articles on ways to dampen the appetite between meals, I thought about including the often-repeated advice to go drink some water whenever you feel hungry.

But the fact is, for me, water doesn’t do anything useful about my hunger pangs. But, I thought, it’s probably something one should do anyway. At least 8 8oz glasses of water a day, right?

Well, not so fast. Dartmouth Medical School professor Heinz Valtin, M.D. just had an article published in the online version of the American Journal of Physiology that says there isn’t good scientific evidence to support the old advice to drink the 8 x 8 of pure water, at least, every day. He says the water in other things you drink, including coffee and tea, does count and there is also a lot of water in real fruits and vegetables. Furthermore, he says, drinking too much water can be really bad.

He says the body has perfectly good mechanism for regulating your hydration status. When you’re thirsty, drink. Seems like a good message to me. –Di
Dartmouth Medical School - ‘Drink at Least 8 Glasses of Water a Day’ - Really?

Tags: weightloss, drink water, hydration, hunger

Recently my workplace started a sort of club to support employees trying to lose weight. Guess word of the obesity epidemic got to the powers that be.

Anyway, for one of the meetings they brought in an internal medicine doctor who’s been on the staff here for many years. She said quite a few employees come to her for help with losing weight and she noticed that many of them seemed depressed. That’s “mildly depressed” in a clinical sense. Serious depression requires serious treatment.

She said that she had noticed that when some people took over-the-counter herbal aniti-depressants like Rhodiola, they felt more optimistic, more in control of things, and could manage their weight better. She said she has many friends who swear by the stuff. This is not hard scientific evidence, of course. This is definitely anecdotal. But I thought I would pass it along in case my dear readers might want to give it a try. Might help, probably won’t hurt.

The name of the plant involved is Rhodiola rosea. This stuff is cheap, readily available and has a very long history of not being harmful. It’s the root and/or its extract that you want, with at least 10.2 mg of Rosavins per capsule. You take one of those a day and see what happens. Will go have a look and see what else I can dig up abut this herb. –Di

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