Healthy Loss Diet - Calorie Shifting Review

Calorie Shifting - Unique Technique for Healthy and Rapid Weight Loss

noreply@blogger.com (O.J. Eppers, PhD) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 23:24:00 +0000

Calorie shifting is a weight loss approach that focuses on eating patterns, rather than on what types of food to eat or have to avoid. The result is a rapid and safe weight loss without starving yourself.

Don't ruin your health with diet pills or so-called low calorie diets! Many people waste thousands of dollars on diet pills over and over again and are still overweighted - or even more than before. After several intents with different methods, I found finally an economic and healthy loss diet that results in a rapid and sustainable weight loss. Read the information below and you will understand why you should stop ruining your health and wasting your money!

Many of the popular programs, supplements and diets currently on the market help people lose a lot of weight quickly. But that is only half the battle. The real challenge is keeping the pounds off once they have been shed. These programs often counsel people to reduce or eliminate certain type of foods, such as carbohydrates, fat or proteins, from their diets. Even if the immediate result is often some short-term loss, the body’s metabolism usually adjusts to the new eating regime by slowing down to conserve energy. In other words, your body goes into survival mode. But this doesn’t stop the body from craving the foods that it’s missing, though. When those types of foods are consumed again, the body soaks them up like a sponge and stores them as fat to keep them in reserve for the next time there is depletion in the food supply. This explains the so-called “rebound” effect: most of the weight that was lost initially - and sometimes even more - is gained back as rapidly as it disappeared during the weight loss diet.

In this blog I describe my experience with the Calorie Shifting Diet in a series of postings. You will find a lot of information related to this weight loss diet but for a good overview I recommend to start with the following:

1. Why 95% Of Diets Fail and the Healthy Loss Diet Does Not

2. How to Calorie Shift as Healthy Loss Diet - and use the free Food & Calorie Finder as Menu Planer (see bottom of this page).

3. Calorie Shifting avoids the Diet Plateau and Rebound Effects

4. Strengths and Drawbacks of the Calorie Shifting Diet
5. Calorie Shifting - Maximized Weight Loss

Why 95% Of Diets Fail and the Healthy Loss Diet Does Not

noreply@blogger.com (O.J. Eppers, PhD) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 18:47:00 +0000

And Why I Choose thehe Healthy Loss Diet with Calorie Shifting
Researching statistics about the success of diet plans shows that 95% of them fail miserably. Like the vast majority of people with overweight I already followed several distinct diets (among those: low fat, low carb, low calories) and always with the same result: I managed to lose some weight in the beginning of each diet, though unfortunately most of it seemed to be just liquids and not fat. As a result, I stopped losing weight after a while and gained back what I lost after finishing the diets, and worse - I ended up even fatter than I was before I started each procedure.

The main reason why most diets fail is that they are based on a greatly reduced calorie intake and/or a total avoidance of a certain food group. A low calorie diet, and I have seen people go on 400 calories a day diets, causes our metabolism to slow down considerably and your body to burn less and less fat. The explanation for this: the body protects itself because it thinks we're starving it – we are constructed to survive, even in extreme situations.

The dangerous part of the story:
After complying with a diet we are going to consume more calories again and as our metabolism is still at low speed after the "bad times" of dieting we are accumulating fat much faster - which is being accumulated by our body as calorie deposit for bad times. And besides, eating 400 calories a day over a prolonged period is very hazardous to your health, even though you are taking supplements like vitamins, minerals, etc. In general, consuming less than 1800 calories a day will not provide you with enough essential nutrients to meet all of your needs. The human body is an extraordinarily intelligent machine. When you cut back on your energy intake (calories) too much, the body perceives this restriction as a threat. As a defense mechanism, your body protects its reserves. The stricter the diet, the more your body will go into famine mode in order to protect itself. Thus, your body slows down. It then becomes easier to gain weight over time. It has been shown that many diets avoiding food groups like carbs or proteins hurt the body because they deprive a necessary ingredient from it, causing potential health problems even after the diet.

What is the Main problem:
Any weight loss achieved through this type of diet schemes is of short term. In contrast, a healthy loss diet lets you eat a reasonable amount of food with a certain supply of all necessary food groups that still helps you to lose weight. And the most important fact is that the diet needs to be sustainable, without the feared Diet Boomerang or Rebound Effect.

Weight loss diets that are too restrictive can be harmful to your health and well-being. For example, cutting out milk products can deprive your bones of the precious calcium and vitamin D necessary for their strength. Eating too few grain products, especially whole-grain products, could mean less fibre and other nutrients that help digestion. There are many other examples as well!

A diet that finally worked best for me, as it avoids all the mentioned pitfalls, is the so-called Healthy Loss Diet with Calorie Shifting (or simply Calorie Cycling). This diet is known already since many years among bodybuilders and other body-conscious people as ideal method to increase the muscle mass without the increase in body fat, which occur with most long-term nutritional programs। This group of people is applying acute calorie cycling, consuming a high-calorie diet for 2 weeks followed by a low-calorie diet for 2 weeks, and then repeating this pattern over and over again. A modification of this bodybuilder diet resulted in an extremely fast weight loss diet which at the same time is healthy as it does not eliminate important nutritients from your diet plan. For me and many other people this healthy loss diet works very well as it does not starve you and at the same time produces a fast and continuous weight loss.

Several friends of mine tried as alternative to this calorie shifting approach the "Burn the Fat - Feed the Muscle" Diet that also has been developed based on bodybuilder diet plans. This diet also has been shown to be an alternative and very successful approach for reducing and controlling overweight.

Well, I tried the Healthy Loss Diet based on Shifting Calories and found it the best bet for me as I don't want to starve myself and at the same time achieve a fast and continuous weight loss.

How Does it Work?
Healthy Loss Diet using Calories Shifting is accomplished by constantly changing what you eat, so that your body doesn't get used to any routine. This causes your metabolism to remain high and your body to burn fat faster and more efficiently.

The Healthy Loss Diet with Calorie Shifting keeps the metabolism high at all times, so your body always burns fat, leading to a rapid and continuous weight loss.

The developers of this diet call it with some enthusiasm the Extremely Fast Weight Loss Diet as it really is a diet giving very rapid results that can be applied easily and by everyone. The diet, originally promoted as "FatLoss4Idiots" due to its simplicity, includes a detailled handbook and a menu generator which produces a personal menu to each user. You type in the food you like to eat, and the menu generator takes it into account, so you end up eating much of the food you like, but it always shifts it around. The Healthy Loss Calorie Shifting menu is comprised of 4 meals a day so you never starve. That's why so many people have been able to stick to it for so long and maintain their new weight once they lost the number of lbs. they wanted.

Now you might imagine why this healthy weight loss diet works so well for me and for so many people.

But how to start?
At the bottom of this page you find a Food&Calorie Finder that I used at the beginning to develop my personalized daily diet plans. When I recognized that this concept really works, I searched the web and found a commercial software package to design diet menus based on the calorie shifting diet concept. Since then I am using this software with really exceptional success. I found it quite easy to reduce my weight rapidly but for me the most important factor is that I managed to maintain my weight for now more than two years, just changing my eating style and planning once a week my daily diet. This allows me to take control over the things I purchase in the supermarket, considering also other personal health related facts.

To read more about the diet system I am using and to design my own diet menu plan, check out the following site: Healthy Loss Diet Menu Planning.

Avoid Weight Loss Plateau and Rebound Effect with Healthy Loss Calorie Shifting

noreply@blogger.com (O.J. Eppers, PhD) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:59:00 +0000

Weight Loss Plateau is a stage when after initial weight loss you are not losing pounds any more, independent on the consumed calories. Healthy Loss Diet with Calorie Shifting is a proven method to overcome this Weight Loss Plateau and to avoid the feared rebound of lost weight.

Most people associate the word calorie with something “awful”, as it is common knowledge that eating excess calories leads to excess fat. Hence, the conclusion is that cutting way back on calories each day is the fastest way to lose weight. This means, when a person who usually eats 2,500 calories per day decides to cut back to 1,500 calories per day, the saved 1,000 calories are consumed by the body fat reserves resulting in a weight loss.

This calculation is quite easy to understand but unfortunately it doesn’t really work like this.

Experience shows that cutting calories too drastically, for instance by skipping meals or starving yourself, the body gets used to the calorie reduction and you quickly experience what is called a “Weight Loss Plateau”. After an initial steady weight loss, suddenly the scale refuses to drop any lower - no matter how little you are eating.

During the first weeks of the diet, the body’s response to the reduced calorie intake is very encouraging. Calorie intake is low, whereas the body metabolism is high. During this time, the body is subject to new changes in terms of food intake. The result is an instant, steady weight reduction, even though most of this reduction is due to the loss of water. Then suddenly, the body is switching to the “survival mode”, slowing down the metabolism for getting used to the calorie reduction. This is the point when Weight Loss Plateau sets in. The body is “tuned” to the new conditions and has settled down to adjust by burning fewer calories. The diet program and the exercise regime don’t produce the expected results any more and it is getting harder and harder to lose more weight. This is a very dangerous point as most of the people give up and slipping back to where they started.

How to avoid a Weight Loss Plateau?
Many of the popular diets and dietary supplements on the market help people lose a lot of weight quickly but what they are losing is basically water and almost no fat. Apart from the explained metabolic change, this is one of the reasons for running into a Weight Loss Plateau. Another problem of these diets is the “rebound” effect. Most of the weight that was lost initially-—and sometimes even more-—is gained back as rapidly as it disappeared.

But there is good news. You can avoid and overcome a Weight Loss Plateau. A proven way is to trick your body into thinking that you need more energy to stay alive while eating less. The result is that you body will burn more calories than you consume. But as your body is designed as a smart “survival machine” and easily can get used to new environmental conditions, it will automatically adjust itself to burn less calories for your daily activities. The trick is to use a unique eating system called Healthy Loss Calorie Shifting Diet to confuse your body in a healthy way.

As the Healthy Loss Diet - Calorie Shifting idea is unusual and goes against many dieting rules and standards, it has been dismissed by many people being a scam. But the most important behind all this: it works and anyone who tries this diet quickly finds out how shocking the weight loss effect is. It's just something you have to try to believe.

Your body will receive different calories each day. One day you will consume 1500 calories and the next could be 1100 calories, derived from different types of food. This way your body does not establish any eating habit, it keeps burning calories and maintains high rate of metabolism even when you are eating less. The result is a faster weight loss, avoiding the feared Weight Loss Plateau and the Rebound effects.

Learn more about this new diet system and set up your personalized Diet Menu Plan

Strenghts and Drawbacks of the Calorie Shifting Diet

noreply@blogger.com (O.J. Eppers, PhD) — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 10:36:00 +0000

During the past years, the Calorie Shifting Diet, originally developed as "Fat Loss 4 Idiots" Diet and now promoted as "Extremely Fast Weight Loss Diet", has been evolved as one of the most popular diet plans today. The diet advocates a theory called Shifting Calorie or Calorie Shifting. The idea behind this Calorie Shifting approach is to increase our metabolism rate by stimulating our bodies to burn additional fat through giving signals that the calorie level is low.

Based on personal experience and discussions with other users of this diet (see following publications at this blog), this is my oppinion on drawbacks and strengths of Calorie Shifting:

Drawbacks:

1. Without Commitment And Determination no Success
The Fat Loss 4 Idiots diet claims to be the easiest solution for fast and sustainable weight loss but according to my experience, without commitment and determination you’ll never have the desired success. Even though, the diet is quite easy to implement and to follow, it’s up to you to comply with your diet plan or not. This diet is not just like a weight loss pill treatment where you throw in your drug and forget about the rest.

2. Claim of Losing 9lbs in 11 days is very difficult to achieve (if not impossible).
The diet claims that one will be able to lose as much as 9lbs in 11 days. Many people might be attracted by this number whilst others will be alerted that it sounds dubiously.

The weight loss success depends basically on the consequent application of the diet plan, the reduction of daily calorie intake and also physical activities - sorry, but unfortunately this is true :-(

From my personal experience, I decided to reduce my daily calorie uptake by 500 calories (accumulating to 3500 cal less per week) to achieve an average of 1900 cal per day. For a convenient planning of my daily diet plan, I used the Online Menu Planner that came with the "Extremely Fast Weight Loss" handbook. This diet was published originally (and I understand is patented) by a program called "Fat Loss 4 Idiots" (strange name, however...). With this "idiot proven" strategy, I was able to loose 6 pounds in the first month, 4 pounds in the second and again 6 pounds in the third one (accounting for about 2.7 lbs in 14 days). I achieved this weight loss without starving myself or increasing my physical activities.

I talked to 5 friends and relatives using the Calorie Shifting diet plan strictly already for more than three months and evaluated their dieting results. As a conclusion, the average weight loss in 11 to 14 days was only 7.6lbs instead of the claimed 9lbs. All of the interviewed dieters were exercising more than usual during the application of the Calorie Shifting diet. Anyhow, I found it difficult to come up with an exact number as several evaluated persons did not control their weight on a daily basis.

I personally feel that the claim of losing 9lbs in 11 days is rather an exaggeration and maybe should be seen as an upper limit rather than the rule as only very few will be able to achieve this goal in just 11 days.

3. No Permanent Weight Loss if not Continued
I recognized that once I stopped following the Calorie Shifting diet and tried to enter in my previous “routine” again, my weight started to increase again. Therefore, even though this diet plan does work and all people who used it really lose weight, it is not more than a temporary solution if you don’t adjust your lifestyle after dropping the extra pounds. Anyway, after experiencing the diet and adopting to the new eating habits, you’ll recognize how easy it is to continue with this diet and you will do it almost automatically.

4. Other Potential Drawbacks

There are no clinical studies presented on the official website
The Fat Loss 4 Idiots diet does not apply any appetite suppressants (which are not natural)
There no formal fitness regimen addressed on the official website
The diet requires that you change quite drastically your daily eating habits. Not everybody may be ready to manage this.

Strenghts :

1. Simple Diet Plan

Calorie Shifting is a simple and unique weight loss diet that is learned via the official website with low start-up and no follow-up costs. I purchased/tried several other diet programs but this one really is different from each and every other diet program I know. The diet book contains loads of information about weight loss techniques and reading the book you recognize how easy it is to follow this diet.

2. Healthy Diet Plan
Most of the people I talked to (and including myself) prefer a weight loss method that doesn’t use appetite suppressants or other expensive food supplements. As the Calorie Shifting diet does not exclude any food group, in contrast to other diets like the low carb, low fat, low cal etc., you don’t need to worry about unbalanced alimentation. This is probably the most healthy diet plan you’ll ever find.

3. Highly Effective Diet without Starving Yourself
Even though the claim of losing 9lbs in 11 days is rather an exaggeration, experience shows people using this diet are losing weight very rapidly. It is in particular useful for people with a low metabolism who tried already other diet plans without success (including myself). With some more physical activities, it should be no problem to lose between 7 and 8 lbs in two weeks without too big effort and, most important – without starving yourself.

4. Avoiding the feared Weight Loss Plateau and Rebound Effect
Weight Loss Plateau is a stage when after initial weight loss you are not losing pounds any more, independent on the consumed calories. The Calorie Shifting Diet is a proven method to overcome this Weight Loss Plateau and to avoid the feared rebound of lost weight. Your body will receive different calories each day. One day you will consume 1500 calories and the next could be 1100 calories, derived from different types of food. This way your body does not establish any eating habit, it keeps burning calories and maintains high rate of metabolism even when you are eating less. The result is a faster weight loss, avoiding the feared Weight Loss Plateau and the Rebound effects.

This is the main reason why this diet is that successful. It targets your metabolism rate as the root of most weight problems, instead of simply reducing the calorie intake.

5. Online Diet Generator
When purchasing the diet handbook, you’ll get access to an online diet generator. I found this tool very helpful and used it a lot for defining my daily menus. The diet generator creates 11 days of basic meal plans based on your food preferences.

As a conclusion, for most people the strengths of the Calorie Shifting Diet by far outweigh the drawbacks. This is the reason why this healthy diet is considered as one of the best and most powerful weight loss methods currently available.

Calorie Shifting Plan - Maximized Weight Loss

noreply@blogger.com (O.J. Eppers, PhD) — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 20:30:00 +0000

The Calorie Shifting Plan – or simply called Calorie Shifting – ensures a faster and easier weight loss than any other diet plan I know of. You don’t have to go hungry, it doesn’t require calculations, and you don’t have to exercise rigorously. It works really great, but you have to be cautious not to take it too relaxed. The plan still has to be followed rigorously in order to be successful.

Nevertheless, I received emails from people asking for an even faster weight loss. For them, a weight loss of 9 pounds in 11 days is magnificent, but as they have a real problem with their extra pounds, more would be even better! This motivated me to write this article, including a few tips to take full advantage of the Calorie Shifting Plan.

So here are a few tips to improve weight loss using Calorie Shifting.

1. Set your goal rationally! Most of the people fail to achieve their target weight because they want something that even God will fail to confer. If you want to lose 15 pounds of weight in just 7 days, then I am sorry. No weight loss regimen has been discovered so far that will offer such an immense reduction of weight; unless, of course, you choose to operate out whole of your abdomen. Calorie shifting diet will give you 9 pound reduction in just 11 days.

2. Calorie Shifting works best when the diet is accompanied with an exercise program that avoids the reduction of muscle mass and favors the consumption of fat as energy resource. This exercise program preferably is a cardio exercise performed in the morning and even better before having breakfast. At that moment of the day the carbs stored from your last meal will be almost depleted and your body will be burning your fat instead.

3. Don't skip any of the 4 meals that you have to take daily. Moreover, you must take the tea-time snacks. These meal plans are formulated as per your need and they follow the calorie shifting protocol. Skipping a meal will break the rule and will not help you in successful weight reduction.

4. You must take at least 2.5 to 3 liters of water daily if you are staying in temperate countries. This amount of water will help to flush out the toxins that may produce during the weight loss regimen. Many people are simply not drinking enough water or replacing water by sugar saturated soft drinks. Try to avoid very sweet drinks, even when they made with dietetic sugar substitutes. The best drink still is fresh water!

5. Don't trust others! Prepare all the meals by your own hands. Don't let others to do job for you. Say for example, if the diet generator says 'Chicken sandwich' for a meal, don't go to the 'Subway' for a pack. Cook it in your kitchen. All the nutritious values will remain as it is.

6. Avoid refined sugar whenever possible unless it is on the menu. Sugar substitutes can bring about their own set of problems, but we need to solve the weight loss problem first.

7. You need adequate sleep! No matter whichever weight loss regimen you adopt, if you are not sleeping at least 8 hours a day, they will definitely fail. Sleeplessness will create anxiety and depression. It will slow down the normal metabolic processes. It severely hampers your daily routine and you will not be attracted to the weight loss regimen.

8. A lot depends on how you prepare the food. When the daily menu includes chicken, for instance, it doesn’t define how to prepare it. As far as the calorie shifting theory goes, you are free to have fried chicken. But using your good sense it is clear that by taking in all of that extra grease is not really good for your weight loss aspirations! So take as much of the grease off and bake or broil your chicken. The breast is the best piece for low fat and high protein, but don’t restrict yourself to that unless you want to.

9. Change the menu plan as you feel so! Boredom with similar menus may drag you out from the weight loss journey. So, as soon as you feel weary, grab your computer and use the online diet generator to bring out a whole new bunch of fresh meal plans.

10. Use professional advise if you experience problems with the Calorie Shifting Diet. Most recommended program and inventor of the calorie shifting system is the improved “Fat Loss 4 Idiots”, called "Beyond Calories". Beyond Calories is an online book that shows you how to increase the number of meals you eat to get rid of even more pounds. It works by using H.S. foods to lose the extra weight. H. S. foods are High Satiety foods, that is foods which naturally make you feel full after you eat a small portion of them. In fact, Beyond Calories not only goes into great detail with lots of tips, tricks and secrets, but it gives very detailed examples of results that have been achieved and exactly how to make it work in your particular case. This program comes together with a very helpful on-line diet generator you should use to program your daily or weekly diet.

If strictly using the rules and in combination with cardio exercises, the Calorie Shifting Plan is a faster weight loss method than most other diet plans. Using common sense in the application of the diet and the combination of your menus, and by other tips and tricks explained in the new exciting book titled "Beyond Calories", will maximize your weight loss results.

How to Calorie Shift as Healthy Loss Diet

noreply@blogger.com (O.J. Eppers, PhD) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:58:00 +0000

Calorie shifting has become one of the most popular healthy loss dieting technique for rapid, healthy and sustainable weight loss. The difference to other diets: it is faster, safer, doesn't require hard work and you can eat most of your favorite meals with this plan, including fast food (even though it is not recommended).

Correctly applied, you can lose up to 8 or more pounds in less than 2 weeks without actually doing much! In this Blog I explain how I accomplished a constant weight loss over months without starving myself and avoiding the feared rebound effect.

The basic principle of the healthy loss diet with calorie shifting: you have to eat meals up to 4 or more times a day and no snacks or tiny meals are allowed in between. Each of the meals should have different calorie values, but must be a full meal. It is important to drink a lot of liquids, recommended are up to 10 glasses of water a day (but you can also drink sodas, coffee and juices in addition to this). The water is essential to speed up the weight loss process as it helps to flush out the food and to keep the metabolism high. For me it was very interesting to learn that if you just drink water, disregarding the calorie shifting diet altogether, you are going to lose weight but not as quickly as if you follow the Healthy Loss Diet with calorie shifting.

Eating meals with different calorie values and types of food results in a unique reflex in your body raising the fat burning metabolism and keep it high for as long as you keep doing this calorie shifting diet. Metabolism is the set of chemical reactions that occur in living organisms in order to maintain life, including calorie-burning processes. With an increased metabolism you are even burning fat while you sleep! It has been proven that combining 4 different meals each day, drinking plenty of water and shifting calories is the best way to accelerate your metabolism.

As the Calorie Shifting idea is unusual and goes against many dieting rules and standards, it has been dismissed by many people being a scam. I assure you that this is not true! Calorie shifting works and anyone who tries this diet quickly finds out how shocking the weight loss effect is. It's just something you have to try to believe.

There are many ways to approach with this diet but here I explain you how I succeeded:

As a first step, you need to analyze carefully what type and quantity of food you are consuming on a daily and weekly basis. It is highly recommendable to write everything down in a notebook – and please don’t forget things like soft drinks, coffee with sugar, etc. If you have a well-established eating routine, it should be ok to do this exercise for one week. If you are changing frequently food type and quantities, you should perform this counting for at least one month.

The next step is to calculate the calories you are consuming per day. I am posting a Food and Calorie Finder at the end of this blog that I used at the beginning to calculate my daily calorie uptake. After starting with this easy tool I decided to purchase the Fat Loss 4 Idiots dieting handbook which includes a more sophisticated and practical online Diet Generator.

Once you know the daily calorie consumption over a certain period, you are able to calculate the average daily calorie uptake. The average daily calorie intake varies from person to person and depends on a variety of factors like lifestyle, but for adult women it should be in the range of 1940 and for adult men in the range of 2550 calories.

Once you established your calorie baseline, you can start with daily variations of your calorie uptake. In order to lose weight you need to eat fewer calories per day than your body needs. To lose for instance 1lb a week, you’ll need a negative calorie balance of about 500 calories per day. To lose weight at 2lb a week you’ll need to reduce your calorie intake by approximately 1000 calories a day. These are values for purposes of orientation only and may vary depending on individual metabolism characteristics.

Considering my Body Mass Index and personal weight loss goal, I decided to reduce my daily calorie uptake by 500 calories (accumulating to a reduction of 3500 cal per week) thus achieving an average intake of approximately 1900 cal per day. I choose this "soft" version of calorie shifting as my goal was a steady and smooth weigth loss without starving myself. I distributed my personal daily calorie uptake as followings

Monday: 1300 cal
Tuesday: 2000 cal
Wednesday: 1800 cal
Thursday: 2500 cal (more physical activities at work)
Friday: 1300 cal
Saturday: 2700 cal (my “Pizza family day”)
Sunday: 1700 cal

With this strategy and consuming the appropriate food as I explain below, I was able to loose 6 pounds in the first month, 4 pounds in the second one and again 6 pounds in the third. I found it easy to continue this diet plan (you don't feel hunger all the time as with other diets...) and to further reduce or maintain the achieved weight, whilst avoiding the feared weight loss plateau as well as the rebound effect. Other people applying this diet did even better as they reduced the calorie uptake more drastically and also increased their physical activities considerabley.

My "active weight loss" part of the diet is now several months ago and routinely continuing with the basic rules of this diet I manage to adjust and to maintain my weight inside the green range of the Body Mass Index (a BMI calculator can be found at the bottom of this blog) and I feel much better and healthier now. As a "side effect" I was able to normalize my elevated Cholesterol and Triglycerides levels, principal cause of high blood pressure and occasionally detected elevated blood sugar levels.

Which Type of Food is Required for Calorie Shifting?
The calorie shifting diet is not a food-specific diet like low-carb or low-fat diets, etc. It does not really matter what you eat, as long as you do not exceed your daily calorie limit. But this does not mean that it doesn’t matter what you eat. You imagine that it is not ok to eat fast food with grease saturated French fries every day - the point is that your body gets a balanced food following if possible the Food Pyramide. The Food Pyramide is a government created guideline for "healthy eating" and was developed considering the results of hundreds of scientific studies. Be aware that following these guidelines alone will not produce the desired weight loss effect, at least not in a short term (a discussion can be found in this article).

Here are the basic 8 rules of the Calorie Shifting Diet that I followed:

Stop eating once you are satisfied – do not eat until you are too full;
Eat exactly 4 meals a day, leaving a gap of 2.5 to 3 hours between each meal;
You have a choice to eat any of the 4 meals in any order throughout the day;
Eat only the foods prescribed to you according the calorie shifting meal plan;
Eat each day different food, from meats to fruits and vegetables;
Change the calorie uptake each day randomly in order to avoid that the metabolism gets used to the diet;
Take a 3-day break from the diet on days 12 through 14 of your diet, before you may resume the diet again. This is important to give your body a chance to rest from the rapid weight loss that you will be experiencing;
Stick to the calorie shifting plan – be honest to yourself.

In order to be successful, I recommend to add the following rule:

9. Combine the diet with a Cardio Exercise program (read this article to understand why this is important).

Calorie shifting diets come in many flavors, and I am not going to describe them all. My objective is to give you a tool that you can apply to any diet of your choice, enabling you to create your own calorie shifting diet.

Leading promoter of the Calorie Shifting Diet is “Fatloss4Idiots” who provides unlimited access to a diet generator and a Calorie Shifting handbook.

Following strictly their diet plan, developers of the Fat Loss 4 Idiots diet claim that dieters are able to lose 9lbs in 11days. Well, based on my experience I feel that this is somewhat wishful thinking. In an approach to get more realistic performance data, I talked to 5 friends and relatives using the Fatloss4Idiots diet plan already for more than three months (most of them very consequent) and evaluated their weight loss results. As a modification of the original Fat Loss 4 Idiots diet plan, which does not require specific physical activities, all of the interviewed dieters were exercising more than usual during the application of the diet.

As a conclusion, the average weight loss in about 14 days was only 7.6lbs instead of the claimed 9lbs in 11 days (resulting in an average weight loss of 6lbs in 11 days). Evaluating the results was complicated by the fact that several evaluated persons did not control their weight on a daily basis.

Although we believe that the 9lbs is only an estimation, we still think that it is not truthful and honest in providing such an excessive claim. Overall, the average result of our "test persons" is still quite impressive and without exception all of them expressed their satisfaction with the performance of the diet. Several of them also mentioned the quality of the customer service of the Fat Loss 4 Idiots team.

The handbook provides a comprehensive information on what kinds of food that will encourage fat burning, what food to avoid during dieting etc. etc. It is definitely one of the better weight loss ebooks I have read during the past years. Overall, it is professionally written with very comprehensive explanations. For me the most interesting part: when you purchase the Calorie Shifting Handbook you'll get an Online Diet Generator which I found very useful for putting together daily diet plans. I bought the handbook together with the online diet generator for $78 which definitely was worth the investment. If you visit now there homepage, you'll get the same package for only $39 (as I understand, this is a limited time offer).

And: This is a one-time investment as there are no follow-up costs (as with other diet plans where you need to purchase dietary supplements, etc.)!

Visit the Calorie Shifting Diet Homepage

Healthy Loss Diet - Friendly Sites

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Good Trans Fats vs. Bad Trans Fats

noreply@blogger.com (O.J. Eppers, PhD) — Fri, 29 May 2009 00:15:00 +0000

Good Trans Fats vs. Bad Trans Fats
by Mike Geary, Certified Nutrition Specialist, Certified Personal Trainer

I'm going to talk about something today that most of you have probably never heard... that there is a distinction between good trans fats and bad trans fats. There is some evidence that the good trans fats can help you with fat loss, muscle building, and even cancer prevention, while the bad trans fats have been shown to cause heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and the general "blubbering" of your body.

Artificial trans fats are one of the most prevalent poisons in our food supply; but most don't know that healthy natural trans fats DO exist.

I'm sure most of you have heard all of the ruckus in the news over the last few years about just how bad man-made trans fats are for your health. If you've been a reader of my newsletter and my Truth about Six Pack Abs e-book program, then you definitely know my opinion that these substances are some of the most evil food additives of all and are found in the vast majority of all processed foods and fast foods on the market today.

In my opinion, man-made trans fats are right up there with smoking in terms of their degree of danger to your health. After all, they are one of THE MAIN factors for the explosion of heart disease since approximately the 1950's.

With all of the talk about trans fats in the news these days, I wanted to clarify some things, particularly regarding bad trans fats vs. good trans fats. If you've never heard of good trans fats before, let me explain in a bit.

The Bad Trans Fats
First, the bad trans fats I'm referring to are the man-made kind. These are represented by any artificially hydrogenated oils. The main culprits are margarine, shortening, and partially hydrogenated oils that are in most processed foods, junk foods, and deep fried foods.

These hydrogenated oils are highly processed using harsh chemical solvents like hexane (a component of gasoline), high heat, pressure, have a metal catalyst added, and are then deodorized and bleached. A small % of the solvent is allowed to remain in the finished oil. This has now become more of an industrial oil rather than a food oil, but somehow the FDA still allows the food manufacturers to put this crap in our food at huge quantities, even with the well documented health dangers.

These hydrogenated oils cause inflammation inside of your body, which signals the deposition of cholesterol as a healing agent on artery walls. Hence, hydrogenated oil = inflammation = clogged arteries. You can see why heart disease has exploded since this crap has been loaded into our food supply over the last 5 to 6 decades.

As time goes on, and science continues to unveil how deadly these oils really are, I feel that eventually they will be illegal and banned from use. The labeling laws were just the first step. In fact, certain countries around the world have already banned the use of hydrogenated oils in food manufacturing or at least set dates to phase them out for good.

However, keep in mind that as companies are starting to phase out the use of hydrogenated oils in processed foods, they are replacing them, in most instances, with highly refined polyunsaturated oils such as soybean oil, cottonseed oil, corn oil, etc, etc. These are still heavily processed oils using high heat, solvents, deodorizers, and bleaching agents. Even refined oils are known to produce inflammation in your body...a far cry from natural sources of healthy fats.

Don't be fooled by the new onslaught of foods claiming "trans fat free"... if they use heavily refined oils (even if they're non-hydrogenated), it's still pure evil for your body!

The Good Trans Fats
Ok, after having trash talked the man-made trans fats, let me clearly state that there is such a thing as healthy natural trans fats. Natural trans fats are created in the stomachs of ruminant animals such as cattle, sheep, goats, etc. and make their way into the fat stores of the animals.
Therefore, the milk fat and the fat within the meat of these animals can provide natural healthy trans fats (best in grass-fed organic versions only).

Natural trans fats in your diet have been thought to have some potential benefit to aid in both muscle building and fat loss efforts. However, keep in mind that the quantity of healthy trans fats in the meat and dairy of ruminant animals is greatly reduced by mass-production methods of farming and their grain and soy heavy diets. Meat and dairy from grass-fed, free-range animals always have much higher quantities of these beneficial fats.

One such natural trans fat that you may have heard of is called conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) and has been marketed by many weight loss companies. Keep in mind that these man-made CLA pills you see in the stores may not be the best way to get CLA in your diet. They are artificially made from plant oils, instead of the natural process that happens in ruminant animals. Once again, man-made just doesn't compare to the benefits of natural sources.

Now that all of your labels should be listing grams of trans fat, keep in mind that if a quantity of trans fat is listed on a meat or dairy product, it is most likely the natural good trans fats that we've discussed here.

Otherwise, if the quantity of trans fat is listed on any processed foods, it is most likely the dangerous unhealthy crap from artificially hydrogenated oils, so stay away!

One more important note about food labels and trans fat listings... keep in mind that food manufacturers are allowed to label a food "trans fat free" if 1 serving size contains less than 0.5 grams of trans fat. So you may see some products with hydrogenated oils as one of their main ingredients, but if they make the serving size small enough so that it contains less than 0.5 grams of trans fat per serving, they can label it as trans fat free... now that's BS! just another example of our broken system!

Glycemic Index Myths

noreply@blogger.com (O.J. Eppers, PhD) — Thu, 28 May 2009 23:49:00 +0000

Potatoes, Glycemic Index, and "White Foods" - Friend or Foe for a Lean-Body?

by Mike Geary, Certified Nutrition Specialist, Certified Personal Trainer and founder of the Get Rid of Belly Fat without Abdominal Exercises (Truth about ABS) Homepage

I'd like to start a little discussion today about carbohydrates... and in particular, "white foods" as well as potatoes. One reason I wanted to mention this is because so many health and fitness professionals trash talk potatoes about being a bad carbohydrate choice because of the high glycemic index. Some even say such ridiculous things as "avoid any and all white carbohydrates".

Ok, now while I certainly agree that white bread and refined white sugar are two of the worst things we can be feeding our bodies, I definately don't agree with avoiding any and all "white carbohydrates". Now I know all of the buzz lately has been about colorful foods and the protective antioxidants that they contain. They tell you to focus on colors and stay away from white.

It's true that colorful foods are great, but it is a big mistake to specifically avoid white foods! There are plenty of white foods that have specific nutrients that are hard to find elsewhere. Let's look at a few examples...

Onions & Garlic

What about onions and garlic? They are both white and they are chock full of protective phytonutrients, vitamins, and trace minerals that aren't easy to find elsewhere in a normal diet... such nutrients as allicin, quercetin (an important flavonoid), chromium, and other unique anti-inflammatory nutrients.

Cauliflower

Another example of something white that is great for you is cauliflower. Cauliflower is loaded with vitamin C, fiber, minerals, and special compounds such as glucosinolates and thiocyanates, which are specifically abundant in cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage. And a little-known fact is that some of the compounds in cruciferous vegetables help to combat other estrogenic compounds in our food supply and environment and can help prevent excess belly fat. So eat up on that cauliflower!

Mushrooms

Not many people realize this, but surprisingly, even white mushrooms have high levels of unique nutrients and antioxidants. White mushrooms are high in a couple types of antioxidants called polyphenols and ergothioneine.

Potatoes

Now that also leads us to another example - white potatoes (which by the way, can also be found in red, yellow, purple varieties, etc). Many health professionals claim that potatoes are a bad carbohydrate because they are thought to have a high glycemic index. First of all, if you've read my Truth about Six Pack Abs book, then you understand that glycemic index is not necessarily the most important factor in choosing your carbohydrates.

While a generalization can be made that most low glycemic index carbohydrate choices will help you lose body fat easier than high glycemic index choices, it is not all that it's cracked up to be. There are many other factors that determine how your body will react-to and process the carbohydrates you ingest, such as glycemic load and also how you combine the high GI food with other foods.

For example, using glycemic load as an example... it is known that watermelon has a high glycemic index. However, the glycemic load of a normal serving of watermelon is just way too low for your body to start packing on body fat just because you ate a high glycemic index fruit. You would have to eat such an enormous quantity of watermelon just to get enough grams of carbohydrates to have any negative glycemic effect, that it is just non-sensical.

Not to mention that watermelon is also a great source of vitamins, minerals, and lycopene. There's just no reason to avoid it simply because it has a high GI. My point is... candy bars, cupcakes, and donuts make you fat... NOT watermelons, carrots or potatoes.

Also, as i mentioned, food combinations are important in how your body processes the carbohydrates and the associated blood sugar and insulin response you receive. For example, if you mix a high glycemic index carbohydrate with an extra source of fiber, healthy fats, or even certain proteins, many times the blood sugar and glycemic response will be slowed down considerably by the way you combined the food. Again, I talk in detail about this entire topic in my Truth about Six Pack Abs book

Alright, so back to my point that white potatoes are actually a healthy carbohydrate as long as you eat them in the right form... with the entire skin, and please don't ruin them by deep frying them into french fries either! French fries are one of the most evil things ever invented for your health, but only because we ruin them by soaking them in a scorching bath of trans fats in the deep fryer from the hydrogenated oils that are typically used.

Keep in mind that potatoes contain so many vitamins and minerals that the list is way too long to even try. Also, as long as you eat the skins, you get a decent shot of fiber too.

On the topic of potatoes not being so bad after all, I don't remember where I saw this referenced, but I recently saw a particular study that had participants eat something like 7-9 whole potatoes per day for several weeks.

At the conclusion of the study, the potato eaters had actually consistently lost weight! I'd venture a guess that the reason the people lost weight is that they were probably so full from eating all of those damn potatoes, that they actually consumed less calories than normal! An average sized potato only has about 100-120 calories, and I can surely imagine you'd be full constantly from eating 7-9 potatoes each day.

Now I would never recommend going to those extremes, but my point is that an occasional potato is not going to hurt your efforts to get lean, especially if you combine it with some other fibrous vegetables and maybe a healthy fat and some protein. On that note, I have one of my favorite recipes for you, using potatoes.

Geary's Lean-Body Potato Side Dish

Desired quantity of baby potatoes (I like to use this mixture I found recently at a health food store... it is a mixture of white, red, yellow, and purple baby potatoes)
1 red pepper
1 green pepper
1 yellow pepper
1 or 2 onions
a couple cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 or 2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
a little salt and pepper to taste (I like using a sea salt instead of normal commercial salt)

Cut the baby potatoes into slightly smaller pieces and place in a steamer until soft all the way through. Slice up the peppers and onions into strips and add with the chopped garlic into a pan with the olive oil. Cook the peppers, onions, and garlic until tender, and then add the steamed baby potatoes. Stir it all together and serve.

This is a delicious and healthy side dish that goes great with chicken or red meat.

I hope you've enjoyed this little topic today about potatoes, healthy carbohydrates, glycemic index, and my killer potato recipe idea!

Back to Get Rid of Belly Fat without Abdominal Exercises home page

16 Simple (and Sexy) Ways to Lose 50 Pounds a Year

noreply@blogger.com (O.J. Eppers, PhD) — Thu, 28 May 2009 23:04:00 +0000

For many people, losing weight seems like an impossible task. "I don't have the willpower!" they say.

But it doesn't have to be that hard as this example from Leo Babuata shows who lost 50 pounds in a year following these 16 simple rules.

The basic rule of weight loss is that you take in fewer calories than you burn -- and if you want to turn a positive calorie balance into the calorie deficit you need to lose weight, just make some smart choices in what you eat and drink, and how you burn calories.

The second rule of weight loss is that if you take in 3,500 fewer calories than you burn, you'll (generally) lose a pound of fat. So if you can have a calorie deficit of 500 calories a day, you'll burn a pound of fat a week (7 times 500 is 3,500), which is about 50 pounds a year.

If you have been maintaining the same weight for a little while, you are taking in the same amount of calories as you're burning. So you just need to choose a few of the options below to lose 50 pounds in a year. However, if you've been gaining weight, you'll need to choose a few more of the options below to go into calorie deficit.

Remember that 50 pounds a year is only about 4 pounds a month, so you won't notice a huge drop in the first month. Be patient, stick with it, and you'll start to see weight loss in the following months.

Also remember that with any of the changes below, it's hardest for the first few days. After that, you get used to it, and it gets easier.

Drink water. If you typically drink lots of juice or soda or alcohol, replacing these calorie-filled drinks with water will cut a few hundred calories a day.
Exercise for 15-20 minutes. If you have a weight problem, chances are you also have a problem with regular exercise. That's probably because you tried to do too much. Just commit to 15 minutes a day. That's not hard at all. And don't do anything intense, especially for the first month. Take it easy -- do a few crunches, a few push ups, jog in place for a few minutes. If you do this every day, you'll burn 100-150 calories, depending on your size and metabolism.
Replace a fatty snack with veggies. Potato chips, fries, anything that's greasy -- those are laden with calories. Fat is the most calorie-filled food type there is. If you eat a snack like this every day, replace it with cut-up carrots, broccoli, celery, or a salad (with low-fat dressing, not anything fatty).
Have sex daily. One of the best exercises there is. Of course, you'll need to do it beyond your usual three minutes. If you can get 15 minutes of sex in a day, you can burn 150 calories. You also might need to find a willing partner. The exercise in the item above might help with that.
Replace a sugary snack with fruits. If you eat Twinkies, Ding Dongs, donuts, candy bars, a carton of ice cream ... you know you need to cut those out. Try fruit instead. Berries are my favorite.
Eat a healthy breakfast. If you eat eggs and bacon, or something covered in syrup, or anything else sweet or fatty, replace it with something healthier. Steel-cut oatmeal with blueberries, ground flaxseed and almonds is a great choice that is delicious. Also try whole-grain cereal with low-fat milk or soy milk.
Walk, and use the stairs. Park 5-7 minutes away from work, which adds up to about 10-15 minutes of walking a day, to and from work (in addition to the exercise mentioned above). Use the stairs instead of the elevator. That's about 100 calories total.
Use non-fat milk in your latte. If you use half-and-half in your latte, using non-fat milk will save you about 250 calories.
Skip butter. If you put butter on your toast, your roll, and your baked potato, you can save 200-300 calories a day if you skip the butter.
Plan snacks, don't snack randomly. Munching on little things here and there, throughout the day, can add up to hundreds of calories. Instead, plan on a midmorning and mid afternoon snack, and make at least one of them healthy. Don't snack in between snacks.
Go with red pasta sauce, not white. Marinara sauce instead of Alfredo will save you a couple hundred calories. Skip the meat too.
Eat baked chicken, not fried. Fried chicken contains a lot of fat absorbed from frying oil, as well as the fatty skin. Skip the skin, and bake the chicken. Herb it up good, with some pepper, and it tastes great.
Skip seconds, and eat slower. If you go back for an extra piece of meat and buttered bread, you're adding another few hundred calories. Instead, eat slowly, and you'll get full faster. Also, even if feel hungry after the first helping, wait for 20 minutes. Often, the feeling of hunger will go away.
Air-pop popcorn. Movie popcorn is full of oil and butter. Tons of fat. Instead, air-pop the popcorn. You can put salt on it, but not butter.
Go for pretzels, not peanuts. Nuts contain tons of calories. Instead, snack on mini-pretzels (not the soft kind), which can satisfy the salt craving without all of the fat.
Skip the muffin. Muffins are just cake, if you buy them at a coffee shop, donut shop, or grocery store. You can make your own muffins that don't contain all that fat and sugar, but instead, try eating the healthy breakfasts mentioned above.

--snip---
My tip: combine these steps with the calorie shifting method (explained in detail at this blog) and you'll get a very powerful and sustainable weight loss method.
--snip----

Article Source: http://www.dumblittleman.com/2007/08/easy-and-sexy-ways-to-lose-50-pounds.html

10 Reasons to Overeat

noreply@blogger.com (O.J. Eppers, PhD) — Thu, 28 May 2009 22:04:00 +0000

1. Instant gratification saves time

2. Aren't we supposed to end world hunger?

3. Why cut pork when the government won't?

4. Grow the economy and yourself.

5. The U.S.A. can still be No. 1 in something!

6. Excess is a normal American trait.

7. It is good exercise for your jaw.

8. You won't have to fight temptation.

9. Overeaters get a lot of attention.

10. It sure does taste good.

These hilarious quips come from The Art of Overeating - a hilarious book from psychologist Leslie Landis. The book takes reverse psychology to a new level. Instead of berating us to eat less we get advice like:

Be a good guest and offer to do the dishes. Alone. This way, you can lick each plate clean. If anyone catches you, say you are trying to be eco-conscious and save water.

A good laugh as we enter the season of gluttony...

Available for $9.95 from Amazon.com.

Why have Middle Aged Women Problems to Control their Weight?

noreply@blogger.com (O.J. Eppers, PhD) — Thu, 28 May 2009 20:50:00 +0000

by Oswald J. Eppers

Middle-Aged Women and overweight is a common problem in our society. Slower metabolisms and hormonal imbalances are frequently the reason for the difficulties in reducing overweight. The most successful strategy for weight control is a reduction of calorie intake combined with physical activities.

If you are a middle-aged woman between your 40s and 60s, you probably experienced that it’s not easy to keep your weight stable or worse to get rid of some extra pounds. The main reason for this: you don’t have the same metabolism any more you had as a 20 year old girl, when it was easy keeping your ideal weight just by skipping a few meals.

You've probably heard people blame their weigh gain on a slow metabolism and publicity of different diet plans claiming a faster weight loss by accelerating metabolism.

Well, there is no doubt that metabolism is linked to weight, but this relation is not that straightforward you may expect. Metabolism is the process by which your body converts what you eat and drink into energy and weight gain is most commonly the result of eating more calories than you burn. As a consequence, to lose weight you can consume fewer calories in order to create an energy deficit, increase physical activity to burn more calories, or both.

There are several hormonal disorders that can affect your metabolism, for instance as result of an underactive thyroid gland (hypothyroidism) or an exposure to high levels of the hormone cortisol for a long time, resulting in the so-called Cushing's syndrome. The most common cause of Cushing's syndrome, sometimes called hypercortisolism, is the use of oral corticosteroid medication. The condition can also occur when your body makes too much cortisol. In particular when reaching menopausal period, hormonal imbalances are frequently causing overweight in middle-aged women and the mentioned difficulties when trying to lose this overweight again.

If you are experiencing a constant weight gain or also weight loss, it is important to rule out physiological disorders like the mentioned hormonal disorders, consulting your doctor.

Why is metabolism changing in middle-aged women? As you get older and many times already starting at an age of 35 years approximately, the amount of muscle tends to decrease and fat accounts for more of your weight, slowing down calorie burning. The carbohydrate metabolism undergoes changes as well. Thus, one can observe in many cases a decrease of glucose tolerance caused by a slow down of their decomposition.

Now you understand why you really don’t have too much control over the speed of your metabolism. What you do can control is the quantity of calories you consume and burn through your level of physical activity. And there is one additional factor that has been proven in many studies: Men usually have less body fat and more muscle than do women of the same age and weight (thus burning more calories). As a consequence, a middle-aged woman needs to control even more than their even-aged partner from the opposite sex their calorie intake and level of physical activity to burn excess calories. As a rule of thumb: the more active you are, the more calories you burn. In fact, some people who are said to have a fast metabolism are probably just more active — and maybe more indefatigable — than are others.

Visit my blog “Healthy Weight Loss Diet” to discover a foolproof guaranteed way to lose weight naturally and with long lasting effects.

Is Stevia Sweetener Healthier than Aspartame?

noreply@blogger.com (O.J. Eppers, PhD) — Thu, 28 May 2009 20:04:00 +0000

By Oswald J. Eppers

The shrub Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni, commonly known as Stevia, was first mentioned by the Spanish physician and botanist Pedro Jaime Esteve (1500-1556) who found it in the north-east of the territory now called Paraguay.

Guarani Indians of this area as in southern Brazil are using "ka'a he'ê" ("sweet leaf"), as it is called in Guaraní, since hundreds of years as a sweetener in yerba mate, and several tribes reported the use of this plant in the control of fertility of women, applying concentrated Stevia infusions for prolonged periods.

It is precisely this contraceptive property that is discussed since the 70s until today in the scientific literature. The reason is simple: Who wants to consume a sweetener that suddenly makes you barren?

Stevia leaf contains a complex mixture of glycosides (compounds where one or more sugar molecules are bound to a non-carbohydrate moiety). These compounds give the leaves an intensely sweet taste, about 30-45 times sweeter than sucrose, the sweet stuff of refined sugar. To date, ten different chemical compounds (chemically, all steviol glycosides) were isolated which are responsible for the sweet taste of the plant: stevioside, rebaudioside A, B, C, D, E and F, dulcoside A, rubusoside and steviolbioside. The highest concentration of the sweetening effect comes from Stevioside and rebaudioside A, responsible for the extract of Stevia being 250-300 times sweeter than sucrose with almost cero calories (about 0.2 calories per gram).

Both sweet steviol glycosides are chemically diterpenic glycosides, substances composed of two molecules of different types of sugar and a molecule called steviol. Steviol serves as "backbone" of the chemical structure and is structurally similar to the plant hormones gibberellin and kaurene. Several studies show that these glycosides are – at least partially - metabolized in the body releasing the sugar molecules and steviol.

Is It Safe to Use Stevia instead of sugar?

It is precisely this compound steviol that for many years called attention to toxicologists. In studies with bacteria and in cell-cultures it was demonstrated that this compound is genotoxic (i.e. is capable of changing the genetic information). However, more recent studies with mice, rats and hamsters, indicated that it requires relatively high concentrations of steviol to cause any considerable damage to the DNA, the molecule of life containing all our genetic information.

Browsing toxicological databases, there are hundreds of publications discussing potential adverse health effects of stevia extract, but the results are not very consistent. In particular, the effects on fertility and the potential carcinogenicity of Steviosides were subject of controversy in the scientific world. It was a study published in 1968 by Professor Joseph Kuc Purdue University in Indiana, USA, which initiated a controversial discussion about stevia and fertility. Prof. Kuc detected a clear contraceptive effect on female rats that were administered high doses of stevia. The fertility rates of the rats dropped by up to 79 percent.

While the outcome of this study was not confirmed by other scientific groups, a study published in 1999 by Prof. Melis of the University of São Paulo also reported a reduction of sperm quantity in male rats after applying high doses of Stevia glycosides. Concerns of carcinogenicity or mutagenicity were not confirmed in the vast majority of the toxicological studies.

Although adverse health effects of Stevia never really have been tested in humans directly, the authorities in the United States, Canada and the European Union considered Stevia extracts not to be safe in the application as a tabletop sweetener due to the lack of long-term toxicological studies. In contrast, authorities in other countries like Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and Mexico have a different point of view and accepted the use of extracts of Stevia as a natural sweetener. In several other countries, in particular in Latin American and Asia, Stevia and its extracts are available with and unverified regulatory status. In Japan, Stevia extracts are already commercially available since 1971 as tabletop sweetener and there are no reports about health problems associated with this product.

In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration on (FDA) approved the use of Stevia extracts as "nutritional supplement" but not as tabletop sweetener. Only the glycoside Rebaudioside A in its pure form is considered as "Generally Recognized Safe Substance" (GRAS), since December 2008. In contrast, Stevioside, the other main compound of Stevia extracts, was not recognized as GRAS by the FDA.

Both, in Canada and the European Union (EU), the use of Stevia as a tabletop sweetener was prohibited based on the fact that there was insufficient evidence to prove its safety. But now this situation likely is going to change. In April 2010, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) performed a new evaluation of the available toxicological information. As a result of this review, Stevioside and Stevia extracts in general are now considered safe when used as a tabletop sweetener - at least under certain conditions.

EFSA established an acceptable daily intake (ADI) of 4 mg per kilogram of body weight of steviosides, expressed as Steviol equivalents, the same ADI recommended by the World Health Organization according to a WHO document published in 2008. In common words, an adult weighing 70 kg can consume each day 700 mg of Stevia extract without running any health risk. As Stevia extract is about 250 times sweeter than table sugar, an adult can replace daily 175 grams of refined sugar with Stevia extract. This is equivalent to about 10-13 tablespoons or about 50 teaspoons of sugar. As children have a lower body weight, the dose should be reduced in proportion to their weight.

It is interesting to compare these data with Aspartame, the globally most used synthetic tabletop sweetener. Food safety authorities worldwide have set acceptable daily intake (ADI) values for aspartame at 40 mg/kg of body weight based on a 1980 Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives recommendation (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). This means that – strictly based on toxicological available information – Stevia extract is considered about 4 times more "toxic" than Aspartame.

Even though Stevia sweetener is a product isolated from a plant and not product of a classical chemical process, being critical is never misplaced, because "natural" does not necessarily mean risk free. As a conclusion, Stevia extracts can be considered safe if not consumed in large quantities. The common idea that this "natural" product is safer than other commercially available tabletop sweetener is not supported by the available toxicological information.

Literature:
1. European Food Safety Authority, 2010. Scientific Opinion on the safety of steviol glycosides for the proposed uses as a food additive. EFSA Journal 2010;8(4):1537.

2. JECFA (Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives), 2009. Safety evaluation of certain food additives. Prepared by the 69th meeting of the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives. WHO Food Additives Series, No. 66, 183-220.

3. Charles River Laboratoires, 2008. Orla (stomach tube) developmental toxicity study of CPO 2196 in rabbits. Study No EHE00002. Charles river Laboratories, Horsham, PA.

4. Curry L, Roberts A and Brown N, 2008. Rebaudioside A: Two-generation reproductive toxicity study in rats. Food and Chemical Toxicology, 46 (7), S21-S30.

5. Barriocanal LA, Palacios M, Benitez G, Benitez S, Jimenez JT, Jimenez N, Rojas V., 2008.

Apparent lack of pharmacological effect of steviol glycosides used as sweeteners in humans. A pilot study of repeated exposures in some normotensive and hypotensive individuals and in Type 1 and Type 2 diabetics. Regul Toxicol Pharmacol. 2008 Jun;51(1):37-41. Epub 2008 Mar

6. FDA (Food and Drug Administration), 2008. Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN)/Office of Food Additive Safety, December 17, 2008. Agency Response Letter GRAS Notice No. GRN 000253.

7. JECFA (Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives), 2008. Compendium of Food Additive Specifications. Monograph 5. Steviol glycosides. Available online at:

http://www.fao.org/ag/agn/jecfa-additives/details.html?id=898

8. Chan P, Tomlinson B, Chen YJ, Liu JC, Hsieh MH, Cheng JT, 2000. A double-blind placebocontrolled study of the effectiveness and tolerability of oral stevioside in human hypertension. Br. J. Clin Pharmacol. 2000 Sep;50(3):215-20.

9. Evaluation of Certain Food Additives. WHO Food Additives Series 42:119-143, Geneva,1999.

10. Magnuson BA, Burdock GA, Doull J, Kroes RM, Marsh GM, Pariza MW, Spencer PS, Waddell WJ, Walker R, Williams GM, 2007. Aspartame: a safety evaluation based on current use levels, regulations, and toxicological and epidemiological studies. Crit Rev Toxicol. 2007; 37(8):629-727 [Critical reviews in toxicology].

Source of photo and stevioside structure: wikipedia.org

Losing Weight with Self Hypnosis

noreply@blogger.com (O.J. Eppers, PhD) — Thu, 28 May 2009 19:43:00 +0000

We are what we think. This is a famous saying. This is the essence behind the concept of weight loss through the software advertised in the website store.unexplainable.net. This website is a repository of different kinds of software that are used to enhance the brain power. Though there are pills for any kind of ailment, they do not provide permanent relief. However this software gives permanent relief from any kind of ailment, at reasonable prices and without any side effects.

We are what we think. This is a famous saying. This is the essence behind the concept of weight loss through the software advertised in the website www.store.unexplainable.net. This website is a repository of different kinds of software that are used to enhance the brain power. Though there are pills for any kind of ailment, they do not provide permanent relief. However this software gives permanent relief from any kind of ailment, at reasonable prices and without any side effects.

Weight loss is the happening word today. Almost everybody thinks that they are overweight and take desperate efforts to slim down. They maintain very strict diet and mostly, they almost eat nothing at all, resulting to under nourishment. Having a healthy body is very important for one’s own confidence levels. Many dieticians and doctors around the world recommend specific foods and recommend tablets to bring about weight loss. The fact is that, these do bring about weight loss without doubt, but they are not long standing. After a few weeks or months, the weight tends to appear on one’s body. This is the biggest disadvantage of all the medicines and the diet programs that are available in the market today.

However the software available in this website is only about positive recordings. It has a lot of positive recordings that emphasize that nobody is overweight. The term weight itself is a negative term. The priority is to have a healthy body. One should stop worrying that he is overweight, or does not have the correct physique for his age. These negative energies aggravate weight gain. No matter how strict the food or diet is, no matter how many tablets one takes, weight loss never happens because of the negative energies in the mind.

The brain is the controller of the human body. When there are so many negative forces in the brain, how can one expect to lose weight? Thoughts are more effective than tablets. Everybody should agree to this. One can download this software at a reasonable price and listen to the positive recordings that clear the myth of weight loss. This gives an insight into what weight means and how one should control it. It may appear pschycological to few people, however the fact is that, after listening to these recordings, one is bound to feel good about his physical appearance. The world always weighs us on our confidence levels.

This program is sure to give enough confidence levels to project a positive picture to the world. It is not the weight, but the attitude that matters. As long as one has a healthy body, one should not bother about his weight. Continuously listening to these recordings sends positive signals to the brain and automatically controls the food that we intake. Weight loss happens naturally without any external medication. This is the best way to lose weight. In addition to that, one begins to feel so good and confident about oneself. This satisfaction is never achieved even at times of strict diet control or weight loss medications.

How to start? We recommend this instantly downloadable MP3 from Self-Hypnosis specialist Richard McKenzie. Give it a try and you will be surprised by the results!

Fat Loss 4 Idiots Reviews

noreply@blogger.com (O.J. Eppers, PhD) — Thu, 28 May 2009 19:34:00 +0000

There are many Fat Loss 4 Idiots Reviews around the web. I hope this short article will dispel many of the myths regarding this diet and will give a clear view of what it actually is.

So what is the Fat Loss 4 Idiots diet, really?

Fat Loss 4 Idiots is a nutrition based diet which is founded on the calorie shifting weight loss method. What I mean by it being a nutrition based diet is that involves very little exercise and the weight loss is in fact triggered by sound nutrition alone. This has a a good side and a not so good one: the not so good side to this kind of diet is that you don't develop any muscles or stamina, the good side is that it's very easy to do and requires almost no effort on your part. Of course, nothing stops you from exercising while on this diet, it's just not part of the diet itself.

The Calorie Shifting weight loss method is something which the Fat Loss 4 Idiots team invented. No Fat Loss 4 Idiots Reviews can be complete without a little explanation about it. So here goes: Calorie Shifting is a nutritional way to induce a continued high metabolic rate while a person is on a diet. You see, what usually happens when a person goes on a diet is that his/her metabolism gradually slows so that continued weight loss is very hard to accomplish. By shifting your calories, you basically solve this problem, since you can get your metabolism to disregard the fact that you're dieting. This makes it easier to lose weight fast for a long time and also helps to maintain this weight loss after the diet is over.

Not everyone does as well on the Fat Loss 4 Idiots diet. Some people lose 6 lbs in the first 10 days, others even make 8 or more. There are also some people who don't succeed with it. I want you to know, though, that for many, the diet has proved successful. I believe that for most people, it's a great way to shed some pounds fast.

Article Source: ezinearticles.com

Do You Have a Healthy Body Fat Percentage?

noreply@blogger.com (O.J. Eppers, PhD) — Thu, 28 May 2009 19:31:00 +0000

The level of body fat you have is a better indication of your health (or lack of) as compared to your body weight. Body fat is measured by a standard known as the body mass index or BMI. Calculation of BMI involves two measurements namely your body weight and height and doesn't tell your BFP. It is simply a correlation between your height and weight. If you started a fitness program and burned belly fat yet added muscle to your frame, your BMI could go up but your BFP would go down.

In order to understand what’s really going on with your body, you should use both indices, BMI AND BFP. BFP has become a hot topic in the recent years as a way of determining how lean a person was. I constantly heard that people who were very vascular and muscular had single digit percentages. Of course, I wanted that low percentage as well!

Whereas the calculation of the BMI is rather simple (check for instance the article “How do I know that I am Overweight?”), BFP is not that easy to determine. There are in fact various methods to figure out how to calculate body fat percentage (for instance using a caliper) but it's best to stick with one method if you're trying to get the most consistent numbers.

For a good estimation you can use the Body Fat Calculator published by the US Army Corp. To get your personal BFP just measure your height, neck, hips and waist (just above the navel), introduce the results in the calculator and press "calculate".

What are typical BFP values?

Well, it’s important to understand that women and men's percentages vary in terms of healthy levels.

Here are typical percentages for BFP for women and men (as recommended by the American Council on Exercise):

Description    Women             Men

Athletes           14–20%            6-13%

Fitness             21–24%            14–17%

Average          25–31%             18–25%

Obese            32%+                25%+

Unique Exercise to Flatten your Stomach while Driving

noreply@blogger.com (O.J. Eppers, PhD) — Thu, 28 May 2009 17:57:00 +0000

Here's a unique exercise to help flatten your stomach while driving

by Mike Geary, Certified Nutrition Specialist, Certified Personal Trainer

If you're already a reader of my Truth about Six Pack Abs manual, then you may already know this unique trick... it's basically a simple exercise that you can do anytime, anywhere to help get a flat stomach over time.

Now I will say that this exercise does NOT increase fat burning, but it CAN help to flatten your stomach by strengthening your deeper transversus abdominis muscles and hence "pulling in" a lazy stomach (aka beer belly or "pooch belly").

It involves doing an exercise called "ab vacuums".

I find it a good time to get in the habit of doing daily ab vacuums while driving on your daily commute or another time that would get you in the habit of doing them regularly.

(please make sure this doesn't distract you from driving safely... I find that it doesn't distract me at all...it's certainly much safer than driving while on the cell phone!)

Of course, ab vacuums can be done anywhere and don't have to be just for driving, but I've found that it helps me to remember to do them if I do them at a specific time when driving regularly.... this could be while driving home from the gym every time, or perhaps during your daily commute to work.

Ab vacuums are simple:

You can do ab vacuums pretty much anywhere, at any time.

You can do them standing, seated (such as in a car), kneeling in a four-point position, or even lying flat on the floor.

The movement is as simple as pulling your belly button in as far as you can by imagining you're trying to touch your belly button to your spine and holding for 10-20 seconds at a time.

Start by inhaling deeply. Then, as you exhale, start pulling the belly button in towards the spine and hold it there for 10-20 seconds while just taking short breaths. Repeat for several holds.

Get in the habit of doing this at least 4-5 days per week while driving somewhere and you may find that this helps to flatten your stomach more by strengthening the transversus abdominis muscle (the deep abdominal muscles beneath the rectus abdominis) if you previously had a "lazy belly".

Like I said, this exercise doesn't increase fat burning... it only helps to flatten a round stomach that has lazy deep ab muscles.

If you want a true "six pack abs" appearance, you obviously still need to burn off the body fat that covers your abs... and that calls for a fully encompassing workout program (not just ab exercises), a strategic nutrition program, and the right mindset for success.

This idea of "ab vacuums" while driving is just one of the dozens of tips and tricks found inside my Truth about Six Pack Abs manual. If you don't already have a copy, see what other readers are saying about Truth about Abs here

Or if you have questions whether the Truth about Abs program is right for you, go here

If you liked today's idea in this newsletter, feel free to email this link (or post this link to twitter or facebook) to any friends or family that may want to try these "ab vacuums" to get a flatter stomach.

Don't be lazy... be lean.

Mike Geary

Certified Nutrition Specialist, Certified Personal Trainer, Founder - TruthAboutAbs.com & BusyManFitness.com

noreply@blogger.com (O.J. Eppers, PhD) — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:39:00 +0000

42 Nutrition Questions and Answers

In this publication, you'll find answers to 42 questions about nutrition facts. I am going to complement this information frequently considering new scientific findings. Comments and/or recommendations are highly appreciated.

Table of Contents

The Basics Of Nutrition
What is nutrition?
Good nutrition based on certain foods?
Nutrients and food stuffs
Breaking Years Of Bad Habits
Changing Bad Eating Habits
Overweight families.
Emotions and Lifestyle

Diet and Nutrition
So what is a calorie (cal) ?
What is a carbohydrate ?
What are fat and protein ?
Can you eat more and lose weight by combining foods ?
Are there any specific foods that burn fat ?
Should we be counting calories, carbohydrates or fat ?
Is it true that you should only drink red wine ?
What is a well balanced diet and do I get one ?
Why do we crave certain foods ?
Do we become hungry because our stomach’s are empty?
What are functional foods ?
Does functional food convert differently into energy ?
Are certain nutrients good for your health ?
What are basic nutrients ?
What is a non-nutrient ?

Digestion
What happens to food after we eat it ?
Do we always absorb all the nutrients that we eat ?

Protein
What about red meat is bad for you ?
What are some of the other sources of protein ?
Is a vegan diet healthy ?

Carbohydrates
Are there good carbohydrates and bad carbohydrates ?

Vitamins and Minerals
Do we need to take a supplement ?
As you age, do you need a vitamin supplement ?
What should we know when purchasing a supplement ?
How much water should we consume ?
Is Our Food Supply Healthy ?
How healthy is our food ?
Does food processing take the nutrients out of the food ?
Does food lose its nutritive value over time ?
How Are Our Food Products Developed ?
The process that new food products go through
Do new food products have to presented to the FDA ?
How long does it take for products to be developed ?
Testing of a new drug or food product.

Dieting
Do you think I should use diet pills ?
What are some of the risks involved ?
What should we look for in a weight loss program ?

The Basics Of Nutrition

What is nutrition?
Nutrition starts with eating food and drinking drink. The body then breaks down the food and drink into its respective nutrients. These nutrients then travel around the body to be used wherever necessary. Carbohydrates are converted into glucose or fuel for the body, protein is broken down into amino acids and fats are broken down into fatty acids. For a person to be healthy, a person must eat enough food to get a good supply of all the key nutrients.

There is a set of guidelines that the government publishes for 20 or so different vitamins, minerals and nutrients and those values are based on population studies, where they go out and look at the health of the general population and consider what people consume on a regular basis.

Is good nutrition based on certain food stuffs?
Nutrition is based on getting all the right balance of nutrients necessary for good health. A food stuff is a raw material that can be made into a food. Only eating particular foods or foods stuffs will not help you be healthier.

What is the difference between nutrients and food stuffs?
In the big picture, there is no difference between the two. You can look at anything that provides nutrients to the body like carbohydrates, protein, and fats. Food in general is just a carrier for nutrients. For example, take a loaf of bread – it has starch in it and protein and non-fat dry milk, the non-fat dry milk also contains lactose. It will also contain a high amount of minerals.

The non-fat dry milk will contain casein, which is a non-fat milk protein. When you eat food, you break down the food to get nutrients for the body.

How does one go about breaking years and years of bad eating habits? What is the starting point for someone who wants to start eating healthier?

If there were an easy answer to the question we wouldn’t have the problems we have today like obesity. Right now in the US 60% of the population has a weight problem. “Morbidly Obese” is clinically defined as being 100 pounds or more overweight. In our population, the number of people being morbidly obese is
increasing year after year.

Changing a person’s perception of food starts at an early age. You can show a person in black and white what foods are good for them and what isn’t and it pretty much comes down to a conscious decision to consume healthy foods or not.

It certainly helps to have a mentor or life coach or fitness trainer or just a friend where there is some kind of relationship when it comes to dealing with eating healthily. The fact is that you need support and one of the reasons there are so many weight loss programs is that they do something a little different, they have meetings and people get together and support each other.

When you gauge how much weight people lose on weight loss programs like Optifast or Atkins and whether they keep it off, all of those people probably within a 5 year period have gained all that weight back because they have lost their support group.

It speaks volumes to me that if people are going to lose weight and keep it off they need a support group. You should not be on a diet to lose weight, you need to be making a lifestyle change. It means finding new ways of eating and develop new habits even for your everyday activities so that the new way you are eating becomes your new lifestyle.

The Best Way To Change Bad Eating Habits
The best way to change your bad eating habits is to do it very slowly. If you try to change everything all at once, it will seem too hard to maintain. Try changing one thing at a time. For example, perhaps you like a morning cappuccino.

Decide to stop drinking your morning cappuccino and drink bottled water instead. Don’t change anything else about your eating habits until you feel totally comfortable about that dietary change.

Then move on to something else, like healthy snacks. Instead of that chocolate energy bar, pack a piece of fruit and a small tub of yogurt. Essentially fruit is natures snack food, it’s also cheaper. Once you’re comfortable with this change, then move onto something else. You get the picture. When you’ve got your diet sorted out, then you can move on to getting some exercise into your lifestyle.

So it doesn’t have to be an abrupt change you just need to understand more about what you are eating and what the energy value is and the nutrient value of the foods you are consuming, and make slow but sure changes to your lifestyle.

Why do you think overweight children come from families with parents who are also overweight?
In a way it is endorsement to the children that their eating habits and lifestyle habits are acceptable. Just like any of us what better role models than your parents. If they snack and eat unhealthily then the children will as well.

However having said this, there are other considerations to take into account. For example there is some tentative evidence that people who are obese are genetically pre-disposed to it. So if this were the case, these families may have an underlying reason for their weight problems. This does not necessarily mean that there is nothing that they can do to lose weight. Families who may have these genes who eat wisely and exercise will be showing their children how to eat, how much fun it is to exercise, and can maintain normal weights. So while genes don’t excuse bad lifestyle choices, it may be a reason why they are more likely to become overweight.

Are much of our lifestyle habits linked to emotions?
Sure. Emotions and stress - all those things get factored into it. Everybody has times of emotional need.

I know from watching myself. When I get depressed and overworked, I lose sleep because I’m trying to get work done, or something has happened that I feel bad about. When I get into these situations, I definitely end up simply eating more than I would have normally, partly to try and make myself feel better and partly because I’m so tired, that my body is craving more energy (food).

The way to avoid allowing yourself to be controlled by emotional eating is knowing what to eat, how much to eat, what is healthy and maintaining enough down time and sleep. These all factor into just having a healthy lifestyle.

Diet and Nutrition

So what is a calorie (cal)? What is a kilocalorie(Kcal) ?
I will keep it pretty simple. A calorie is the amount of heat that is required to raise one cubic centimeter of water one degree. A kilocalorie is the amount of heat that is required to raise one kilogram of water one degree. A much more detailled explanation can be found at wikipedia.org (keyword: calorie)

How about a carbohydrate, what is a carbohydrate?
Carbohydrates are made up of carbon and water. Atoms of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen form carbohydrate compounds such as sugar and starch. There are five types of carbohydrate sugars, glucose, fructose, sucrose, maltose and lactose.

Carbohydrates are the body’s preferred source of energy and in fact your brain needs a constant supply of carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are broken down into glucose by the body and as you may know, is absorbed into the blood stream. It can also be stored in your muscles and liver as glycogen. You need about 40 – 50 per cent of your diet to be made up of carbohydrates for good health.

What are fats and protein?
A fat is a waxy, oily substance and is essential for good health. Fat has double the amount of calories and so poses a problem to individuals who find it difficult to exercise. If you break down a fat you break it down into something called a fatty acid and glycerol. Proteins are made up of chains of amino acids and are necessary for your body to build enzymes, antibodies and haemoglobin.

When you eat protein, your body breaks the protein down into amino acids and then tries to re-assemble them into other configurations to make other needed proteins for use around the body. Carbohydrates, fats and protein can all be broken down into smaller units. Each one of those macronutrients can be sub-divided. In the case of proteins, proteins are made up of amino acids. Not all proteins have the eight essential amino acids that the body needs. If you
are consuming protein and you miss out the essential ones for long periods of time, you are putting yourself at risk of becoming malnourished. In some cultures around the world where food isn’t so plentiful, children can become malnourished and develop diseases such as Kwashiorkor. The children have the distended tummies, however the rest of their bodies are fine, this unfortunately is caused by a protein deficiency.

Scientists can actually measure the quality of nutrients that people are getting. People will volunteer to be involved in a clinical feeding trial and they will hook these people up to all kinds of measuring devices to measure everything from body temperature to how much moisture they exhale. They weigh and eliminate brine in their feces and record everything they can about these patients. They will feed these people a controlled diet – controlling the amount of protein consumed. They can measure how much is excreted, how much weight a person gains and basically they can determine how much of that protein is utilized by the body.

When they do that they can determine the quality of the protein and the amino acids that makes up the protein. They can determine how well the body absorbs protein and assign a number value to the protein as to how well it is absorbed. Some proteins are absorbed extremely well, an example would be egg albumin, which is a protein found in the white of an egg rather than the yolk. The egg white protein has an extremely high biological availability and all of the essential amino acids in the right balance.

Gelatin though has many of the essential amino acids however does not have an amino acid called tryptophan and because it is lacking - it isn’t considered a complete form of protein. If it is combined with other sources of protein it is okay.

The bottom line is if you are looking at carbohydrates, fat or protein, it is important to look at the composition of them. You can read the declarations of the food labels. Often snack foods will contain inefficient protein, or protein that does not contain all the essential amino acids.

It is important to know that all carbohydrates, fat and proteins are made up of these building blocks and it is important to know to have a balance of all of these building blocks for good health.

Is it true that you can eat more and lose weight by combining different foods?
No. People say that there are certain foods that take more calories to burn than they provide or that certain food items are going to cause more calories to be burned. It is a misconception and I can fully understand why people think the way they do.

People don’t want to put the time and the energy or the money into losing weight. It is a lot of work. People want to lose weight and they know that some of the food they eat is unhealthy and they don’t want to put the time and energy into changing things. It takes planning and time. Instead of visiting the fast food restaurant on the corner on the way home you go to the produce aisle in the grocery store. It might take you a little more time and cost you a little more money but it’s worth it.

You know the fast food restaurants super size everything. The artists and executives that design the ads know that our mentality is that the more food we can get for our buck, the better we are going to like it. It wasn’t so long ago that you would go in and order a pop and you would get 8 oz or 12 oz and now it’s not uncommon to get 24 or 36oz because they super size everything.

Tell me are there any specific foods that burn fat?
No. Basically, if you want to burn fat or lose or maintain your weight everything comes down to energy balance. Researchers are constantly looking for foods that could burn fat. Some of them concentrate on milk and dairy products that have been theorized to burn fat through increasing inadequate calcium intake. Some concentrate on finding a specific diet that will burn fat like a high protein diet. While there is evidence for and against – it has never been proven beyond a doubt that there is any one type of food or type of eating that can burn fat.

When it comes down to it, it is a marketing myth that just got so large that everyone started to talk about it, and pretty soon, people started to believe that food could burn fat. In reality food provides energy and nutrients, but cannot burn fat.

Then what should we be counting? Should we be counting calories, carbohydrates or fat?
If you look at carbohydrates and fat, it is the same scenario. Each gram of carbohydrates contains 16 kcal of energy, while fat contains 37 kcal of energy. This is why watching how much fat you’re eating is so important. It is almost twice that of protein and carbohydrates.

Much of the research on low carb diets such as the Atkins diet found that people lost more weight initially and that the diet was more effective than the other diets. Research has also found that people who are on high protein diets also experience higher satiety levels, that is, they are not as hungry. One of the main reasons that low carb diets induce weight loss is because of the simple fact that they are just consuming less calories, but more protein and fat than carbohydrates.

What it seems to boil down to is that some low carb diets restrict your intake to mainly fat and protein, by eliminating carbohydrates from the diet. This has the effect of taking away so many of the food choices that are available, as well as vital nutrients that your body needs.

You know, even lovers of protein and fat, find that the variety and choices are taken away and what you are actually doing is actually limiting your caloric intake. So it works initially and that is one of the reasons why people are so attracted to it.

The fact is however that 95% of diets fail and what it really comes down to is if you want to lose weight, lifestyle change is the only way. A diet is only temporary, you go on it and you lose weight.

But what are you going to do eventually? You are going to go off it.
In my definition, that is not a lifestyle change that is a temporary fix. That is human nature. You go on the diet and eventually you are going to go off it and revert back to your old eating habits and gain the weight back.

It all comes down to understanding a little bit more about the foods that you are eating and a choice to make a lifestyle change. Also almost all of these diet plans introduce a new way of eating, a way that is abnormal to the way that you are used to eating and we are creatures of habit and we like the foods that we are used to.

Because we are creatures of habit we don’t adapt very well to changes like that. We can go on it for a while and because it is so abnormal it just doesn’t fit. It all comes down to the fact that you have to make a decision that you are going to change the way you eat.

One of the things that I have noticed is that if you do something as simple as go out and walk 15 minutes a day, it will be easier for you not to be tempted by unhealthy food. The healthier your lifestyle choices, the easier it will be to stick to your healthy food choices.

It’s almost like the unhealthy choices don’t fit anymore. They are incompatible with the healthy choices. You know, I have quoted that adage that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Well it’s almost the same applied to health and nutrition. As I kick around health and nutrition with people that are into it like I am, I find that if you do exercise and have more muscle mass you burn more calories when you are at rest. Lean muscle mass has a higher metabolic requirement. When you are just sitting around doing nothing and your body has more lean muscle mass you are going to burn more calories than if your body contains fatty tissue. It’s kind of a cruel injustice but the fitter you get even at rest, you are burning more calories.

What about alcohol? First they say that one drink is okay or two drinks are okay and now they say it’s just red wine. Red wine may be preferred because of the antioxidants that you get and the other chemicals that come along with the wine. Obviously there is something in the red wine as opposed to the white that makes it more beneficial.

Alcohol is the second highest source of calories, behind fat. The higher the level of alcohol in the beverage the higher the caloric intake is. One gram of alcohol supplies 29 kcal’s. It isn’t as high as fat but not as low as protein and carbohydrates.

There are other aspects of that to think about, if you are trying to lose weight you need to question whether you need the extra calories. There are many other beverages that would provide many more nutrients. If you are trying to lose weight you need to question whether or not you need those extra calories from something that basically has no nutritional value. I would tend to be more negative about consuming alcohol because, besides the dangers of alcoholism, there is the obvious danger of drinking too much and consuming way too many calories.

So I am not an advocate of drinking alcohol because it has no nutritional value or health value, particularly because any nutritional benefit that you can get from alcohol, can also be found elsewhere in our food.

What is a well balanced diet and How Do I Get One ?
Following the food pyramid is a good place to start and maybe it’s a good place to end for some people. If you take all the food somebody eats at the end of the week and then add them all up and how much variety there was, you will find that there really wasn’t that much variety.

People generally have a dozen foods they like to eat and they will end up eating the same foods day after day for most of their life and that is where you run into problems. You get stuck in a rut and fail to incorporate a vast variety into your diet and fail to get the nutritional balance that you should be getting.

If you know nothing about food but incorporate a lot of variety of fresh fruit and vegetables, cereals, dairy, protein sources, small amount of “good” fats, and legumes and nuts into your diet the chances of your missing out on the right nutrients essential for good health are lowered.

When it comes to fresh fruit and vegetables, some people like to use a diet out there called the Rainbow diet. It’s based on all the different colors of fruits and vegetables. So I will take purple grapes and onions and garlic and sprinkle some lettuce and if we have fresh strawberries I will add those to cantaloupe and really your imagination is your only limitation. Just basically add all your favorite fruits and vegetables and season it to taste. Mix it all up and you have an incorporation of all of that variety. You get all of the vitamins and the nutrients and the minerals that you need in just one meal instead of just ingesting one kind of food.

My point is the more variety you can get in your diet the greater the possibility that if you are lacking in something that you are going to get it. I am an advocate of getting variety in your diet. It all comes down to looking at your budget and having some knowledge of getting what you need and looking at the food labels.

With just a little bit of knowledge of how to read food labels and what you need you can make the right choices with the money that you have to work with.

Even the restaurants and the fast food chains are starting to offer more nutritious choices, likes salads. Subway is one that has really jumped on the bandwagon. You know the one with Jared standing there saying this deep fat fried sandwich contains 45 plus grams of fat and compare it to the subway sandwich.

I saw an interview where they were talking with the producer of Sesame Street and they were talking about the Cookie Monster and how it was presented inadvertently to get kids to eat more junk food and more cookies. Now they have repositioned that whole program to where they are starting to teach kids more about nutrition. I am hoping that one of the things that is happening is that there is increased awareness about nutrition and the obesity epidemic. Some people are just succumbing to obesity and the things that come with it like cancer and heart disease and diabetes. It’s good to see some positive changes taking place.

Why is it that we sometimes crave certain foods? Can it be that your body is sending you a message?
The theory is that people will have a craving for certain things that will provide a nutrient that is lacking. In our culture I don’t think there is a metabolic reason for food cravings. You know if you are used to consuming sugary sweets and that is all you eat, your metabolism adapts and your body guides you to the foods you are used to consuming.

An example of that would be someone who has gone on a vegetarian diet and eliminated meat from their diet temporarily. Then they start to reintroduce meat and their stomach is upset. Their stomach is not used to digesting that kind of food. They have adapted to digesting just non-meat items. There are food digestive adaptations to the kinds of food that you eat. One would have to believe that those are the kinds of foods that you get used to.

Do we become hungry because our stomach is empty or is it because of something else?
That is a tricky question. There are people who have studied this and can boil it right down to all kinds of enzymes and mechanisms that kick into play, stimulating appetite or depressing appetite.

When I go out to exercise and I get back and sit down, I need to replenish my water intake. The next thing that I find is I find a combination of fruits to eat, primarily because they are made up of water, and sugar carbohydrates. But the digestive process is pretty rapid when it comes to breaking down sugars into glucose.

I can consume a lot of fresh fruits and it doesn’t satisfy my hunger. I will still have hunger pains because the digestion is completed so rapidly as opposed to protein, which takes longer. It almost seems like exercise can suppress appetite but I think you have to balance that whole idea with how much exercise you are doing and how many calories your body needs to replace and what kinds of food you are going to consume.

It is complex and is another whole area to think about as to why people are gaining weight, whether it is emotional or whether it is the amount of exercise they have done. Everyone studying this issue, trying to help people lose weight, may have their own theories and their own recommendations.

They all study it in a different way - some try to understand the psychology and some try to understand the nutritional aspects of it. If it were well understood, we probably wouldn’t be having the problems we are having today.

We have discussed foods in general, but what are “functional foods”?
It is a term that gets bantered about by people who are food scientists or food companies that are talking about different kinds of foods. Usually when they are talking about a functional food it is a food analog, which is a food that has been put together by a food manufacturer. It might also be called a nutraceutical.

Functional foods can also be natural foods which have been found to be beneficial for a specific purpose. Some companies manufacture internal tube feeding formulas for hospital use. The composition of the product contains all the nutrition in the right proportions for protein and amino acids plus fat with the right fatty acids and the right vitamins and minerals and you put all that together and it has a particular food functionality.

There are foods that are designed to resolve particular health problems. Let’s take something common like lactose intolerance, people have trouble digesting the lactose because they are missing an enzyme called lactaid. So an example of a functional food would be a food that was put together without any milk protein or lactose sugar. It functions with that person who is lactose intolerant. You can take that example and apply it to anyone else who has special feeding needs.

Does functional food convert differently into energy than normal food?
No, functional food behaves the same way as normal food as far as converting into energy. Functional foods are still broken down into their respective nutrients and provide energy, it’s just that their specific nutrients have been seen to be beneficial in certain areas for certain members of the population.

Nutrients decrease the risk of some diseases, is that correct? In other words you can’t eat a magic vegetable to cure cancer but you can eat certain nutrients that lend themselves to good health, can’t you?
There was one company who developed a “magic pill” that you could take to get all of your nutrients in the proper proportions that you needed for the day. They actually gave it to the astronauts but they had to take six of those a day. Each magic pill was the size of a softball.

The bottom line is there is no magic pill. It wasn’t until the 1940’s that we as a country started to put together nutritional requirements in relation to disease and when we started to establish the different recommendations.

Something that has always intrigued me is that if you do take that historical perspective and go back you find that in the early years there were just a few nutrients for which the recommended daily allowances were established and through the years, through the studies and the whole process of understanding we have continued to add to the list of things that are required. It hasn’t been until quite recently that we have learned about trace nutrients like selenium and things like that, that have recently been added to the list. Those levels continue to change as we learn more. One of the things that interest me is the addition to the list; it is almost a never-ending process. I always come back to the concept of nutrition and variety and not getting locked into a few fixed food items.

Just to clarify, in the most basic form what are the basic nutrients?
There are seven nutrients that your body just can’t live without. These are carbohydrates, fiber, protein, fat, vitamins, minerals and water.

So then what is a non-nutrient?
Basically it is a naturally occurring component of food that doesn’t contain any calories, protein, carbohydrates or vitamins and minerals. Phytochemicals (food chemicals having antioxidant effects) may be an example of a non-nutrient.

Digestion
Can you explain what happens to food after we eat it?
I would just look at it very simply. When you eat food, the process of digestion breaks food down into it’s respective nutrients as we discussed before.

Carbohydrates into monosaccharides (single units of sugars), protein into amino acids and fats into fatty acids. This process starts when you actually chew the food, the food then travels down into the stomach through the esophagus where it is liquified. When it reaches your small intestines, this is where the fun begins. Most of the digestion and absorption of the food occurs here in your small intestine. Digestive enzymes called lipase, amylase and protease act on fats, carbohydrates and protein to break them down into their nutrients for absorption.

Once the food has been broken down into their simple units, they are then absorbed into the blood stream for further chemical changes to make other compounds that the body needs, or for use around the body. Water and small lipids (fats) cross the intestinal wall easily. Some nutrients such as water and fat soluble vitamins need a carrier to take them across the wall.
Other nutrients such as proteins and glucose move across the wall and into the blood stream by themselves but use energy to do so.

Once we’ve eaten the right types of food, does that mean that we always absorb it’s nutrients?
Once the processes I’ve just talked about have been completed, your body has digested and absorbed the food. However, before the nutrients have actually entered the blood stream, the nutrients are not actually considered to have entered your body.

So you can actually eat a whole lot of good food without absorbing it’s nutrients.
You can ensure that you absorb the maximum amount of nutrients through a number of ways, but the major concerns would be to limit caffeine and alcohol intake, as alcohol can reduce the secretion of digestive enzymes that help to break down food and caffeine can reduce your body’s absorption of iron. Stress can also play a role in not allowing your body to absorb all the nutrients available to it. So if you want your body to absorb the maximum amount of nutrients, keep caffeine and alcohol intake to moderate levels. You can probably still have your morning coffee, but make sure that it is spaced at least an hour away from breakfast.

Protein
Going back to protein, what is it about red meat that doctors say is bad for you?
Fatty meats or red meats are typically higher in fat and the fat is generally a higher saturated fat than say, poultry. It would be the saturated fat in the meat that doctors are advising against.
To make a blanket statement that red meat is bad for you would be overkill. Even though they may contain higher levels of saturated fat, red meat still has high levels of the essential amino acids, that your body needs to survive.

That means that the protein in the meat provides all eight essential amino acids while the protein in wheat flour or cake flour may only provide one or two amino acids. It comes down to an understanding of not throwing out the baby with the bath water, if you eat beef, just make sure that you cut all the fat off it – or purchase lean cuts of meat.

What are some of the other sources of protein?
Eggs are a tremendous source of protein. The egg white has an abundance of all the right amino acids and is easily digested and absorbed into the body.

How about an all vegan diet, is it healthy?
Actually it is. There was a pretty significant study done that was widely published. Researchers from the Beltsville Human Nutrition Research Center looked at data from 10,104 adults who were eating different kinds of diets including vegetarian diets, low carbohydrate diets and high carbohydrate diets and their effects on BMI, energy intake and diet quality. The study concluded that those who were eating a vegetarian diet had low BMI’s and ended up eating less energy. (Kennedy et. al, Popular Diets: Correlation to Health, Nutrition and Obesity. J. Am. Diet. Assoc. 2001 Apr. 101(4) 411-20). There is something to be said for it but it comes down to knowledge and balancing. You have to be cautious when starting a vegetarian diet and you need to make sure you are knowledgeable about it.

It’s harder to get the adequate amount of B vitamins on a vegetarian diet and you have to know which foods to eat to get the right amount of vitamins and minerals. So you know which vegetables to eat and how much to eat in order to get the amount of protein that you need.

Carbohydrates
Is it true that there are good carbohydrates and bad carbohydrates?
In a word, yes. There is a such a thing as good carbohydrates and bad. In the past they used to call bad carbohydrates simple sugars and good carbohydrates complex sugars.

Today they have changed this to referring to good carbohydrates as those which release glucose slowly into the blood stream. They call these low glycemic carbohydrates. High glycemic carbohydrates cause blood glucose levels to spike almost immediately after you’ve consumed them. A high glycemic carbohydrate may be white bread or a sugary breakfast cereal.

Having said this, though, just because a carbohydrate has a high glycemic value does not mean it is bad. Some varieties of carrot can have a high glycemic value, but for it to provide a great burst of glucose into your blood stream, you’d need to eat an awful lot of carrots. High glycemic carbohydrates can also become useful when you want a sudden burst of energy. I was actually just reading that consuming high glycemic food in the three hour period after training can acilitate muscle building.

Low glycemic carbohydrates become useful when you want sustained energy throughout the day. The rate at which glucose is released into your blood stream can also be slowed if you combine a low glycemic carb with a high glycemic carb. Alternatively, if you combine a source of protein with a high glycemic carb, this can also slow the absorption of glucose into the blood stream.

As a general rule, a bad carbohydrate would be a heavily processed carbohydrate such as a frosted donut mentioned earlier. A good carbohydrate would be an apple or a slice of Wholemeal or wholegrain bread.

Vitamins and Minerals
What about vitamin and minerals. Do we get enough from our food or do we actually need to supplement?
It depends on where you are coming from and what culture. Again if you get variety in your diet there is probably no need for vitamin and mineral supplements. There is a section of the community that don’t really get enough variety in their diet, and really just stick to certain foods, so they do need a supplement. However health conscious people who eat a variety of food probably don’t need a supplement. If you are pregnant or lactating or if there is some other need for vitamins and minerals then it is probably a good idea.

Vitamins and minerals really only work if you’re not getting them in your diet. Some chronic dieters who diet consistently won’t be getting enough vitamins and minerals, so sometimes it is a good idea for them to take a supplement.

As you age, does that mean you need a vitamin supplement?
Yes, there are quite a few areas where you may need a supplement. Your absorption of nutrients declines in your later years and your body’s need for B6, B12, calcium and vitamin D
increase.

What should we know when purchasing a vitamin and mineral supplement ?
You know supplements can be expensive. It depends on the kind of vitamins and minerals you are talking about. Vitamins break down into water soluble and fat-soluble. Typically there is more concern with the fat soluble vitamins (A,D, E & K) because they are not excreted from your body, unlike the water soluble vitamins like B and C, the excess will get flushed but with the fat soluble vitamins the excess is retained in your body.

That can get to be a problem if you are for some strange reason taking excessive amounts of let’s say vitamin D for example.

There is no official figure for how much vitamin D you need, but it should be somewhere in the vicinity of 5 mcg – 10 mcg at the most. For those who don’t get exposure to sunlight, you can get vitamin D in cod-liver oil but be careful not to consume more than 20mcg’s.

Vitamin D is toxic at very low levels, so having too much in your system can be dangerous. It comes down to someone not having information to fall back on and they just do it because they are naïve. It may start out as a doubling of the recommended daily allowance and they think, “well I’m not seeing any results, so I will triple it.” Some of the vitamin companies that manufacture these are no help because they will introduce products into the marketplace with one capsule delivering a mega dose.

It just gets to be like a power struggle even with the manufacturers of those products. People will think that if a little bit in a tablet is good then more will be better. People often think in dollar terms, how much can we get for this amount, if I can get more vitamin for the same or similar amount of money, then that’s better – right. Unfortunately nothing could be further from the truth.

There are very well documented cases of vitamin overdoses and the consequences of taking too much of one vitamin or mineral. You just have to be careful. Most supplements if you will look on the labels will tell you how much to take. When you look at the labels, look at what percentage of the RDI (recommended daily intake) of each vitamin or mineral is included in the supplement. If you see 100% beside one of those vitamins or minerals then you know that taking that supplement will provide 100% for that particular vitamin or mineral. If you intend to eat that day as well as take the supplement, you could be over-dosing yourself on that particular vitamin or mineral.

Or, if it says 150% or 500% then it is supplying 5 times more of the nutrient than you really need. And all those levels are based on typical values in our society. On an individual basis there may be a person who needs more than that or someone who might need even less than that. That’s when it becomes difficult to know if you are getting the right amount of nutrients. This is where it comes back to getting variety in your diet and eating according to your lifestyle. People who have an active lifestyle generally eat more than those who don’t, their body is ensuring that it gets enough energy, vitamins and minerals to be able to carry out it’s normal functioning.

What about water, how much water should we consume?
You know that whole question has been kicked around a lot too. The people who were studying that were saying for a long time that we don’t get enough and we need to be consuming more than we do. Then there were some publications that were saying that too much water isn’t good for you either.

I would tend to believe that we don’t get as much water as we need. If you drink too much you are just going to eliminate it, so if you drink a lot of water or whatever then you are probably getting enough. As a general rule of thumb, your body will let you know when it is thirsty. If you ignore the urge to drink then you can get into trouble.

Water level is the maker or breaker of whether or not you are going to have a healthy lifestyle because it is self-regulating, you know if you get thirsty then you drink and if you are not thirsty then you don’t drink. So it is sort of self-regulating. So usually the amount of water you take in is in the acceptable range.

Is Our Food Healthy?
How healthy is our food, the stuff we buy in the grocery stores?
Well, if you make a comparison between food in the USA and other developed countries and food in under-developed countries, it is probably the safest and the most nutritionally satisfying food supply possible.

The standards for food inspections and food quality that goes into the manufacture and safety and the formulation of foods is really pretty extraordinary. Is it perfect? No, you can find problems if you look.

Does food processing really take the nutrients out of the food?
It can if manufacturers let it, but it is a marketing power struggle. Some food processing can actually be healthier for you. For example some breads have added fiber, to make it healthier.
Food preservatives have been included in the manufacturing process as a necessity to make sure that the food is not rotten and moldy by the time the food gets to you. Have you ever cooked bread from scratch – you’ll find that it doesn’t store as long as the commercially made breads.

Not all food processing is bad. Typically when fruit or vegetables are cooked it will lose some of its nutrients, but some manufacturers will actually add these nutrients back into the food to compensate.

Does food lose its nutritive value over time?
They can and can’t. Take a drink product that claims to have Vitamin C in it.
The manufacturer of this drink has to put an average of that vitamin in the product because some of the vitamins will deteriorate over a period of time. Depending on the temperature of the storage of the product, usually the higher the temperature or the longer the storage time, the more of the vitamin will end up deteriorating.

Vitamin C happens to be one of the most sensitive. The government does inspections on these products. They will randomly do surprise visits and routinely visit the food manufacturing companies to take samples for testing. When the product is formulated, the food companies will add an average of vitamins. It protects the product during the shelf life. If they want the product to contain 100% of vitamin C at the end of the shelf life, then they may have to put in 200% to begin with because they know that 2 years later it will have lost half of its value.

Food companies can predict the rate of loss on similar products so that when a nutritional beverage is formulated they can base the level of any particular nutrient against historical values for similar foods.

Food companies use this as the starting point and they will enter the food into something called accelerated storage. That is a higher level of temperature so they can monitor the level of loss.
They call that storage study. Most food companies will do that on their own accord but they do that in case there is ever a government inspection because they want to make sure they are meeting their label claim.

Companies that manufacture vitamins and minerals do the same thing. If it is a dry food like a vitamin tablet the rate of deterioration is usually much slower because it is a dry environment.
Fats can also oxidize. If you have ever had a bag of cake flour on your shelf in your kitchen and two or three years later it is full of weevils and you smell it and it has an awful smell, it is usually because the fat that is present in the flour has oxidized.

How Are Our Food Products Developed
What is the process that new food products go through before they end up on the shelves ?
New food products start with a product development food scientist who works closely with the marketing people of the company. The marketing team helps conceive the ideas for food products like analog products, like a cereal or whatever it may happen to be.

It could also be a fabricated product like a take off of a baked item. You come up with the idea working with the marketing people. You would then put together a prototype of the product idea so that the marketing group would have something they could look at and actually sit around the conference table and talk about.

Then the team would decide which of these products you’d like to develop. One of those products would be picked and taken to the next stage and the product development scientist would begin to refine that product. It might be improvement in flavor or taste or texture.

The product would be refined and presented again to the marketing group. There would be another round table discussion about that particular product and the marketing group would point the food scientist in the direction he needs to go.

Once the product is approved by research and marketing then you begin to pull manufacturing into the picture who would also then contribute to the development of the food product.

At what point do new food products have to presented to the FDA?
Generally it is the responsibility of the product development people to be aware of the Food and Drug Administrations requirements. Food scientists should have access to a library of different regulations called the Federal Code of Regulations and be aware of all the guidelines.

If there is an aspect of the food that does not comply with one or more regulations, then it needs to be submitted to the FDA, however, if there is no perceived problem or everything is seen to comply with the Federal Code of Regulations by the food scientist, then the development of the product will proceed without being submitted to the FDA.

How long does it take for products to hit the supermarket shelves?
The development time and the rules and regulations applied to the different kinds of products, whether they are food service items or clinic products all differ. There are varying regulations that govern the formulation of and development of and the marketing of all different products.

For example, Novartis had a line of weight loss products that were very popular. It was the Optifast Line. Within that product line I’m just going to guess there were at least 75 different products. There were different categories of products, liquid, supplements and there would be formulas of products intended to be administered through hospital tube feedings. There were solid foods as opposed to liquid. The products would be tested with years of clinical trials.

Most people have no idea what is entailed in developing a new drug or food product.
Normal consumer groups will make some blanket statement about how the consumer is getting ripped off by the drug companies and the pharmaceutical companies because they are charging 100 times more for their pills than what it costs to manufacture. This is the same even with dietary products.

Pharmaceutical drugs are sold for many times what it costs to manufacture the product in terms of the composition and the packaging and the marketing. You put all that together and that is just a fraction of the cost. However the clinical trials that these products go through can run into millions of dollars especially for the larger pharmaceutical companies.

Now the drug companies make A LOT OF MONEY, but there is another side to the picture and that would be the testing that goes into some of these products.

Diet Plans
Do you think I should use diet pills?
I would avoid them with a passion. “Diet Pills” are really only helpful when used under medical guidance when exercise and diet have proven ineffective. Even then, diet pills don’t teach you how to eat properly and exercise to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

What are some of the risks involved?
Well some of the obvious ones are the “over the counter ones” which were pulled off the market. To me it’s just a band-aid. You aren’t helping yourself, you are just covering it up.

If someone were looking for a particular weight loss plan or group what should they look for?
I would look at a few things in particular and one of the first things would be, does the particular weight loss plan advocate certain foods, in other words Jenny Craig says you have to eat my food and you have to have Jenny Craig drinks and entrees.

Jenny Craig is very profitable. Do you have to make ongoing payments to this weight loss plan to keep losing weight ? If you do, then you have to consider what is more important to them, educating you about your long term health, or making as much money as possible out of you.

One of the things that I would look for, is whether the weight loss program introduces you to eating normal food and does it encourage getting into regular exercise as a lifestyle change rather than a short term exercise kick.

Is the weight loss program focused on your long term health rather than getting your weight down and then offering little help afterwards. I don’t like those weight loss plans that delivers food to your door because it’s like spoon feeding you. After you’ve lost the weight what happens, you either continue to buy their food (which gets expensive) or you go back to the way you ate before and this is where the problems occur.
Diet plans that keep you focused on a certain area or a particular niche that they have tried to carve out in a marketing opportunity, are just treating you like a meal-ticket with no thought to your overall health and fitness. I would avoid those with a passion. I would try and go with the plans that give you a normal way of eating, train you to find out what exercise is best for you and your lifestyle and don’t require ongoing payment to the owner or company running the weight loss program.

Resources:

Kennedy et. al, Popular Diets: Correlation to Health, Nutrition and Obesity. J. Am. Diet. Assoc. 2001 Apr. 101(4) 411-20.

The Food Pyramide

43 Nurtrition Secrets Revealed (from savvy-fat-burning-food)

Why Calorie Counting Alone Doesn’t Work for Weight Loss...

noreply@blogger.com (O.J. Eppers, PhD) — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:37:00 +0000

Most people believe that calories are the "enemy", since eating excess calories leads to excess fat, right? That’s why most people believe that the fastest way to lose weight is to cut way back on calories each day.

After all, if a dieter is eating 2,500 calories per day and they decide to cut back to 1,500 calories per day – then obviously those extra 1,000 calories have to result in weight loss, right?

Well, actually this is not exactly true.

In fact, if you try to cut your calories too much (via starving yourself and skipping meals) then you'll quickly reach a dieting "plateau" (a point where the scale refuses to drop any lower no matter how little your are eating).

Firstly, let’s talk about how the average person begins a new diet...

The scenario usually sounds something like this...One day you look in the mirror and see that your clothes are fitting tighter than normal, and you look more overweight than normal. ...And on this day you get “angry” with yourself, you’re angry with what you see in the mirror – and you decide that you’re going to lose weight no matter what it takes.

You are filled with lots of motivation and anger on this day, and you feel determined to do whatever it takes to get slimmer.

So what's the first thing you do?...

You begin skipping meals and cutting way back on calories in an attempt to starve yourself thinner, since you're convinced that calories are the enemy.

Anyway, the above scenario is how you begin your “starvation diet.”

On the first day of dieting you feel so “motivated” to lose weight that you decide to skip breakfast.

Unfortunately, this motivation doesn't last for long, because after a few hours your hunger begins making you feel weak -- because your body is not accustomed to "skipping meals" like this, and your body is not accustomed to being without calories for so long.

Anyway, by the time lunchtime arrives you’re so hungry (and weak) that you feel absolutely miserable --- but yet you bravely tell yourself that you can handle this diet (because after all, you certainly don’t want to feel like a quitter).

So you perhaps have a piece of fruit for lunch (or perhaps another small food item instead), since you're still convinced that you can starve yourself thinner.

Finally, hours later when dinnertime arrives you’re so miserable and hungry that you have a major headache – and this is the moment when you finally begin to realize that starving yourself might not be such a good idea after all.

After this first day of starving yourself you feel horrible, but you’re determined to stick to your diet since you don't want to be a quitter so soon -- so you’ll likely hold out for another few days on this diet.

Or, if you are particularly brave then you may even hold out for a week or two. However, regardless of how long you actually hold out -- you won't get any slimmer and the final result will still be the same.

You see, even after two weeks of starving yourself you won’t have achieved any serious weight loss at all. In fact, your body will still look the same when you look in the mirror.Why is this true?

This is true because most of the weight lost during a “starvation diet” is just water weight, and not real fat loss.

You must remember that any “water weight” lost during a starvation diet will be gained back immediately when you stop dieting and start eating normally again.

Also, whenever you starve yourself you cause a “hidden” factor to come into play...You see, whenever you starve yourself your body will begin burning fewer calories each day.

For instance, let’s say that you normally eat about 3,,000 calories per day.....But then you suddenly cut way back on calories -- so that you're now eating only 1,000 calories per day.Guess what happens?

Even though you’re eating 2,000 fewer calories per day your body will begin burning 2,000 fewer calories per day – so in reality your weight will remain the same even though you’re eating 2,000 fewer calories per day.

When this happens the scale will stop going down regardless of how little you are eating each day, and this is known as a weight loss “plateau.” This is why most starvation dieters cannot make the scale go down anymore after just two weeks of dieting. They all hit a “plateau” where the scale just refuses to go down any further, no matter how little they are eating each day.

Now you know why you’ve always failed when trying to starve yourself in the past, since it’s just not possible to lose weight by starving yourself.

The truth is that “serious” weight loss can never be achieved by starvation dieting.Serious weight loss can only be achieved by giving your body the right types of calories at the correct times each day, which is something that we talk about below... Your body is actually like a big “engine” -- and the truth is that your body needs all 3 types of calories (protein, carbs, and fat) to some degree.

To begin losing weight fast we recommend using the new Calorie Shifting Diet -- because it does not necessarily require any calorie counting when using a diet menu generator who does this work for you (it's one of the only diets in the world which forces fast weight loss without the need to count calories).

You can begin this new diet right here.

The Only 4 Principles of Weight Loss You Need To Know

noreply@blogger.com (O.J. Eppers, PhD) — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:31:00 +0000

Visit a nearby newsstand and I am sure that you will come across some magazines promoting miraculous weight-loss formulas. Sometimes they turn to the mythic properties of fruit, like with the “Lemon Diet” or with the “Papaya Diet.” Other times they just create special nutritional plans, say the “Low-Carb Diet.” There are also the magic workouts and exercises that are supposed to reduce your belly circumference by 10 centimeters in three days â€“ while toning your muscles….

Come on!

The reality is that there are no shortcuts or easy ways to get in good shape. Sorry, but someone needed to tell you this.

Now, don’t get me wrong, you won’t not need to starve for days or perform some Spartan training activities. As long as you get conscious about what you are doing, you will see the results. Below you will find the four principles that you need to keep in mind in your weight-loss journey.

1. Forget About Diets

People that go from diet to diet never reach a stable weight, let alone a good shape. The reason is quite simple: diets are, by their very nature, temporary. You can’t expect to eat properly for two or three weeks and fix your weight problems for the rest of the year.

I know it is encouraging to read that you could lose 20 pounds in 2 weeks if you were to eat this and that. It is encouraging but not true. They might even work in the short term, but after a couple of months you will recover what you have lost.

Many of these diets are not even targeted at fat loss. They promise that you will lose weight, but the caloric cut is so drastic that you end up losing many pounds of water and muscle mass along the way, and that is not what you should be aiming for.

If diets are not the solution, what is then? Proper nutrition, and we’ll cover this on the next principle.

2. Proper Nutrition

If you want to keep your weight and fat percentage under control, you will need to learn the basics of nutrition. Once you learn them, you will be able to eat healthy throughout the year.

Buy a nutrition book on some library and read it. At the very minimum you want to know how your body works, what sources of energy it uses, what are the roles of proteins, carbohydrates, fats, minerals and vitamins.

You will need to shift your paradigm about food. Many people, especially those with weight problems, tend to see food as a source of pleasure. They eat what they like, when they want to, and in whatever proportions it might take to satiate them.

This is not the correct approach. You should see food first and foremost as something functional. You will eat because food is the fuel for your body. If you adopt this mentality, you will start eating what you need, when you need, and in the correct amount.

It might sound extreme, but even with this approach you will be able to have pleasure while eating. It is just a matter of getting used to it. Once you detox yourself from the junk food you will see that an apple can be just as tasty as a sugar-jammed apple pie.

Needless to say that if you are trying to lose weight you will need to have a caloric deficit in place. That is, you will need to eat less calories than what your body needs to keep his weight. Ideally you want to jot down some numbers and calculate how much you should be eating. There are plenty of resources online that can help you here.

3. Physical Exercise

Eating healthy and having a caloric deficit will only take you half the way. The other key factor is physical exercise.

Low intensity cardio is the corner stone of any weight loss program. That is because the higher the intensity of the exercise, the lower the amount of free fat acids in your bloodstream (free fat acids come from your stored fat through the lipolysis process, and they are burned for energy).

So far so good, but what is considered low intensity cardio? The easiest way to determine is to find your max heart rate (220 â€“ age = max heart rate) and calculate 40% and 60% of it. That is the range you should aim for when doing low intensity cardio. Suppose you are 20 years old. This means that your max heart rate is around 200, so your range for low intensity cardio is from 80 heart beats per minute to 120 heart beats per minute.

Pragmatically speaking, what activities can you do as low intensity cardio? There are many of them, from walking to swimming and riding a bicycle; just find something that you like to do.

Start with two weekly sessions, and build your way up. The same theory goes for the duration, find what you are capable of doing in the beginning (without feeling too tired), and build your way up. It might be 10, 20 or 30 minutes, it doesn’t matter as long as you make progress along the way.

4. Discipline and Perseverance

You can start eating healthy and exercising properly, but unless you stick doing it regularly, the results won’t appear (if they do, they won’t last).

Discipline and perseverance are key here.

You could find a friend to exercise together, a mentor to guide you throughout the way, or even write down your progress day after day,Â like this person has done on his fat man weight loss blog. Do whatever it takes to stay on track.

That is pretty much all you need.

It won’t be easy, but very few worth things in life are easy to achieve, right?

Good luck!

Source: http://www.weightlosswand.com/blog/96/the-4-principles-of-weight-loss/

10 Unconventional Diet Tips: How to lose 50 pounds in three months

noreply@blogger.com (O.J. Eppers, PhD) — Thu, 28 May 2009 15:17:00 +0000

This is a post from a boy who really lost 50 pounds in three months, an awesume achievement! I think these diet tip are great and i have been on a diet for a while now and following basically all of his tips as part of my Calorie Shifting diet. This is the article:

The following are 10 unconventional weight loss tips that worked for me. Between January 4, 2006 and March 31, 2006 I lost fifty pounds. These tips work well because almost every tip is focused around completing a small goal. In my opinion, to stay motivated and lose a significant amount of weight, you should complete many goals in a short period of time. The reason I call these tips unconventional is that I had not seen a majority of them before starting my diet.

I will start by recognizing the typical “calories in, calories out” schpeil. Yes, to lose weight you have to eat well and exercise. But there is much more to it than that, and I don’t want to spend time regurgitating ideas you’ve heard before. That brings me to the first point:

Buy a digital scale

This seems easy enough. I recommend that before starting a diet, buy a scale that is accurate to .2 (two-hundredths of a pound). I will explain why below. I also recommend either buying a scale that can record your daily weight, or manually logging your weight everyday. I bought a scale that was accurate to .2 and logged my weight at Sam’s Club for $22. It has been a great investment.

Weigh yourself everyday

You’ll find that almost every other dieter will tell you to weigh yourself only once a week. I recommend the exact opposite. I am very goal oriented and I like to see results everyday. The reason I recommend buying a scale that is accurate to the .2 is that there is a very big difference between weighting 170.8 one day and 170.0 the next day. Losing .8 pounds in one day is excellent. However, if your scale is not accurate enough to report the loss and still shows 170 after a day of healthy eating and working out, you will feel extremely discouraged. A more detailed scale makes it easier to keep a positive outlook. The more successes (days with positive weight loss) the easier it is.

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This is a point where I slightly disagree. I think its not a good idea to check your weight each day as it makes you nervous when during several days you don't see the expected result (which is absolutely normal in fact). I check my weight twice a week and not each day in order to see the trend and not just daily fluctuations.
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Drink 8 glasses of water everyday

This one is obvious and broadly recommended, however, the reason I recommend it is slightly different. Drinking eight glasses of water per day helps you “feel less hungry.” I can’t prove this scientifically, however, when I am at work, I drink 4 cups in the morning and 4 cups in the evening. On the days that I don’t drink the water, I feel hungrier, earlier. Also, on the days I don’t drink water I feel sleepier, sooner. Don’t feel intimidated by trying to drink 8 glasses of water. Try doing what I do: I have a pint glass I keep at work, it holds sixteen ounces (as all pint glasses do). All I do is drink two pints of water in the morning and two in the afternoon.

Make your diet public

Tell people you’re on a diet. There’s no reason to be ashamed to be on a diet. I found that trying to keep my diet a secret was harder than just telling people. In fact, telling your coworkers, girlfriend, family, etc. will increase your accountability. It motivated me knowing that my coworkers and family knew that I was dieting because I did not want to fail. I also chose a typical “fat picture” and put it on my fridge, in my cubicle, and on my wall. I wanted to have a continual reminder to lose the weight. I know it’s a cliche, but it was important for me to remind myself of my ultimate goal.

I feel I should also note that although I was 50 pounds over weight, when I told people I was on a diet they often said “you don’t need to diet.” I found this surprising because I was obviously overweight. Beware that you will likely hear similar comments. I found it easier to just accept the “compliment” than to try to justify my diet to them. Remember that you are on a diet for you, and that you do not need to justify yourself.

Don’t diet on the weekends

This is another unconventional bit of advice. I was able to lose 50 pounds without dieting on the weekends. I found myself tired, depressed, and unmotivated if I tried to continue my diet into the weekend. I felt that Friday and Saturday (my weekend) was a time to celebrate 5 days of dieting. You may not find this necessary, especially in the first few weeks of a diet. However, as many weeks passed, the weekend became a time for me to celebrate my weekly successes and get myself mentally prepared for another five days of dieting. I considered it a mental recharge.

Don’t sacrifice your life for your diet

On occasion, you will find yourself unable to eat healthy. Whether this is because of lunches with your team at work, birthdays, or special occasions, there will be events that you just can’t (or don’t want to) eat healthy. A diet will feel overwhelming if you have to sacrifice special events in your life. The way I combated this was to exchange a day that I was not going to diet on the weekend. In other words, if I didn’t diet on Tuesday, for example, I would diet on Saturday, instead.

Make the small changes

This is a pretty common tip, however, I have a twist to it. Rather than giving up what most diets say you should give up (soda, coffee, beer, caffeine, etc.) just make healthier decisions. I didn’t want to give anything up, so I decided to make some changes instead. The first switch I made was switching to diet soda. Don’t worry, you’ll quickly get used to the flavor. Before I started my diet, I swore I would never drink diet soda. Now thanks to my girlfriend, diet is the only soda I drink. The second switch I made was to drinking black coffee. Cut out the sugar and creme, and you get the benefits of coffee (caffeine) without the calories. The last major switch I made was to “healthy” beer. I’m a Miller Lite drinker, however, by temporarily switching to Beck’s Premier Light (60 calories per serving) I was able to still enjoy a healthy social life while maintaining my diet.

In addition to making the small changes in your diet, make the small changes in your life: park further away, walk to the end of the train platform and get in the last car, and vow not to take an elevator for an entire week. I also found it advantageous to wear a pedometer and try to compete against myself for how far I could walk in a single day. The furthest I walked in a day was 6.5 miles. I voluntarily walked to work twice a week.

Gain perspective by understanding the fractions

Your diet is an incredibly small fraction of your life. If you live for 80 years, and dieted for four months, that would only be .42% of your life. That’s right, if you diet for four months, it will be less than one half of one percent of your life. On the other hand think of the major benefits you can get from .42% of your life. If it helps you stay motivated, count down the days starting at 120.

Rationalize your workouts

Finding the time to get to the gym can be very difficult. However a 1/2 hour workout is only 2% of your day (assuming 24 hour days). For me, the most motivating thought was comparing my workouts to sitcoms. As a huge Everybody Loves Raymond fan, every time I would sit down to watch an episode, I would remind myself that in the 1/2 hour that I was sitting and doing nothing, I could complete my daily workout.

You’ve lost the weight, what now?

Have a red flag weight

Once you’ve lost the weight, you need to keep it off. This is where the red flag comes in. You need to pick a weight and vow to never get heavier than it again. It is normal for your body to fluctuate five to ten pounds. I recommend picking a weight that is ten pounds heavier than what you “normally” weigh and never weigh more than it again. Setting a red flag weight allowed me to keep off every pound for over 1 year.

Lastly, for the curious out there…I followed the Weight Watchers diet. I did not pay for the diet, nor did I go to meetings. I found out all the information about the diet on-line. The first place to look is at their patent.

All well known diets are available via Google Patent Search. For the several months that I was dieting, I also gave up red meat and made sure to drink a lot of milk. The preceding tips worked perfectly for me and they will work for you, too. Prior to creating my own diet plan, I tried to diet several times and failed every time. I swear by these weight loss tips. What do you think of them? Do you have a tip that didn’t make my list? Let us know in the comments. I will be glad to answer any questions or defend any point.

Resource: lifehack.org

The reason fat people find it hard to lose weight is found

noreply@blogger.com (O.J. Eppers, PhD) — Thu, 28 May 2009 13:56:00 +0000

Scientists have discovered why fat people find it so hard to lose weight, which will lead to many new approaches to weight loss.

The difference in the number of fat cells between lean and obese people is established in childhood and, although fat people replenish fat cells at the same rate as thin ones, they have around twice as many.
This remarkable glimpse of what gives us beer guts, love handle and muffin tops could also lead to new approaches to fight the flab, by cutting the overall number of fat cells in the body, as well as providing an insight into why fat people find it so hard to lose weight, because the number of fat cells in a person remains the same, even after a successful diet.

The details of how humans regulate their fat mass is reported today in the journal Nature by a team led by scientists at the Karlolinksa Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, as a second team, led by Imperial College London, reports in the journal Nature Genetics the discovery of a gene sequence present in half the population linked to three quarters of an inch bigger waistline, four lb gain in weight, and a tendency to become resistant to insulin, which can lead to type 2 diabetes.

The fundamental new insight into the cause of obesity comes from an international team lead by Dr Kirsty Spalding, Prof Jonas Frisén and Prof Peter Arner who found the body constantly produces new fat cells to replace equally rapid break down of the already existing fat cells due to cell death.

They also show, that overweight people generate and replace more fat cells than do lean - and that the total number of fat cells stays equal after a diet program.

Until now, it was not clear that adults could make new fat cells. Some had assumed that they increase their fat mass by incorporating more fats into already existing fat cells in order to maintain their body weight (lean, overweight, obese). However now it seems we constantly produce new fat cells irrespective of our body weight status, sex or age.

"The total number of fat cells in the body is stable over time, because the making of new fat cells is counterbalanced by an equally rapid break down of the already existing fat cells due to cell death", says Prof Arner.

The study was made possible by a method to use radioactive isotopes in fat cells from people who had lived through the brief period of Cold War nuclear bomb testing from 1955 to 1963 to determine the age of the fat cells in the body.

This was combined with methods to carefully measure the size of the fat cells in relation to the total amount of adipose tissue in 687 people with a large individual variation in body weight who had undergone liposuction and abdominal reconstruction surgery.

Fat cells are replaced at the same rate that they die - roughly 10 per cent every year. The level of obesity is determined by a combination of the number and size of fat cells, which can grow or shrink as fat from food is deposited in them.

Even if obese subjects go on a diet they keep the total number of fat cells in the body constant, but the size of individual fat cells is decreased markedly.
The findings therefore provide a new target for treatment
of obesity, namely by attacking the signals and genes in fat cells that control the formation of new such cells.
"The results may, at least in part, explain why it is so difficult to maintain the weight after slimming", adds Prof Arner.

"Until now it was not clear whether there was fat cell turnover in adults," adds Dr Spalding. "Now we have established this does occur, we can target the process.

"Various groups are looking at compounds that might regulate the formation of fat cells but this work is at too early a stage to say when anti obesitiy drugs based on this understanding will be tested on patients, if at all."
Other new insights into how to treat obesity could come from the gene sequence linked to an expanding waist line, weight gain and a tendency to develop type 2 diabetes in the Imperial led study.

Professor Jaspal Kooner, the paper's senior author from the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London, says: "Finding such a close association between a genetic sequence and significant physical effects is very important, especially when the sequence is found in half the population."

The study shows that the sequence is a third more common in those with Indian Asian than in those with European ancestry. This could provide a possible genetic explanation for the particularly high levels of obesity and insulin resistance in Indian Asians, who make up 25 per cent of the world's population, but who are expected to account for 40 per cent of global heart disease by 2020.

The new gene sequence sits close to a gene called MC4R, which regulates energy levels in the body by influencing how much we eat and how much energy we expend or conserve. The researchers believe the sequence is involved in controlling the MC4R gene, which has also been implicated in rare forms of extreme childhood obesity.

Previous research on finding the genetic causes of obesity has identified other energy-conserving genes. Combining knowledge about the effects of all these genes could pave the way for transforming how obesity is managed.

This research, backed by the British Heart Foundation, was carried out with scientists from the University of Michigan and the Pasteur Institute, France.

Last year a British led team found that if people carry one copy of a variant in a gene called FTO, as does half of the general population, it will lead to a gain in weight of 2.6lb or put just over half an inch on their waists and raise their risk of being obese by one third.

If people have two copies of this variant in the FTO gene, which is the case in one in six of the population, then they will gain almost 7lb more than those who lack the variation and are at a 70 per cent higher risk of obesity.

According to the 2001 Health Survey for England, more than a fifth of males and a similar proportion of females aged 16 and over were classified as obese.

Half of men and a third of women were classified as overweight.

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor, Published at Telegraph UK, 04 May 2008

Fat Loss 4 Idiots Plus Cardio Exercise – Even More Powerful

noreply@blogger.com (O.J. Eppers, PhD) — Thu, 28 May 2009 13:54:00 +0000

by OJ Eppers

The Fat Loss 4 Idiots Diet is a diet based on Shifting Calories or Calorie Shifting. Even though this diet generally is considered idiot proof, in combination with a cardio exercise program it has been shown to be one of the easiest, fasted and healthiest weight loss solutions available.

Browsing the web you’ll find many reviews of the Fat Loss 4 Idiots diet and unfortunately, many of these are simple promotion for different diet products. The goal of this brief article is to bring some light into the darkness and to provide a comprehensive view of what it actually is and how it can be improved.

The diet is based on calorie shifting, a method applied since many years by body builders and adapted by the Fat Loss 4 Idiots team for the purpose of losing weight rapidly and without starving yourself. Calorie Shifting or Shifting Calories is a nutrition-based weight loss approach that focuses on eating patterns, rather than on what types of food to eat or avoid. The result is a rapid, but safe, weight loss. As a nutrition-based diet, very little exercise is required to achieve the weight loss. Losing pounds basically is achieved by sound nutrition and a constant change of what you eat. As a consequence, your body doesn't get used to any routine and your metabolism remains accelerated causing your body to burn fat faster and more efficiently.

The basic principle of healthy loss diet with calorie shifting: you have to eat meals up to 4 or more times a day and no snacks or tiny meals are allowed in between. Each of the meals should have different calorie values, but must be a full meal. It is important to drink a lot of liquids, recommended are up to 10 glasses of water a day (but you can also drink sodas, coffee and juices in addition to this). The water is essential to speed up the weight loss process as it helps to flush out the food and to keep the metabolism high.

Eating meals with different calorie values and types of food results in a unique reflex in your body, raising the metabolism (and fat burning process) and keep it high for as long as you keep doing this calorie shifting diet. With an increased metabolism you are even burning fat while you sleep! Combining 4 different meals each day and drinking plenty of water is the main idea behind how to calorie shift.

The developers of the Fat Loss 4 Idiots diet call it with some enthusiasm the “Extremely Fast Weight Loss Diet” as it really is a diet giving rapid results that can be applied easily and by everyone. They praise it almost as the Holy Grail of the diets. The simplicity and the fast weight loss of the Fat Loss 4 Idiots diet is the bright side of the story but there is an other side with some more shadow. As the diet does not include physical activities, there is a risk that the dieters not only lose fat but also muscle mass. Here is the reason why: First and preferred energy source of your body are carbohydrates (usually simply called carbs). Carbs are stored basically in your muscles and liver in the chemical form of glycogen, a core protein of the enzyme glycogenin surrounded by branches of glucose units - analogous to the function of starch in plants. The storage of this primary “fuel” in your muscles and liver is a form of survival mechanism as in extreme situations your body needs a fast resource of energy to react instantaneously. Body fat is only used when not sufficient glucose is available.

As a consequence, Fat Loss 4 Idiots is only idiot proof if the diet is accompanied with an exercise program that avoids the reduction of muscle mass and favors the consumption of fat as energy resource. This exercise program preferably is a cardio exercise performed in the morning and even better before having breakfast. At that moment of the day the carbs stored from your last meal will be almost depleted and your body will be burning your fat instead.

It has been shown that the Fat Loss 4 Idiots diet, combined with physical activities preferably of the cardio type, is a very powerful tool for rapid and sustainable weight loss. Depending on the average daily calorie reduction and the performed physical activities, dieters usually experience a weight loss in the range of 3 to 8 lbs in the first 11 to 14 days. But it also true that not all people succeed with this diet. The most common reason for failure is that the diet is not correctly applied, even though the application is really simple and straightforward as the diet instruction book comes with an online diet generator that automatically generates individual diet menu plans for 11 days.

The Fat Loss 4 Idiots diet is not the Holy Grail of weight loss diets, but correctly applied and in combination with a cardio exercise program, this is one of the easiest and fastest and weight loss solutions currently available. As no diet pills are required and in contrast to other restrictive diets like low carb, low fat, low cal, etc. no food groups are excluded, it also can be considered one of the healthiest diets you can choose to get rid of your extra pounds.

Read more about the author's experience with the Fat Loss 4 Idiots diet.

Reduce Diabetes Risk by 58 Percent With Diet and Exercises

noreply@blogger.com (O.J. Eppers, PhD) — Thu, 28 May 2009 13:27:00 +0000

A study carried out by the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) Research Group reveals that overweight people can reduce the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes by 58 percent by reducing their weight combined with an exercise program.

In the study performed by the US researchers and published in the National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse (NDIC) in October 2008, a total of 3,234 overweight people participated in a three-year diabetes prevention program. The participants were segregated into three groups: The first group, called the lifestyle intervention group, received intensive training in diet, physical activity, and behavior modification. By eating less fat and fewer calories and exercising for a total of 150 minutes a week, they aimed to lose 7 percent of their body weight and maintain that loss. The second group took the popular anti-diabetic drug Metformin (850mg twice a day), and the third receiving a placebo (an inert sugar-type pill labeled exactly like the Metformin drug). The Metformin and placebo groups also received information about diet and exercise but no intensive motivational counseling. At the beginning there was also a fourth group receiving the drug Troglitazone (Rezulin). This group was discontinued when it was discovered that Rezulin has the potential to cause serious liver damage.

After concluding the three-year prevention program, all participants had access to ongoing lifestyle coaching and were frequently monitored regarding their glucose blood levels over a period of ten years.

Dieters gather the most benefit
The study clearly shows that overweight people reducing their weight by 7 percent, combined with a 30 minute daily exercise program, achieve a reduction of developing Type 2 diabetes by 58 percent compared with the people of the placebo group. Weight loss and physical activity improve the body's ability to use insulin and process glucose and thus reduce the risk of developing diabetes. This finding was true for both men and women and across all participating ethnic groups. Weight reduction in particular was beneficial for participants over 60 years who achieved this way a diabetes risk reduction of 71 percent.

The group applying Metformin also showed a significant diabetes 2 risk reduction of 31 percent. Metformin was found to be most effective in men and women between 25 and 44 years and in those with a body mass index of 35 or higher (i.e. with at least 60 pounds overweight) and least effective in people over 45 years old.

Further analysis of the data also have added to the evidence that changes in diet and physical activity leading to weight loss not only reduce diabetes risk but also risk of cardiovascular diseases, including high blood pressure and metabolic syndrome. Participants in the lifestyle intervention group who did not have metabolic syndrome at the beginning of the study-about half of the participants-were less likely to develop it than those in the other groups.

This study is one more proof of the importance of weight control and physical exercises for personal wellness and good health. It clearly shows that lifestyle factors (obesity and sedentary lifestyle) are very important in triggering the genetic elements that cause Type 2 diabetes. People having somebody in the family suffering this disease should pay special attention to these results and considering them as a motivation for applying a rigorous weight control and routinely physical training program.

Read "How to Calorie Shift as Healthy Loss Diet" to discover a foolproof guaranteed way to lose weight naturally and with long lasting effects.

16 Steps to Lose Weight Fast

noreply@blogger.com (O.J. Eppers, PhD) — Wed, 27 May 2009 17:45:00 +0000

Obesity is the second leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. Do you want to slim down fast for that beach vacation or high school reunion? While there are many things you can do to shed pounds, losing weight too quickly, like any sudden change to your body, can be dangerous. While fad diets, diet pills, and fasting may indeed induce rapid weight loss, these methods can cause you to lose muscle and may also injure your heart and other organs fairly quickly. The best solution? Don't go for an overnight miracle. Instead, follow these steps to lose weight rapidly, healthily, and sustainably.

Steps

Determine your daily caloric intake . Losing weight is simply a matter of expending more calories than you take in, through exercise and your daily activities. To win the battle, know how many calories you consume in a day.

Write down all the things you eat on a typical day. Carry a small notebook with you and write down every snack, every drink, and the contents of every meal. There are also great websites that you can use to keep track of calories, get recipes, and help achieve your goal. Don't forget to include the pats of butter or the spoonful of sugar in your coffee. It's best to do this for at least a couple weekdays and a weekend; it's even better if you can go a full week. There are also calorie tracking websites or calorie counting software as published at the bottom of this blog.
Do an itemized calorie count. When possible, write down the number of calories in each thing you eat as you eat it. Keep in mind that the recommended serving size is often considerably smaller than the serving you actually eat. Look up the calorie count on the internet for foods that don't have calories listed on the container or for fast food meals. You don't have to be 100% accurate, but you do want a good estimate of the number of calories you're taking in. There is an idea that multiplying your own weight by ten will produce a rough estimate of the number of calories you need to eat per day to maintain your weight. This is NOT true, you may wind up grossly under (or perhaps over) estimating the number of calories you should be eating. Use a scientific or health website to determine the number of calories you should eat a day or consult your doctor. Everyone has different metabolisms and there is no blanket rule that covers everyone's recommended calorie intake. Reducing 500 calories per day from the calories you eat to maintain your weight can help you lose a pound of fat per week.

2. Go over the list and decide which foods to cut out or reduce. Cutting calories is usually a lot easier than you might think. For example, that daily tall latte in the morning may pack 500 calories. Since a pound of flab (lost or gained) is roughly equivalent to 3,500 calories, replacing that rich beverage with black coffee can help you lose a pound a week. Other easy cuts include salad dressing (salad dressing is the number one source of fat in the average American woman's diet) soda pop, candy, and butter. Look at the nutritional information for the foods you eat, pay special attention to your intake of saturated fats and empty calories (high-sugar foods). You don't need to cut these things out entirely, but if you reduce your intake of high-fat, high-calorie foods you'll lose weight faster.

3. Seek out alternatives to the unhealthy foods you've identified. You can simply reduce the amount of soda you drink or mayonnaise you put on your sandwiches, or you can substitute healthier choices. Drink water instead of soda, for example, or use mustard instead of mayo. Low-fat and low-calorie options are also available for most foods, and many of these are natural, (although some are made with strange chemicals), and tasty. Start trying to eat healthy in most meals:

Choose lean meats. Chicken and fish are both very low in fat (and certain fish like salmon, sardines, and fresh tuna are an excellent source of antioxidants, which are also beneficial to your health), so aim to replace some or all of the beef or pork in your diet with these foods.
Replace high-calorie side dishes with healthier alternatives. Many people get a ton of calories from side dishes such as macaroni and cheese, French fries, or potato salad. You can eat healthier and lose weight by replacing these with fresh vegetables and salads. Pre-made salads are practically effortless, and when accompanied by a reduced-calorie dressing or no dressing at all, they're weight-loss gold.
Start your days off right. A fattening breakfast of bacon and eggs or a pastry can be replaced with yogurt, oatmeal, high-fiber, low-sugar cereals; or fresh fruit for fruit smoothies. However, for those on a low carb diet bacon and eggs are a great combo for breakfast, since neither have carbs. But don't fall into the trap of skipping breakfast. Eating a healthy breakfast increases your rest metabolic rate earlier in the day, and reduces snacking before lunch.

4. Plan your meals. Look for healthy, delicious meals online or in your cookbooks, and create a menu for the week. Make sure that your meal plan reduces your total calorie intake: you're not going to lose weight if you consume the same amount of calories by eating different foods. Make a list of what you'll need for these meals, and -- except for a few snacks, of course -- don't stray from your list when you get to the market. Planning your meals helps ensure you get a balanced diet and reduces the temptation to stop off for fast food or order a pizza. Remember, it's easier to stick to your shopping list if you shop when you aren't hungry.

5. Watch your portion sizes. Opening a bag of rice cakes and eating all of them in one sitting isn't going to help you lose weight. When eating chips, nuts, or dried fruit put a portion in a small bowl and then put the bag away. That way you won't mindlessly eat a larger portion than you had intended. Even if you only make minimal changes to your diet choices, reducing portion size will inevitably reduce caloric intake. A great way to watch portion sizes while snacking is to buy one serving 100 calorie packages - and they come in many favorite snack food items!

6. Graze on healthy snacks. Just because you're getting healthy doesn't mean you can't snack. In fact, eating small meals and snacks throughout the day, or grazing, has been shown to aid weight loss, (compared to eating three large meals a day), by keeping metabolism steadier. Pick snacks that are low in calories and fat and high in fiber (dried apricots, nuts, rice cakes, fruits, baby carrots, cherry tomatoes, and so on). Vegetables are generally very low in calories, very high in fiber, and full of flavor and nutrition. Avoid starchy vegetables like potatoes, and try to eat vegetables plain, without fatty dressings or dips. Fruit also makes a good snack. Fruit contains more soluble fiber than vegetables, which slows your body's absorption of carbohydrates, thus releasing energy more slowly, (preventing sugar highs), and keeping you feeling full longer. Fruit juices are not a replacement for the real thing. You need that fiber, and juices often have more calories than the equivalent serving of fruit -- as many calories as soda! Be careful with dried fruits, because without the water, you tend to eat more, and fruits, when dried, are calorie-rich per ounce. With any dry or dried food, be sure to drink plenty of water.

7. Get more fiber. There are many myths about fiber, but there is science to back up its helpful role in the diet. Fiber keeps the right amount of water in your intestines, making your digestive system work more efficiently and helping to keep you regular. Thus, just eating enough fiber may help you feel slimmer in just a day or so. There is also evidence that fiber in the diet can help prevent stroke and heart disease, ease the effects of diabetes, and may even directly help in weight loss.

8. Drink plenty of water. Adequate water is essential for health, and a great many people simply don't get enough. What's more, if you're chronically dehydrated, your body will retain water in unflattering places, so if you make sure to get plenty of fluids you can start visibly trimming down in as little as a day. Remember, the more you exercise, the more water you'll need. See the related wikiHow for more details on how much water you should be getting.

9. Exercise. Remember, you can lose weight either by decreasing your calorie intake or increasing the number of calories you burn. Any health strategy should include both, but if you want to lose weight fast, exercise is essential.

10. Perform high-level aerobic activities. Moderate aerobic workouts incorporating jogging, brisk walking, cycling, aerobic machines, or classes not only burn calories -- they also keep your heart healthy. Swimming is also great, especially if you are quite overweight or have joint problems, because you can get the same benefits of running -- typically burning even more calories -- with much less stress on your joints. Try to get at least 30-40 minutes of aerobic exercise at least three or four days per week.

11. Pump some iron. Resistance training, (weight training), can help both sexes stay lean by building muscle and raising metabolism. The fact is, hours and hours of aerobic exercise won't help most people lose weight fast because your metabolism drops back to normal fairly quickly after stopping the exercise. If you gain muscle, however, your body's resting metabolism, (the amount of calories you burn when you're just sitting still), increases, because muscle requires a lot of calories to maintain. Studies have shown consistent weight training to raise the body's metabolism by 15%. This means an average woman might burn 200-300 more calories at rest every day! Resistance training is the gift that keeps on giving! Although, keep in mind that muscle mass weighs more than fat (don't be surprised if you gain weight but look slimmer).

12. Rest properly. This means not only taking at least 24-48 hours between strength training the same muscles, (and taking 1-2 days off from exercising each week); it also means getting enough sleep at night, since sleep deficiency impairs your ability to lose fat.

13. Be realistic. Don't expect a miracle. Healthy weight loss can be achieved fairly quickly, but you'll need to be patient. In addition, be sure to set realistic goals. Make sure that the weight you're trying to reach is a healthy weight for you, and keeping in mind that gaining pounds of muscle will help you lose fat, be trimmer, and look better even though you don't actually lose any weight. Your goal should be a healthy body, not a number of pounds! Everyone looks good at a different weight. A short person may look really good at about 112 pounds, but a person of a taller height would just look unhealthy. Keep yourself at a weight that makes you look good, not at a number that sounds good.

14. Make adjustments. A successful weight loss strategy based on reducing calorie intake and increasing activity can be adjusted to maintain your desired weight once you reach it. Unlike typical diets, this method is sustainable -- it is a lifestyle change, not a binge-and-purge exercise. Slowly adjust your diet and exercise to include more weight training and calories, as much as is comfortable for you. If you do gain any weight back, you want that weight to be lean, toned muscle, not fat. In addition, weight training, no matter what your age, prevents muscle atrophy and can help stave off osteoporosis.

Instead of thinking of it as losing a certain amount of pounds, think of it as being a certain weight. So if you are 145 pounds, and you would like to lose 10 pounds, think of it as being 135 pounds. This helps you think about it as a long-term goal and not just losing the weight to gain it back again.

15. Be confident. You need to believe in yourself! If you want to diet, and you know that it will make you feel better, then you need confidence. Otherwise, the temptation to cheat on your diet will make it harder, and you will not feel better when you do lose weight. Avoid temptations like chocolate, ice cream, and cookies. They may taste good, but there are other foods that taste delicious, too, without being unhealthy. You need to always encourage yourself to achieve the goals that you have set. Learn to evaluate your efforts fairly and objectively. If you fail to achieve your target for the week, find out why is it so. Is it because you have missed a jogging session? Or you have been eating junk food for one of the days? After evaluating, look ahead to next week and try your best to stick to your plan.

16. Be consistent and disciplined, and have self motivation. To lose weight effectively, you need to stick to your weight loss plan religiously so as to see results. When you have the thought of giving up, visualize how good you will look when you manage to slim down successfully.

Weight Loss Motivation - Video

Tips

Determine your objectives to lose weight. To succeed in doing something, you need to have a very compelling objective or reason so that you will not lose track of your goal. Losing weight just for vanity's sake is usually less helpful than losing weight to improve health. Other than just exercising, you need to have a healthy diet so that you will have a better body and more energy to be positive throughout the day.
It's very good to do a blood test before you begin your new diet and exercise regimen. Some people may not need to lose a lot of weight, but they may need to lower the blood sugar level slightly. You can also check for mineral deficiencies.
The goal is to lose fat, not just weight in general. If you are doing strength training during your weight loss (which you should be), you might actually see an initial gain in weight -- don't worry! You have probably lost fat and gained muscle, which is denser than fat and is much healthier.

A better measurement than what a scale reads is body fat percent. If you don't have access to calipers or a body fat scale, a better gauge is how your clothes fit and how you look rather than your absolute weight. If you can, though, it is good to measure your body fat about once per month. Men should be between 15%-25%, but no lower than 4%; and women 20%-30%, but no lower than 15%. Females have higher fat percentage due to pregnancy and menstrual requirements.
Generally, you want to - with a combination of calorie reduction and increased activity - reduce and burn a certain number of calories a day, causing a net loss of calories so your body is forced to use its own stores of fat. How much aerobic exercise you need to perform depends on what you eat, how fast you'd like to lose weight, and how much muscle you gain. A pound of fat contains 3500 calories. Men can safely lose around two pounds a week, and women can safely lose around one pound a week. Any more than this and you might be losing more muscle mass than fat. Thus, with a combination of calorie restriction and aerobic exercise, a man should aim to run a 3500-7000 calorie deficit each week, and women should aim for a 1750-3500 calorie deficit.

With regard to weights, men and women differ on their goals with weight training. Women, don't worry, no amount of weight training will make you as bulky as a man; women just don't have enough testosterone to build large muscles. The female body-builders you see are either taking steroids or training 2-3 hours every day. Male and female beginners should start with 3 sets of 8-12 repetitions, and should use the heaviest weight you can while still maintaining good form, even to the last repetition of the last set. Get a weight training book or find a reputable website that will show you different exercises and the correct form. When lifting properly, you will stretch the muscle during the exercise, but you should still stretch properly to prevent injury!
No matter what the magazine article says, spot improving is a myth! When your body burns fat, it takes it from all over your body, even if all you do are crunches. No amount of crunches will get rid of that gut if they are not backed up by proper aerobic exercise and diet! Washboard abs do not come from millions of sit ups; they come from having low levels of body fat. So if that is your goal, make sure you do plenty of aerobic exercise in addition to your ab routine.
Sugar comes in many disguises. Check your food labels: fructose, glucose, molasses, and corn syrup are all sugars. Limit all sugars, but especially stay away from high-fructose corn syrup. It is just a corn syrup full of sugar. Choosing foods without it will help you reach your weight loss goals faster.
Remember your body needs 'fuel' just like a car needs 'fuel'. Your body needs the 'right' kinds of food to lose weight effectively.
Don't taunt yourself by not letting yourself eat the occasional snack that you're craving. Just make sure you burn it off later with exercise
Despite popular belief it is not terrible to eat after 6 p.m. A reasonable dinner (with extra protein if you've had a good weight training session) is going to help deliver nutrients to the body to prepare it for the next day. Additionally if you find yourself very hungry before bed, a small bowl of high fiber cereal and low fat milk will actually help maintain your metabolism while you sleep. The key is to not overeat in the evenings.
Take a multivitamin. While it is better to always get your nutrients from your food, most people miss something in their diet, especially when they're trying to cut calories. Vitamins and minerals play an important role in keeping your body chemistry balanced and your energy levels healthy.
If you find yourself missing some of your favorite foods, don't worry. There is no harm in having your treat once a week. Pick a day each week where you treat yourself to your guilty pleasure--remember, everything in moderation. If it's pizza, try going to a gourmet pizza place that will use better ingredients and fresher vegetables. If it's a Big Mac, try making your own. A homemade burger is generally much healthier than the food they serve in fast food restaurants. Electric grills that are slanted to allow most of the fat to slide off make nice, lean burgers.
Save some calories for potassium and protein for after you work out, this will help reduce soreness. (A banana and an egg does the trick.)
Do not forget to stretch. Stretching can help increase your strength and flexibility.
Cut down on your sodium. Many prepared foods have as much as 30% of your daily value. You get your daily requirement of sodium from a healthy diet; too much can cause you to retain water weight.
Try not to skip any meals as this only makes your body to retain fats for energy. A good weight loss plan is to eat healthily and exercise regularly.
To continue to lose weight fast - eat a variety of foods. Just like in weight training, the body will get used to the same routine and plateau. Mix up the foods you eat to keep your metabolism high and prevent a metabolism plateau.
Also consider taking supplements like the Acai Berry. These are natural berry juices proven to speed up the weight-loss process with up to 78%.
Your breathing can also help increase your metabolic rate, and in turn enable you to burn calories more efficiently.

Warnings

Do not try to starve yourself. In the short run, reducing your calorie intake to unhealthily low levels will slow metabolism and actually cause you to lose weight more slowly. Then your body cannot process potassium so when you DO eat again, (the alternative to dying,) you will gain much more weight than you would if you weren't starving yourself and overall, you may end up gaining more than you lost. In the long run, starving yourself (anorexia or bulimia) can kill you.
When creating a weight lifting routine, do not focus on a single muscle or group, doing so will overbuild that muscle while under building others - in other words, if you work your biceps, and not your triceps, your arms will begin to curl inward and you will look silly. If you work your chest and not your back, you will have a hard time maintaining good posture as your pectoral muscles overpower your back muscles and pull your shoulders forward.
If you have a serious medical condition (such as asthma or diabetes, or allergy to protein such as dairy products or you have lactose intolerance) or you are severely obese, consult with your doctor as well as a dietitian.
Do not take any harmful drugs. They are unhealthy and may ultimately make you gain weight instead.
Carefully consider whether you need dietary supplements. Most people may get the basic minerals and nutrients they need to sustain life through eating food. For example, excessive multivitamin supplements can make you overdose in some vitamins you need, and you can't store most water-soluble vitamins like vitamin C as any excess will be urinated. Although you could be below the recommended daily intake, that doesn't necessarily mean you are deficient in it if it's a kind that is stored. So you may wish to consult with your doctor or dietitian to inquire whether you need supplements and how much you should take.
Losing weight too quickly is dangerous and can have adverse effects on your health. Despite the title of this article, getting into shape is best done slowly. If you find yourself losing more than a pound or 2 (or more than 500g) each week, you are probably doing something wrong.

Source: wikiHow