Jennifer, a middle-aged single mother with one six-year-old daughter, has been skipping sweets for a few weeks now. She’s also become a stickler for portion control. She feels as if she’s eating less than ever, and she’s been diligently exercising for an hour at a time at least four days a week. Yet, she hasn’t lost a single pound. The question is, “Why?”

This is a dilemma which affects dieters the world over. They think they are taking the steps necessary to lose weight, but nothing seems to be happening. In essence, they are trapped in a dieting rut and they don’t know how to free themselves. As a result, they become frustrated and depressed and may then engage in binge eating.

One of the problems with diets is that they are often standardized. As a result, they don’t take into consideration your individual physiology and metabolism. They provide a cookie-cutter approach to weight loss—an approach which may not work in your individual case. As a result, an increasing number of people are turning to dieticians to formulate a person weight loss strategy for them. This process has been made easier through the Internet, where you can correspond with a dietician any time of the day or night via e-mail. The dietician can also act as your personal coach, helping you through your dieting dilemmas.

Another reason that you may be failing at your diet is because of a lack of support. You may have family members who can eat whatever they want and seemingly not gain a pound. As a result, they may fill your refrigerator with junk food, leading you into temptation. Also, you may feel as if you have no one to turn to in order to discuss your weight problems. In order to solve this problem, many individuals look to psychotherapists to help them with their food-related issues. This can be particularly important if an individual has turned to purging in an effort to combat their weight problems. Bulimia is a serious disease which must be treated in order to ensure the good health of the patient. Thankfully, there are a number of treatment programs throughout the U.S. specifically focusing on bulimia.

Yet another reason for diet failure is hidden calories. You may literally be consuming calories and not even realize it. For instance, the frappucinos that are so popular today are loaded with calories—as many as 600 in a single serving! You may also be indulging in sugary sodas—another source of extra calories. By taking a few simple steps, such as eliminating the exotic coffee drinks from your diet and substituting skim milk for whole milk, you may be able to eliminate the hidden calories that are denying you dieting success.

Lack of consistency can also be a diet-killer. You might go on a diet for a while, then quit before you’ve made any measurable progress. It’s only natural to want to see quick results. The problem is that healthy weight loss involves losing only a couple of pounds a week. That means you’ll have to stay on your diet for months before you see appreciable weight loss. Discouraging? It can be, but if you keep a positive attitude you can achieve your ideal weight.

You may also be more successful in your dieting if you consider it to be a lifestyle change. Therefore, your diet becomes a meal plan for life. This means that you must change the way you look at food. It is designed to be fuel for your body, and nothing more. As a result, you should not turn to food to make you feel better or to provide you with a sense of comfort. A lifestyle change implies commitment; it means that you are prepared to follow the plan for the long haul. If you feel as if you cannot be on your diet for any appreciable length of time, perhaps it’s time to consider a different diet. Your aim ultimately should be not simply to lose weight, but to become healthier. A fad diet will not allow you to reach that milestone. Therefore, you must choose your diet carefully.

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Why Weight Loss Resolutions Don’t Work
If you’re like many people out there, you’ve promised
yourself to do something different this year. Probably to
drop a few pounds by eating better, exercising more and
living a healthier lifestyle.

And if you’re like a good number of people who made
themselves a promise, you may have already broken it - you
may not have made it a week or through the month of January.

Even if you have stayed faithful to your promise so far,
chances are all your good intentions will go out the window
before you live up to your resolution…

That’s why I don’t make resolutions any more.

I set goals instead.

Here’s the difference:

Resolutions usually don’t work. Goals do.

Here’s why:

Resolutions aren’t specific enough. They also tend to be
absolute and rigid.

Resolutions tend to sound like this:

I will eat better this year.

Sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it? But, what does
“better” mean? If you eat one less Cheeto or French fry
over 365 days, have you stuck to your resolution? I don’t
think so. And, if you count that as success, you’re just
cheating yourself.

So, you’ve failed. Because “eating better in 2008″ means
to be perfect for the whole year. Hey, the first time a
slice of pizza or piece of candy passes your lips - your
resolution is a goner - better luck next year.

Goals, on the other hand, when written (note that term!)
the right way are specific and have a specific time
attached to them. That’s what makes them powerful.

A goal might look like this:

I will weigh 175 by March 1, 2008.

Now you have a measurable goal and a time frame in which to
do it.

But, here’s the real magic in goals. If you don’t reach
that weight by that date… no problem. Simply extend the
date (and you don’t have to wait all the way until the next
January one).

Will you have failed if you get down to your goal weight by
April 1st instead? Or May? Or June? I think not.

And what if you only make 176 by the first of March? Is
that so bad? I’ll bet you made a lot more progress than
you would have without goals…

Most times, resolutions set you up to fail because they
require you to be perfect.

Goals set you up for success because they are fluid and
flexible - they allow you to be human while still moving
forward - as long as you keep the target in your sights.

If you’ve set resolutions already - change them to goals.

If you haven’t set anything yet… well, you get the
picture.

Heed this advice and have your best year ever. Ignore it
and you’ll watch another year pass you by without getting
where you want to go.

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Most people trying to lose weight have heard the recommendation to decrease their intake of high-carbohydrate foods, such as sugary foods, bread, cereal, pasta, etc., but a lot of people are not aware of why this recommendation is so critical to burning fat and losing weight. After all, even some doctors think that all calories are the same and the only thing necessary to lose weight is to eat fewer calories than you use up through exercise and daily activities. Due to certain hormones though, not all calories are handled the same way by the body, and the calories from carbohydrates are much more difficult to burn than the calories from other types of foods,and a high carbohydrate intake certainly makes one prone to storing fat and not burning it.

At the heart of the matter is the hormone insulin. The function of insulin is to stimulate the cells to take up sugar from the bloodstream (when blood sugar is high, as it typically is shortly after eating) and store it for reserve energy.

The surplus of sugar in the bloodstream is initially stored in the tissues of the liver and large muscles in the form of glycogen. Glycogen can be quickly converted back to blood sugar when needed for energy to fuel sudden bursts of activity. The available storage space for glycogen is pretty limited, and when insulin has caused the glycogen storage to be filled up, the remaining excess blood sugar is stored as fat.

There is considerably more storage space in the body for fat than there is for glycogen. There are billions of fat cells in the body, each of which can enlarge to over 100 times it’s original size to accomodate extra fat storage. As an aside, this is why it is possible to get fat again after liposuction - even if you remove many of the body’s fat cells, those that remain can enlarge considerably to store fat.

Insulin is extremely powerful in its fat storage effects. In fact, not only does it stimulate fat storage, high levels of insulin block the effects of the body’s fat burning mechanisms. It is for this reason that minimizing the intake of high-carb foods is so important.

High carbohydrate intake (and it really doesn’t need to be very high) stimulates the release of large quantities of insulin. Large amounts of circulating insulin will strongly inhibit the body from being able to burn fat for a period of 1 to 2 days! In fact, a single meal containing 20 to 25 grams of refined carbohydrates (about the amount in a slice of sandwich bread) can completely block your ability to burn fat for 1 to 2 days - regardless of what you eat and how much or how hard you may exercise during that time.

Some people mayhave doubts about that last statement as it is certainly possible to eat a lot of carbs and lose weight - for a while anyway. Notice that I said that high carbohydrate intake causes high insulin production that blocks FAT burning. It is still possible to eliminate retained water (which will produce weight loss), and it is still possible to burn calories, but the calories you do burn will not be from fat, they will be from glycogen and your lean body tissue, primarily your large muscles. As you may be aware, lean body tissue (muscle) is highly metabolically active, and if you burn that tissue, ultimately your metabolism will slow down, making it harder and harder to lose weight.

Because of the effects of insulin, minimizing carbohydrate intake is strongly recommended for sustainable fat burning and the most efficient and lasting natural weight loss. Now, not every person will do well to go on the Atkins diet and eat only protein and fat. Excessive protein intake can create its own problems that can ultimately interfere with ongoing weight loss due to detrimental effects on the liver. Instead, the best diet program in most intances involves eating plenty of fresh or frozen vegetables and fruits, nuts, seeds, and moderate quantities of protein from lean meats, fish, eggs, and dairy. The carbohydrates you do consume are best obtained in high-fiber forms from vegetables, fruits, seeds, and nuts, rather than from refined grains.

A few diet plans will recommend a low carbohydrate intake, yet suggest allowing yourself a “reward” of some high-carbohydrate food like a cookie or other sweet as often as once per week. I disagree with this recommendation as it can sabotage your natural weight loss program on two levels. First, as we’ve been discussing, the carbs will trigger a high insulin release which will shut off your ability to burn fat for up to two days. So, at once per week, you could lose as much as 8 days per month of potential fat burning - decreasing the effectiveness of your diet by as much as 25%! The other problem is that eating carbs tends to set you up for carb cravings. At the very least, such cravings will test your will-power, and they could cause you to cheat on your diet repeatedly. This could ultimately doom your diet to total failure. My advice is to save your carbohydrate consumption for special occasions only - which should be limited to once per month or less.

Hopefully you now have a better understanding of why high carbohydrate consumption is so damaging to a natural weight loss plan. If you commit to a healthy diet and avoid the carbs for 2 to 3 weeks, you will likely find that you don’t really miss them after that period of time and so avoiding them becomes much easier. With a little extra effort early on, you’ll find that eating a healthy diet becomes natural to you and you’ll be able to reach your long-term weight goals.

Article Source: http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard

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If you’ve ever gone on a diet,you’ve learned two things: dieting is no fun. And even if you lose some weight,you usually gain it back. But why is that?

There is plenty of medical evidence to prove that dieting actually can make you fat. And that happens because your body goes to war with any weight loss diet. They aren’t natural and the body craves only a natural state of being. So as you struggle to find a weight loss diet that works, your body makes it tougher and tougher for that unnatural state to persist, which results in the negative effects of yo yo dieting: weight gain.

In this article, we examine the physical reasons why your body sabotages your efforts to diet. We’ll also look at ways to overcome them so your weight loss diet has a better chance of working.

Defense Mechanisms Overview

Our bodies have defense mechanisms that evolved in us throughout history. In early times, food shortages required the body to accumulate fat stores to protect against the lean times. And to this day,our bodies are still programmed this way, even though it’s no longer needed.

So when we go on a diet, the body thinks hard times are here so it goes into fat-storage mode to protect us. The more dieting you do, the more your body thinks it has to store fat. Your task,if you want to lose weight, is to outsmart the following defense mechanisms.

Metabolism

We often use the word metabolism - “I have a slow metabolism”, “I have a fast metabolism.” But what does it really mean in terms of a weight loss diet?

Metabolism refers to all the processes occurring in the body that are responsible for life: your heartbeat, your body temperature, breathing, and the burning of calories to create energy. Your metabolism determines how many calories your body burns to do its job. That’s how your metabolism can be influenced by any weight loss diet that restricts calories.

Repeated diets cause your body to slow down its metabolism in order to become more efficient and continue running on fewer calories.But when you end your diet and return to a normal caloric intake, your body isn’t used to burning all those calories, so it stores the leftover ones as fat. So to prevent that, you now have to eat much less than before just to maintain your new weight. In other words: your diet can never end in order to be successful. And a diet without end is a dire prospect for most of us.

Fat-Storing Enzymes

LPL enzymes store fat. That’s their job. When you diet, the LPL become more active and grow in number. The problem is, when you finish your diet, the LPL levels don’t return to normal until you regain most of the weight you lost.Another way your body makes weight loss dieting very difficult. (Don’t worry, we’ll provide some sensible weight loss diet suggestions that DO work at the end of this article.)

Calorie Absorption

When you diet, your intestines get super efficient at absorbing calories. They go into overdrive, trying to fully stock the body with nutrients by getting as many calories out of the food you eat as possible, not letting any pass out of the body. So the result is logical: dieting makes your intestines very good at absorbing and storing up calories. Exactly what you don’t want when you’re on a weight loss diet to lose pounds.

The Body Fat Dilemma

Poor dieting can make you fatter than you were before. That’s because when you lose the weight, it often comes from water and muscles. But when you gain it back, it returns in the form of fat. So you wind up with a higher proportion of fat to lean muscle than you had before.

Hormonal Disruptions

Low cal weight loss diets make your thyroid gland produce less of the hormone that regulates metabolism. And that can reduce your calorie burning ability by up to 15%. Not helpful for anyone trying to lose weight.

Skipping Breakfast

Missing meals may be the worst kind of weight loss diet because calories taken early in the day are burned off faster than those eaten at night. So skipping breakfast and eating more in the evening actually contributes to the weight problem. In fact, eating all your daily calories for breakfast can lead to weight loss, eating them all at night leads to weight gain.

Training Your Stomach

Overeating at meal time stretches out the stomach.That trains it to want more food in order to get that full feeling. But people who eat small meals more often need and want less food. The stomach can be trained over time to adapt to smaller meals and snacks taken throughout the day. When the stomach is smaller, it will fill faster and demand less food.

Beating Your Body’s Defense Mechanisms

As promised, here are some ways to override your body’s defenses and create a sensible, effective weight loss diet that really works:

1. Don’t yo-yo diet. Come up with a healthy weight loss diet plan and see it through until you get results.
2. Don’t drop calorie intake below 1,000 a day. The body sees this as a threat. Instead, eat enough calories that contain the right balance of nutrients like proteins and carbs while reducing fats.
3. Include fiber in any weight loss diet plan. It helps food and fats pass through the intestines quickly, rather than getting absorbed in the form of calories.
4. Avoid simple carbs like sugars: they are quickly absorbed by the body as blood sugar which increases insulin - the enemy of weight loss diets.
5. Drink caffeine in moderation for the same reason. It stimulates insulin secretion.
6. Never go hungry. Eating regular meals and snacks will help eliminate those dangerous cravings and keep your body’s defense mechanisms from going into starvation mode.
7. Eat more of your daily calories early in the day and less of them later.
8. Be content with slow weight loss. This prevents the body from going on defense and allows the weight loss to continue gradually.
9. Keep the weight off with exercise.

One More Thing

Even following these guidelines, some people who are obese or very overweight find it difficult to lose weight. For them, medication may help to support their weight loss diet.

Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/why-most-weight-loss-diets-dont-work-264588.html

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Weight loss is a common problem millions of Americans today struggle with. Very few Americans have been successful at losing a desired amount of weight.

The main problem is that most cannot stick to the designated program. For instance, a general weight loss program includes both diet as well as exercise. Most of the time an individual trying to lose weight will at least attempt one of these. Often times what happens is that the exercise may be too strenuous for that person since they must have lacked exercise for so long going back to why they are in such shape.

Another perspective is the diet. Most people looking to lose weight are usually in this pandemic because of eating not only food with high amounts of sugars and fats, but also food in high quantities of these fats ans sugars. This becomes a significant problem because changing old habits for anyone is such a difficult process especially in America since you can’t walk two feet out your door without seeing a McDonald’s.

So in the end dieting or weight loss in general is such a difficult process because of the extreme new “way of life” you would have to adapt to. A recent statistic said that of those who fail to reach an ideal weight goal in a diet actually gain more weight trying the diet rather then losing.

The reason for this is once you “give in,” you start “binge eating” meaning you eats almost everything in site with no restrictions. This is a one negative impact of dieting viewed by many.

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Hoodia Gordonii is an unambitious little South African desert cactus type plant that has a big future ahead of it. A gift from the native San people who live in the Kalahari Desert in South Africa, this tiny plant the natives’ call “Xhoba” has already began impacting the world of weight loss with its extraordinary hunger stopping traits. What the Aboriginal San Bushmen have known for a long time and the rest of us are merely beginning to realize is that Hoodia has appetite suppressant qualities distinguished by plant scientists and named P57. This P57 active element has been examined, tested and identified to have the power to reduce calorie intake by up to 1,000 calories a day.

So will any South African cactus do when it comes to helping you to stay away from snacks? Indeed not, don’t go to the local florist and buy yourself a desert cactus to eat. Of the succulent and asclepiad genus there are 2,000 species of ascleoiadaceae, divided into 300 genera, half from the succulent category. Hoodia Pseudolithos and Trichocaulon are members of the Trichocaulon sub-section from the Kalahari Desert region of S. Africa that touches Angola, Botswana and Namibia. Hoodia Gordonii is the name of the cactus you will want to get but don’t plan on taking a outing to the South Africa and getting some Hoodia cacti for yourself; the Hoodia desert cactus are under strict control by the S. African government. It is considered an endangered plant and only Hoodia cactus farmers with certification may produce and sell the Hoodia.

Can Hoodia affect the world’s obesity problem and help the planet be a slimmer place? Business organizations including, Council for Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), Phytopharm, Pfizer and most recently Slim Fast all believe so. All of these companies have banked on Hoodia’s success and together have invested millions of dollars, wanting to corner the marketplace on weight loss. Looking at Hoodia’s journey from Xhoba, plant of The San Bushmen to being today’s miracle plant for weight loss we need to first look at where Hoodia’s been over the past thirty plus years. The greatest amount of time, CSIR analyzed Hoodia to isolate the molecule p57, once they eventually obtained it; they then sold the rights of p57 to Phytopharm. In 1998 The Phytopharm Company leased marketing rights to Pfizer, who invested thirty-two million only to subsequently drop out of the scene because p57 was too expensive to synthesize as a pill. Pfizer’s situation has now been taken over by The Unilever Corporation, the parent company of Slim Fast. Slim Fast at present plans on delivering a Hoodia weight loss supplement to nutritional stores in a couple years.

Almost a year ago, on November of 2004, the Hoodia plant contracted big media coverage when CBS’s Sixty Minutes did a show on Hoodia’s appetite suppressant qualities. With the 60 minute TV exposure, Hoodia was now wanted plant by dieters all-round the globe. People having a hard time staying on their diets desired Hoodia now, not in a couple of years, the secret was out and Hoodia was becoming an indispensable plant. I’m sure after that 60 minutes program was aired, numbers of dieters looked into moving to the Kalahari Desert and making themselves a tiny Hoodia garden of their very own. Luckily, as it is today there isn’t a reason to go to that extent, where there is a consumer need; there are many businesses happy to fill that request.
There were a few businesses that were informed of Hoodia before the news coverage broke and were in the right place at the right time. It didn’t take long though for numerous other organizations to create associations with South African Hoodia Gordonii growers and get Hoodia supplements into stores.
Nowadays there are numerous brands marketing both Hoodia powder form and extracts; how long will the Hoodia plant supply last is the question on dieter’s minds right now. The Hoodia Gordonii succulent is a very hard plant to grow; the plants need very much care and management with irrigating, temperature and sunshine. Where it stands today there are only a couple of Hoodia harvesting centers in the South Africa and the Hoodia plant takes two to three years before it’s ready to be exported. Taking this into account, the multi-million dollar question is, for how many months can the Hoodia succulent plant export continue? Because of this situation buyers should be aware if the Hoodia they are getting has been independently tested and certified to be pure Hoodia Gordonii from South Africa. There are companies out there taking advantage of the great demand and interest in Hoodia and supplying a low quality product

http://www.articlebeach.com/index.php?page=article&article_id=53

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Let’s break down the title of this article a bit and make it more up close and personal. Let’s take your favorite aunt – call her Martha – and ask, “Why is Aunt Martha obese?”

The obvious answer is that she eats too much and exercises too little.

Martha certainly has plenty of company. There is ample evidence that docu