Biggest Loser - Weight loss blog

If you have excess weight or are obese, you need to get started on a weight loss plan right away. There is also a good chance that you might be suffering from associated health risks like heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure or high levels of cholesterol. This is why you need to lose weight and that too without wasting any time.

Reduce calorie intake for weight loss
Start counting your calories to achieve effective weight loss. Consult a health expert to know just how many calories are suitable for your overweight body. Also, learn about ways and means to cut down on your caloric intake and how this reduction is going to impact your health. When it comes to cutting down on calories, you need to maintain a perfect balance between a high caloric count and low caloric count. Some people might consider cutting down as many calories as they can, but this can have a detrimental affect on their body.

Smart nutrition plan for successful weight loss
So what is smart nutrition all about? Well, even if you are overweight or suffer from obesity, you still need to eat. There are some enthusiastic dieticians who might ask you to eat minimally and control your hunger pangs. But a smart nutrition plan is all about cutting down on non-essentials and providing your body with essential nutrients that are going to improve its overall functioning. An example of this can be healthy snacking. Obese people can snack as much or as less as the next person. But while someone else is eating those greasy fries, a smart nutritional plan will mean that the obese person will snack on fruits rather than fatty fries.

Both, a reduced calorie diet and a smart nutritional plan are not all about cutting down on the amount of food that you eat. It’s more about eating right and making sure that you stay away from all kinds of unhealthy food.

‘Dieting’ does not necessarily mean eating less to lose weight; although, this word is primarily associated with weight loss. But the word ‘diet’ also describes the food that you normally consume on a day to day basis. The aim is to improve your day to day diet by incorporating gradual but permanent changes so that you lose weight while still remaining healthy; restricting calorie intake may not always give you the desired results.

Low calorie and fad diets could have serious health implications — insufficient vitamin and nutritional intake, lethargy, reduced metabolism, hormonal effects and even dehydration. Dieters are commonly known to experience intense feelings of hunger and deprivation; this then leads to ‘binge’ eating over time.

Here are a few tips on how you can cut calories sensibly without ‘dieting’ or feeling deprived.

• Research shows that recording exercise and food intake is one of the best predictors of successful weight loss
• Understand your eating patterns as well as eating triggers
• Learn how to make sensible nutritional changes
• Read food labels as this is the key to healthy portion sizes
• Measure portion sizes
• Hold the fat; fats from olive oil and canola are healthy. Similarly, nuts are nutritious and healthy to eat but in moderation
• Limit the amount of oil used by using non-stick pans
• Skimp on butters, dressings and creams, using just enough for taste
• Blot out the fat from greasy foods
• Spice up foods, flavour with red peppers or chilli peppers; this helps boost metabolism

It is believed that making changes to your diet, that is, replacing high-fat and high-calorie foods with fruits and vegetables that are high in volume, fibre and nutrients, can in fact make you feel full faster. Similarly, whole foods are low in calories but loaded with good health

Alcohol is a favourite pastime for most people; but alcohol contains 7 calories per gram, as well as lowers self-control when a person eats after drinking in excess. So it makes good sense to limit your alcohol intake or drink in moderation after a meal.

Water is the elixir of life! Drinking water throughout the day helps curb your appetite, burns calories and gives body at least 10 minutes more energy for exercise. Lowered water levels in your body can slow down your metabolism.

For a healthy lifestyle, follow a diet that is easy to stick with, try incorporating some or all of these easy strategies to reduce calories without giving up the pleasures of eating.

Every individual’s body has a set pace for its weight-control or weight-related functions such as appetite, hunger, metabolic rate, fat and sugar metabolism and calorie expenditure; however, we have been wired to operate more efficiently with an optimum intake of vitamins.

There are a number of weight loss vitamins which assist an individual in his/her weight loss programme. Almost all the vitamins play a crucial role in maintaining optimum health and weight, and many operate synergistically, to help maintain weight at its optimum level.

The most important vitamins and minerals for weight loss are: Vitamin B2, Vitamin B3, Vitamin B5, Vitamin B6, Choline (part of B-complex), Inositol (part of B-complex), and Vitamin C.

Vitamin B2, also called riboflavin, is essential for normal thyroid function and body metabolism. Good food sources of vitamin B2 include: Milk, liver and kidney, almonds, hard cheese, eggs, wheatgerm, leafy green vegetables, as well as marmite.

Vitamin B3, also called niacin, is essential for normal thyroid hormone production. Moreover, this vitamin is very much a part of the glucose tolerance factor (GTF) which is released every time the blood sugar rises. Good food sources of vitamin B3 include: Wheat bran, liver, tuna, turkey, chicken, meat, eggs, mackerel, salmon, oats, barley, wheat flakes, cheese, dried fruit and brown rice.

Vitamin B5, also known as pantothenic acid, aids in fat utilization, thereby playing an important role in energy production as well as in assisting adrenal function. Good food sources of vitamin B5 include: Liver and kidney, meat, poultry, nuts, wheat flakes, wheat bran, wheatgerm, eggs, molasses, oats, barley, beans, wholegrain bread and green vegetables.

Vitamin B6, also known as pyridoxine, helps regulate the production of thyroid hormone and metabolism. Good food sources of vitamin B6 are: Brewer’s yeast, wheat bran, wheatgerm, oats, sardines, mackerel, poultry, beef, avocado, bananas, brown rice, cabbage, dried fruit, molasses and eggs.

Choline, a member of the Vitamin B complex group, it is not a real vitamin as it is made in the liver. However, this vitamin is essential for effective fat metabolism. Its deficiency leads to fats becoming trapped in the liver. Good sources of Choline include: Lecithin, beef liver, beef heart, egg yolks, wheatgerm, cauliflower, cucumber and peanuts.

Inositol, also a member of the vitamin B complex group, it is also manufactured inside the body like Choline. Inositol works to combine with Choline to assist in fat metabolism. Inositol comes from: Lecithin, beef heart, beef liver, wheatgerm, soy, eggs, citrus fruits, whole grains and nuts.

Vitamin C provides a range of health benefits, including proper conversion of glucose to energy in the cells. Good food sources of vitamin C include: Blackcurrants, broccoli, green peppers, kiwi fruits, Brussels sprouts, lemons, oranges, strawberries and cabbage.

Although, cutting calories and exercising have long been touted as the best ways to shed pounds, vitamins that people consume also affect how efficiently the body can help you lose weight.

High Cholesterol Treatments

The main goal for treating high cholesterol is to lower the LDL levels enough to reduce the risk of developing heart disease. The higher the risk, the lower the LDL goal must be. There are two main ways to treat high cholesterol:

Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes (TLC):
This includes a cholesterol-lowering diet, physical activity, and weight management. TLC is meant for anyone who has elevated LDL levels. TLC is a set of things that a person has to follow in order to achieve the targeted low levels of LDL cholesterol. TLC consists of:

The TLC Diet: This diet consists of a low-saturated-fat, low-cholesterol eating plan that begets less than:

• 7% of calories from saturated fat
• 200mg of dietary cholesterol per day

This diet recommends only limited calories for desirable weight maintenance and avoiding weight gain. LDL levels can also be lowed by increasing the amount of soluble fiber in the diet. Certain food products that contain plant stanols or plant sterols can also be added to the TLC diet to boost its LDL-lowering power.

Weight Management: Weight loss can also help lower LDL levels and this is especially important for those with a cluster of risk factors that include high triglyceride and/or low HDL levels and being overweight with a large waist circumference (more than 40 inches for men and more than 35 inches for women).

Physical Activity: Regular physical activity is recommended for everyone. It can help raise HDL levels and lower LDL levels. This is especially important for those people who have high triglyceride and/or low HDL levels and are overweight with a large waist measurement.

Drug Treatment: Cholesterol-lowering drugs are used in combination with TLC treatment to achieve positive results.

Any drug treatment to lower cholesterol is best combined with lifestyle changes to achieve positive and long-term results. This will help keep you on low doses of medicine. Several cholesterol lowering drug treatments include:

• Statins: These drugs, including Crestor, effectively lower LDL levels and are safe for most people
• Bile acid sequestrates: Also help lower LDL levels and can be used alone or in combination with statin drugs
• Nicotinic acid: Helps lower LDL levels and triglycerides while raising HDL levels
• Fibric acids: Helps lower LDL levels somewhat but are used mainly to treat high triglyceride and low HDL levels
• Cholesterol absorption inhibitors: helps lower LDL levels and can be used alone or in combination with statin drugs

Your doctor is the best person to help decide which type of drug is best for you.

To further reduce high cholesterol you must control other risk factors like:

• High blood pressure
• Stress
• Smoking

Lowering cholesterol levels brings on certain benefits:

• For every one percent fall in blood cholesterol levels, you reduce your risk for heart disease by two percent
• Even in patients with heart disease, lowering cholesterol levels will significantly reduce the risk for death and disability
• As blood cholesterol exceeds 220 ml/dl (milligrams per deciliter), risk for heart disease increases at a more rapid rate
• Blood cholesterol levels must be measured at least once every five years in all adults

Finding a weight loss programme is easy but it is extremely tough to stay committed to it. This article offers you helpful tips to keep you motivated for weight loss so that you can achieve lasting results.

• Drink lots of water – Drinking plenty of plain unflavoured water throughout the day helps to revitalize the body’s cells and help them to operate more efficiently. As a result, you get more energy for exercising to burn off fat. Besides, water acts as a solvent for many vitamins and minerals. It also enables transfer of nutrients into and wastes out of cells, which helps the body to function properly.
• You need to exercise – Excessive dieting is not the right solution for healthy weight loss. Take up an activity that you enjoy or plan your exercise regime with a friend. This can keep you motivated and enjoy the weight loss process, instead of making it look like a chore.
• Take a diet plan which is sustainable for long – Don’t commit yourself to a diet plan that restricts you from eating your favourite food or makes you eat food that you hate. It is likely that you won’t stick to it for long. Go for moderate dieting plans that you can continue successfully for long.
• Find out why you overeat – Many people are inclined to go on binge eating when they are stressed, depressed, lonely, angry or bored. The idea is to identify your eating triggers and address them without food. This can help you maintain your weight loss for a long term.
• Incorporate lot of fibre in your diet – A better way to lose weight is to curb your hunger pangs by increasing your intake of dietary fibre such as fruits, vegetables and wholegrain cereals. This is because dietary fibre is quite filling; it makes you feel full even if you eat less.
• Consume low-fat food – Fat contains more than twice the amount of calories/gm than protein or carbohydrates. So when you cut down fat in your diet you automatically reduce energy intake without reducing food intake too much. Experts believe you should not consume more than 25% of your calories from fat - and that fat should be the “non-saturated” type.
• Motivate yourself on being healthy, not on becoming thin – By changing the perception you can keep your spirits high. Experts believe that people should train their mind towards eating healthier food rather that worrying about foods that affect your body’s weight. This helps you stay committed towards weight loss.

With numerous weight loss treatments in the market promising quick results, Tesofensine is another breakthrough in similar line of products. Tesofensine promises to produce a weight loss that is twice of what currently approved drugs can do for you. However, the drug is still in phase III trials to prove for its efficacy and safety.

Tesofensine is being tested by Neurosearch, a Danish pharmaceutical company. Tesofensine is categorized as a serotonin-noradrenaline-dopamine reuptake inhibitor. Inhibiting these chemicals to be reabsorbed by central nervous system suppress ones appetite, or make one feel full. Under trials patients continuing with 0.5mg tesofensine achieved a total weight loss of 12-13kg at 24 weeks. So it may have the potential to achieve greater reductions in weight as compared to other similar drugs in the market.

Obesity has become the number one preventable cause of death in many developed countries. It is caused due to the unhealthy eating habits of people combined with a sedentary lifestyle. Obesity can lead to various serious health problems and is often a precursor of health problems such as diabetes, blood pressure, fatigue, sleeping problems, joint pain and many more. Obesity or weight gain must be addressed on time to avoid it from developing into morbid obesity. The body mass index for morbid obesity is 40, obesity is 30 and overweight is 27+.

How to select the best weight loss pills?
You should start using weight loss pills if your BMI is more than 27, so that you don’t become obese. There are many weight loss pills on the market; they can be classified as over-the-counter weight loss pills and prescription pills. Out of both these types of pills, prescription pills are clinically tested and approved by health authorities whereas, over-the-counter pills are not tested or proven and health authorities have no regulation over them. So it is safer to opt for prescription pills. Select best weight loss pills after doing some research online and find out about the pros and cons of all prescription pills.

Which are the effective prescription weight loss pills?
The two most popular prescription weight loss pills are Reductil and Xenical. Both these pills effectively help you to lose weight but in different ways. Reductil is an appetite suppressant and helps people by making them feel less hungry to control their diet whereas Xenical is a fat blocker and does not allow the fat from the diet to be absorbed by your body. Depending on your need and body type, a doctor can help you determine which pill will be the most effective for you. For instance, if your weight gain is due to increased calories and you can’t control your calorie intake, Reductil might be effective for you. But if your problem is excess amount of fat in the body, Xenical might be the right option for you.

How can you buy weight loss pills online?
Once you find out which of the weight loss pills is right for you, you can buy it online. It is very simple and convenient to buy weight loss pills online. There are many online clinics that offer a free consultation with a registered doctor, free shipping and many other attractive deals. Also, this method is very discreet. However, there is one drawback of buying online. Some of the websites are involved in fraudulent practices such as personal information and credit card information theft, spamming and selling your private information to third parties. Some also charge your credit card more than the said price with ‘hidden charges’. This makes it very important for you to take lots of precautions when you buy weight loss pills online.

Make sure you buy weight loss pills from a website that is located in your country and has a telephone number and correspondence address listed in the ‘contact us’ page of the website.

Source of Information: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/weight-loss-pills-frequently-asked-questions-answered.html