Entries Tagged 'Weight Loss Food' ↓

During my teen years, I tried controlling my obesity using the very popular method, at least to us teenagers back then, known as liquid therapy. It’s a diet merely composed lots and lots of water and some fruits. No not the liquid diet therapy for Crohn’s disease patients.

I know that it’s actually for people who has recently undergone surgery but my reliance on my research ability and my understanding of the human body - I have a BS Biology degree, made me resort to this drastic dieting technique allowing myself to be my own guinea pig.

How did I fare with this water diet?

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This is the last part of the weight loss herbs series. Here are the other installments: Dandelions and Malabar Tamarind and Licorice and St. John’s Wort.

- Oat straw has long been used to curb addictions, and in the past, it was used for alcoholics, drug addicts, and heroin smokers. If you treat overeating as an addiction, then oat straw could probably help. Oat straw, however, should be taken in low doses, as it has not yet been studied extensively.

-Bodybuilders often use Cordyceps, a Chinese herb, to help them gain energy. Dieters use Cordyceps to increase energy for exercise, which can then lead to more lost weight. However, this property of Cordyceps can also make it dangerous to people with heart conditions.

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This is the second installment of the Real Deal on Weight Loss Herbs. The first one is about dandelions and tamarind.

Although licorice root will satisfy sweet cravings, it can interfere with heart medications, cause cardiac arrhythmia (or irregular heartbeat), and even result in a heart attack. Licorice root can also force the body to use up its stored potassium, which can lead to muscle pain or weakness.

Another popular medication is St. John’s Wort, which purportedly raises one’s mood and keeps one from getting depressed. Depression often drives people to eat; so by controlling depression (or stress, which St. John’s Wort can also ease) this herb can allow you to lose weight, right?

Despite this promise, however, St. John’s Wort is not often produced in good enough quality in over the counter medication. You also cannot take St. John’s Wort with red wine, yeast-based foods, or cheese, and you need to take it along with your meals to keep from getting an upset stomach.

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Weight loss herbs are taking over the market, and you might be bombarded with message after message of promises. Some weight loss herb marketing messages will even say that they are from all-natural products – which can sometimes trick people into believing that such herbs are harmless, and that these people no longer need to consult a doctor before taking these herbs. But how reliable are weight loss herbs, and can they really work?

There are many purported weight loss herbs on the market, and they each have to be examined for reliability and safety. Here are only a few examples that you might want to look at before taking that container from the shelf and bringing it to the cash register.

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Weight loss is not only a priority for many people, but it can be big business for many enterprising individuals who see a market for meals in the form of shakes, abdominal shaping machines, and exercise foods that are purportedly designed to help you lose weight with every bite. But how reliable are these products, and can they really help you lose weight?

In the current weight loss and fitness market, abdominal machines seem to be taking the biggest chunk of exercise and fitness equipment. Energy bars and sports drinks are widely advocated as good food substitutes for people who need to have an extra boost, whether they are exercising, studying, or working.

When television commercials talk about a balanced diet, they show pictures of green, leafy salads, and not much else. But are these truly friendly to people who are watching their weight?

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People who are trying hard to lose weight consider bread, especially whitebread, as one of their enemy foods. This is because bread is known to contain lots of carbohydrate that makes losing weight harder.

Actually, carbohydrate per se, is not the culprit but simple carbohydrates. If you’d like to lose weight, aim for complex carbohydrates. But there’s also something interesting about food rich in protein making one lose weight more than food rich in carbohydrates.

Working with researchers from University of WA, a Fremantle bakery called Bodi’s Bakehouse made a bread that’s dubbed as Slimmer’s Choice. This weight loss bread is rich in protein but not in carbohydrate, making people who eat it feel full longer compared with ordinary breads.

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There’s this fallacy about sports and energy drinks not having any calorie.

One fact that you have to be aware of is that a calorie is not a molecule or something that you can get out of a can to mix with your drink.

A calorie is a unit of energy, and it is something you need to get you going: different molecules, such as carbohydrates and fats, provide your body with energy.

Fat molecules, on the average, provide four more times energy than carbohydrate molecules.

So if an energy drink needs to provide you with energy, it should also have molecules that will give you calories! Sports and energy drinks have carbohydrates and electrolytes: the carbohydrates are designed to give you energy, while the electrolytes will allow your body to keep its fluid balance, which is important when you are sweating and losing water.

Such drinks can help you maintain your energy during your long workout sessions, but if you are counting calories without exercising, then you are wasting your time.

[image from jaydee]

Tags: sports, energy, drink, calories, workout, weight loss

Now more than ever, Americans need to lose weight. More than half of the population is reportedly obese or overweight, thanks to calorie-laden food and a lack of a good nutrition plan. If you’ve decided it’s time to make a change on your lifestyle and diet, it may be time to start choosing the best diet plan. If only it were that easy.

The problem with too many diet plan choices
When weight control and diets are easily two of the most common topics around, you’d think that it would be a breeze to find the best diet plan for you. Unfortunately, that is not often the case. From Atkins to South Beach to the Zone, there’s plenty of diet plans to go around to make everyone look like a supermodel. Continue reading →

Mediterranean culture, lifestyle, sights, and people are something that the whole world founds incredibly attractive, but recent studies have suggested that adopting their way of eating can improve your health and weight.

The Mediterranean diet is unlike the usual fare of Americans. It consists of lots of fruits and vegetables, very little red meat, the occasional red wine, a good amount of fish, and a few helpings of nuts. Mediterranean people don’t view fats as totally evil, but there are certain types that they consciously avoid. Most dishes are cooked using olive oil as well.

At Emory University, a short-term study revealed that the Mediterranean diet offered healthy benefits for the heart. The British Medical Journal Thorax, on the other hand, had reported findings where the Mediterranean diet could lead to selective cancer protection, lower heart risks, and longer life. They did, however, emphasize the need for further research to ascertain if the Mediterranean environment, culture and lifestyle as well as genetics could have contributed to the effects.

As for weight loss, some experts say that the Mediterranean diet is essentially a health plan rather than a weight loss program. The Mediterranean may, nevertheless, pull down your weight as it improves your health. An overweight man, for instance, may lose approximately six to eight pounds within two weeks of sticking to a Mediterranean diet while an overweight woman may lose four to six pounds in the same period. After the first two weeks, followers of the Mediterranean diet can still look forward to losing one to two more pounds on the subsequent weeks.

The Mediterranean diet can be safely followed for one and a half months, but beyond that, it’s best that you consult your doctor first.

[image from hydroxi]

Tags: Meditteranean diet, Mediterranean food, weight loss

What does a common spice got to do with weight loss? If you believe reports that it’s the newest all-natural diet supplement to help shed those extra pounds, then it’s time you get to know cayenne pepper.

The cayenne pepper diet supplement is also called the Master Cleanse Diet, due to its purported capability of flushing toxins out of the body. Combined with other ingredients, it supposedly helped Beyonce Knowles lose 20 lbs. in just two weeks.

The cayenne pepper diet supplement is made with water, maple syrup, lime or lemon juice and of course, cayenne pepper. The diet was invented by Stanley Burroughs, who wrote about it in his 1976 book, ‘The Master Cleanser’. When it first came out, this diet was supposed to detoxify the body and treat ulcers. It resurfaced as a weight loss solution in 2004, thanks to Peter Glickman’s book.

So will it really help detoxify your body and help you lose weight?
The caloric content of one glass is approximately 100 calories. If you take about six to ten glasses a day, that will come down to just 600 to 1,000 calories. Considering that an average person needs at least 2,000 calories a day, you certainly will be feeding yourself way less than your body requires.

This diet involves fasting, which means you’ll be starving a lot. You will lose fat because the body will need to feed itself. For somebody who is healthy, one or two days of not eating might not be too bad, but if it lasts longer than that, the body begins to break down the muscles for more food.

Is it for you? If you want to lose weight fast and temporarily, the cayenne pepper diet supplement will work well, provided you are well aware of the risk. But don’t bother with the detoxifying feature of this diet because your body is naturally equipped to do this without help.

via Healthy Weight Forum and Lemon Detox

[image from ckaiserca]