Weight Loss

Is Alli Even Worth It?

Alli is a fat binding diet pill that came out as a non-prescription alternative to its prescription twin Orlistat.  It’s just a slightly milder formula of the same fat binding pill that you take three times a day with meals. It is supposed to help your body pass fat through the body without digesting it.

This in turn helps you to lose weight and to help keep fat off undesirable areas of the body.  It simply passes right through your body, into your stool, which is part of the reason it has such a reputation for having embarrassing side effects.

These side effects include leakage, excessive gas and diarrhea. These symptoms get much worse the more fat you eat, so the company that makes the drug advises against consuming a lot of fat, and keeping it to a limited amount of grams (no more than 15 per meal) in order to avoid these types of problems.

However, some people have said that even though they stuck to that guideline, they still had the issues with the gas and the bloating and leakage and so forth.  There are plenty of horror stories online if you ever care to read any of the more unsavory stories of people’s experiences with Alli.

On the other hand, some people do say that Alli has helped them to lose weight. They say that it has helped them to get in the habit of reducing their dietary fat intake, and has also helped them develop the discipline they need as well as the taste to go away for high fat foods. Why? Simply because they were too embarrassed to endure the possible symptoms of eating fat!

What are some options to fat binding products like these that inevitably end up coming out the “other end”? Well, there have been some very promising studies done on green tea lately that show it may actually have a slight fat binding effect.

The study showed the mice who were fed a diet of vanilla shakes AND a green tea pill with every meal actually excreted more fat out in their stool versus the mice who were simply fed the shakes with nothing else. They also tended to maintain their weight better than the mice who did not get the green tea supplement.

The thought is that the ECGC contained in green tea actually helps to bind the fat and take it from the body better than nothing at all.

Arguments Against Liposuction, Gastric Bypass Surgery

Even though gastric bypass and lap band surgery have become phenomenally popular here in the US, where obesity is a dire health problem and pretty much an epidemic, there are many who say that its effects can still be temporary.

The same thing goes for liposuction, which is also an incredibly popular surgery. This one however, is a totally elective cosmetic surgery, whereas the other is considered medically necessary if the patient is having serious health issues that are related to their weight.

Liposuction is a surgery where the excess fat on the areas that tend to hold more fat, such as the thighs, belly, buttocks, and upper arms, is literally sucked out of you with a canula or suction rod. It can be very painful to recover from, as can gastric bypass, but the potential side effects and risks are not as high.

Lap band or gastric bypass surgery is where the patient’s stomach is literally made smaller by surgically making it smaller. It forces weight loss and dietary restriction because the patient cannot eat a lot of food, or a lot of fat for that matter, without getting sick.

Arguments against this popular surgery are that it can be very dangerous. Infections can set in, and sometimes people “eat through” their banded bellies, making it even more dangerous, and of course defeating the purpose of the weight loss surgery in the first place.

There have been some of these cases documented in celebrities who have had the surgery, lost a ton of weight, then gained a lot back after their eating habits returned, despite the ridiculous fullness it caused. This goes to show that eating isn’t simply related to stomach size, but it is also strongly related to emotions, and simply what we are used to.

Liposuction opponents say that the lipo does work in the short term, but you may gain the fat back in strange places that you never had fat before. It doesn’t really reduce cellulite per se, but it can make it look less obvious since there are less fat cells pushing against the bands of collagen that cause the puckered look.

There have been lots of documented cases where lipo patients have had the fat come back in odd places. The body carefully keeps tabs on the fat cells in the body, and if the predetermined amount of fat cells suddenly goes down dramatically, your body may react by either making more or making the ones that are left a lot larger.

Weight Loss and Hypothyroidism

Most of us with normal thyroid function tend to think it’s pretty hard to lose weight. Imagine how people with a slow thyroid feel. People with a slow thyroid, or with hypothyroidism, have a really hard time losing weight and often times have a hard time trying to maintain a normal healthy weight because of this problem.

Your thyroid gland is actually a seemingly inconsequential gland that is located in the neck, which helps to regulate your metabolism. It does this by essentially converting oxygen into energy.  When the thyroid is under active, it can slow the metabolism to such a point that the body is just not as efficient of a calorie burning machine.

Weight therefore, gets held on to more easily and people who have a hypothyroidism problem tend to have problems maintaining a good weight.  Many times people with this issue need to see an endocrine (hormone) specialist, since this is essentially considered a glandular function.

The opposit of hypothyroidism, hyperthyroidism, is where the gland actually speeds the metabolism up too much, and causes a person to have trouble holding on to body weight and body fat.  Sounds like a problem we’d all dream of having, but it’s not such a cakewalk for these people either as it often comes with other unsavory health issues.

If you have an under active thyroid gland, then you will most likely have to cut calories and exercise more than a person with an average performing thyroid, simply to make up for the gap that exists between the two.

There may be some medications that can help as well, but often times it depends on the patient’s discipline and drive to do it.  Medications may help, but often times it takes a lot of lifestyle changes to make it happen as well.

Lose More Weight Drinking Water Before Meals

It’s a well known fact that drinking a lot of purified water is excellent for your health in many ways. We know that drinking water replenishes our electrolytes, hydrates and nourishes our digestive systems, and pretty much keeps us alive. 

Heck, we know that we can’t go for more than a day without water without dying of dehydration, much less time than it would take us to starve to death, showing how much more important water is to our bodies than food for sustenance.

Water used to be talked about a lot as a weight loss aid. Then of course, the naysayers came out and talked about how they believed that too much water can actually sabotage weight loss goals. 

While it’s true that there is such a thing as water toxicity, where the body is so overwhelmed with water that it essentially shuts down, that is relaly only for extreme circumstances where someone has been drinking excessive water and not going to the bathroom to rid the body of it.

New research is proving that drinking lots of water helps you lose weight more quickly. In addition, the habit helps you keep the weight off for longer as well. 

The research shows specifically that those who drink at least two glasses of water before each meal tend to eat much less and also happen to lose weight at a much more rapid rate. They further keep it off longer if they keep that habit of drinking water before each meal as well.

Water does help to create a sense of fullness when it is taken in either right before a meal or along with a meal, so that’s one benefit. What could some of the other benefits of drinking water be when it comes to weight loss?

People who drank water before their meals actually ate an average of about 75 calories less per meal than those who did not drink the two glasses of water, actually. Those calories may not sound huge, but over time they certainly do add up and make your weight loss more dramatic and much quicker. 

What’s even more interesting is that apparently even a little bit of dehydration causes a significant drop in your metabolism. Therefore, it would logically follow that staying totally hydrated would help keep your metabolism functioning at peak levels. 

So, staying hydrated by drinking water really does help you to lose weight and to keep it off. Not only does water help you physically feel fuller in a manual way by taking up space in your stomach, but it also helps you to maintain a speedy metbolism to stay thin and trim.

Diet Competition is On!

My husband and I are sick and tired of not being able to fit properly in our summer clothes. We gained a little weight after a few weekends of family and friends and barbecues and such, and we really want to take off a little bit of weight.  I want to lose about 7 pounds – not too bad, I just want to be able to fit in my clothes again. It’s amazing what  huge different 7-8 pounds can make on me, I’m a woman with a small 5’4″ frame, and even 5 pounds can make a one size difference in my pants!

My husband wants to lose a little bit more weight than me. Perhaps about 15-20 pounds. He currently weighs about 200 pounds and stands at 6’3″ tall. Like me, he’s not necessarily ridiculously overweight, he’s just not in his comfort range and would like to feel better and fit in his clothes better.

It’s amazing the older you get, the less losing weight is about vanity and the more it is about things you can actually feel and that make your life a higher quality, like energy levels and better sleep.

Here is how we are going about this weight loss challenge. We’re making it fun. I have set up a pad of paper with a pencil in our master bathroom.  Every morning, we’ve agreed to write down our weight.  This will help us keep track of progress and see that weight in writing every morning as an extra boost of will power for eating and exercising throughout the day.

I have a few little “extras” that I will be practicing to help me in my first week or two so that I can shrink my stomach and get used to eating smaller portions, as well as control my cravings. I’m taking a weight loss quality hoodia natural appetite suppressant to help get me through.

This will give me power over my appetite and cravings without giving me any of the nervousness, heart palpitations or jitters that caffeinated and stimulant laced weight loss aids may cause.

I’m also going to be listening to my treasured weight loss hypnosis CD’s which will really help give me that subliminial, subconscious sort of boost to keep going on the right path toward weight loss and my goals of exercising more and doing the things I need to do in order to get back to my ideal weight.

Of course, a little friendly competition never hurts. We are competing in a way, but it’s more of a rah-rah we’re both cheering for eachother sort of thing, not a knock down drag out kind of competition.  We are both really on board with this endeavor, and it’s great to have a partner to go through a weight loss regimen with.

Is Low Quality of Sleep Linked to Weight Gain?

The human body has a necessity of sleep, quite logically, in order for it to function properly. You don’t want to ‘overheat’ the body’s mechanism by avoiding time required for rest with sleep included. During those approximate 7 hours of sleep there is a possibility of gaining weight, but not much and not overnight though.

A study in Finland that was made over 7.300 people among the age of 40 to 60 years showed that women are more likely to gain weight due to less sleeping time. The survey lasted 2 years and gave the results that women who had problems falling a sleep and then waking up just couple of hours later, gained about 11 pounds.

The situation is entirely different about men. They seem to not gain any weight at all if they have problems with sleeping.  This is probably due to the fact that the male body has a long history of physical strength and mobile capabilities. Since men, statistically, are more included in sports and activities, their body hardly waits for night to fall in order to get its proper rest.

It still stay unclear how could the male body stay unaffected by the sleeping problem. Probably because the number of men surveyed in the study is three times less than women (women 5.700 and men 1.300). But still, the number of men gaining weight in this group is almost zero.

However, many factors come in to play when it comes to weight loss or weight gain during sleep. The normal time of sleep is 7 hours in a 24 hour day. Many nutritionists recommend not eating before going to bed; in fact, not to eat after 7 PM. If you eat before sleep, the body must work to process the food. No quality sleep comes from a full stomach when the body is working and your eyes and brain try to sleep.

So sleeping under these circumstances can cause weight gain in time, but not overnight. The problem is that instead of waking up felling rested, you will wake up even more tired than when you went to bed.

Shifting the time of sleep, cutting the time of sleep, even continuing the time of sleep affects the metabolism and the appetite. Probably the worst combination is when you can’t fall a sleep on an empty stomach, which is very normal.

People in this situation must have a bite before going to bed, and then wake up the next morning feeling very tired. Even if they sleep for 9 hours they still need more time to sleep in order to have a fresh start.

Grapefruit with Each Meal and Drop Pounds?

I read something very interesting the other day. It was about a study that showed that people who ate a half of a grapefruit with every meal lost about 3.5 pounds in three months that were trying to lose weight. Now granted, the piece I read actually didn’t give specifics, like if these people were eating light all the way around, but I assume they were. I also made the assumption that the grapefruit sort of helped to satiate these people when eaten with every meal.

A sort of “built in dessert”, if you will, that helped them feel like they had all their essential fat, salt and sweets all in one meal, and therefore made them not crave any of the three major flavors after they were done. Grapefruit has almost always been considered a “diet fruit”.  It has long been speculated that grapefruits possess unique properties that help us to burn fat more readily and may also stabilize our blood sugar, which helps us to not eat as much food.

It helps us not eat as much food, or even crave it throughout the day because instead of eating more to stabilize our blood sugar, we can just have stable blood sugar by eating grapefruit with our meals.

Grapefruits apparently help you to burn fat and stabilize insulin levels because they lower your insulin levels after you consume a meal. Insulin spikes are known for causing cravings and increases in appetite, and are a major reason that people tend to over eat. That and a pesky little hormone called ghrelin, whose properties are just now being studied and better understood, are the major factors behind bingeing, over eating, and craving the worst kinds of food for weight management.

In other words, if someone could find the magic potion to kick ghrelin out of the picture, and minimize it’s effect on our bodies, would become instantly wealthy.  Who knows, maybe one of those new prescription weightloss meds that are going through the FDA in the next year or two for approval will fit that bill!

Eating 1,000 Calories or Less Can Make You Gain Weight!

Did you know that limiting your calories severely, such as 1,000 calories a day or less, can actually make your body put weight on?  It’s true! Although, there are of course cases where people do drop significant weight doing this, but in the short term, cutting your calories that significantly actually backfires on you if your goal is to lose body weight by doing it.  How could the be, I mean 1,000 calories a day is basically like eating for a bird, right!

Well, as you may or may not be aware, your body has many survival mechanisms against starvation, and when you suddenly limit your caloric intake that severely, your body reacts by trying to hang on to and store those calories and fat stores that you already have, all that much more voraciously.  This is because this is your body’s instinctual self preservation mode that kicks in and helps your body to maintain what it already has so that it can continue to live off of the same body fat for a longer period of time.

The body really is truly an amazing survival mechanism if you think about it!  We all know that 1,000 calories a day is extremely hard to maintain, and you cannot function on this little bit of calories, neither mentally or physically, without suffering consequences. This is why people who have severe eating disorders have a hard time concentrating and focusing, and often times have damaged organs – especially the heart. Your body was meant to have enough nourishment, or fuel, in the form of food and liquids, to sustain it to do all of the functions that it needs to in one day.

When you think of all the functions your body performs in just one day, it’s positively mind boggling at what a perfect machine it is, and it becomes more clear that we really must put the right kinds of “fuel” into our bodies if we are to have any hope of them running smoothly up until we end up exiting this world.  Kinda sounds like a car, eh?  It’s true though. If you want your body to run right, you really have to be willing to put the many times more expensive “high octane” stuff in that gives your body the extra kick that it needs to get you through the day, and to do it the right way.

An Apple a Day Takes on a New Meaning If You’re Dieting

I have to admit, I have a love/hate relationship with apples.  I usually have to be in a very specific mood to actually want to consume an apple.  When I am, they taste delicious, and nothing else but their taut, firm skin and juicy inside will do to suppress your hunger.  However, if I’m not in the mood, and more specifically, if the apple is nor organic and of a variety that I really like, then I pretty much have to force myself to gag the apple down, knowing that it’s one of the healthiest, most portable snacks I can possibly put in my body.

That’s why it’s so challenging to eat healthy all the time though. Our bodies naturally crave crap, to put it simply. And, when we’ve been on a crap bender, eating whatever we want for days or weeks at a time, and then have to get back in the habit of eating healthy snacks like apples instead of something like say, chips and dip, then our bodies naturally rebel. Quite simply, we have grown used to the chemicals, the fats and sugars in all the processed and fattening foods, and our bodies go through nothing other than what I can describe as withdrawal.

These are the times when it’s all the much more important to reaquaint yourself with the apple. Not only does it help cleanse out all the bad stuff you were eating, but it gradually gets your body used to the natural sugars again, and how wonderful they can taste once you’ve gotten all the processed cravings out of your system.

Apples contain so many good things for you body, but I will tell you that I only recommend the organic variety. Apples are sprayed with chemical pesticides a lot if they are not organic. They are also irradiated to preserve freshness longer. I can tell you that both of these processes not only rob the apple of some of it’s nutrients, but they also completely ruin it’s flavor, in my opinion. If you don’t believe me, try a fresh, organic apple as opposed to a regular old grocery store produce section non organic apple, and you tell me.  You should notice quite a difference in texture and flavor that will leave you appreciation the apples’ naturally light sweetness and delicate flavor much more fervently!

Apples contain tons of fiber. Wanna get regular?  Eat apples!  They contain a special fiber called pectin that has been thought to really help dieters even more because it is so filling and cleansing to the digestive tract.  Apples have actually been pegged as an excellent food to eat in the morning because they supposedly help you to wake up!  They are low calorie, with a larger apple clocking in at about 60 to 80 calories, every bit usable and beneficial to your body.

Apples also contain some powerful antioxidants that not only help to fight free radicals but also help in the anti aging fight by keeping cells healthy longer and tissues more supple and healthy.  They also contain flavanoids, which are excellent for the body.  I like them most because they are super filling. I can eat a half an apple after dinner and it totally makes me full for hours longer than if I had just eaten dinner with no apple “dessert”.  They are truly the dieters friend – and the person who watches their weight would be smart to add these to their repertoire.

In Dieting, It’s Better to Have a Partner

I’m writing this, thinking about how much easier it is for me, personally, to diet and lose weight, when my husband is 100% on board with me.  The reason is that I do a lot of the cooking in the house, but we both do the grocery shopping, and it’s awfully hard to keep the cupboards free of non weight friendly items like tons of processed, starchy, sugary and fatty foods, when your partner is not on the same wavelength as you, and you find yourself staring at the fruits of his shopping endeavors, drooling and tempted to take a cookie instead of an apple, or something like that.

I find that when we’re both on board, we foster almost a friendly competition as well, and although when he is laser focused on losing weight, since he’s a man, he tends to drop the weight a lot quicker than I do (damn him!), I find it really fun when we are comparing notes on what the scale said and whether or not we worked out that day, and having that little bit of friendly competition going on, especially when I’m winning – hey  didn’t say I was always the best sport, did I!?

At any rate, it’s so easy to fall prey to the group mentality. For example, if he says “oh screw it, let’s order pizza for dinner”, I’m apt to think the same way and dismiss it as “well, if he’s willing to not lose the weight as quickly, then it’s ok if I do the same”.  I mean, after all, we’re married, and I suppose that growing heavier or thinner together is ok, but that’s not really what my mind tells me, it tells me that we should both be healthy and live as long as we can for eachother.  However, as we all know, your belly’s cravings can often win out over your mind’s power of persuasion.

However, don’t let me fool you into thinking I’m always the angel. There are plenty of times where I just don’t feel like cooking, or maybe I’ve been PMS’ing and really want McDonalds and chocolate, and so I bring that home or suggest it. And he rarely refuses me either, so there we are both setting eachother back. But when we’re on a real weightloss jag, we spur eachother on, and we don’t let the other one go when they’ve screwed up, so it’s kind of an incentive to not screw up and to lose the weight quickly, otherwise, you are kind of embarrassed at getting reprimanded about messing up and eating the wrong thing or falling off the wagon. See, marriage is good for dieting – but you both have to be on the same page with the goals!