I have ony tried the prescribed regimen, which includes a once a day meal plan for either breakfast, lunch or dinner, whichever you choose, and then a seven minute exercise program that is to be done before the meal to have an optimum combination effect.  The exercises you do are very simple, and you can choose to spot tone a number of body parts, but can only do one at a time.

The body parts you can target are the arms (lots of women, like me, have problems with upper arm fat, a common fat storage area for women due to hormonal activity), the buttocks, thighs, hips, and abdominal area (belly).  The 7 minutes is a self-imposed intense workout of just that one area, and it’s basically just three very simple exercises that burn out the specified muscles in those 7 minutes, but just enough to target fat cells, not to increase appetite, at least according to the author of the book.

The spot fat reduction meals are specific, in many cases he even gives you brand names of the foods you need to eat.  They even include a little “dessert” after them, which I’m assuming adds to the fat burning capability of the program.  I gotta tell you, after doing it twice now, I thought seven minutes was nothing, but my arms (the second body part I targeted), and my thighs are sore from the 7 minutes of movement. 

I’ll write more on the 7 Minute Miracle and let you know if it is successful in wittling down my thighs and arms! 

It’s like you know you should be full and satisfied by all the stuff you’ve been piling in your mouth, and yet, either because of a blood sugar or hormonal issue, or perhaps because of being mentally bored, you keep eating, and eating and eating….and…you get the point.

Let me tell you how I started off my day, and how it snowballed into a pure carb day, and consuming a whole lot of carbs at that!  I started the day with a large bagel.  Stop right there before you chastise though, because at least it was a whole grain bagel.  Well, go ahead and chastise now, because guess what I had on top of that bagel?  A couple nice pats of butter!  And not the low fat or low salt variety either.  Nope, it was real, hard, bonified dairy butter!

So with a heavily buttered bagel starting my day, I knew I was in trouble by the feeling of malaise that set in immediately after I finished it.  It was like I felt like I needed dessert or something, which if you are a carb freak, you know is fairly common after eating carb loaded meals, no matter the time of day.

I held off the “dessert” part though, and was  good girl and avoided the vending machine at work to get some M&M’s (although those did come later), and instead opted for the delicious, huge nectarine I had brought with me.  For anyone who is not familiar with their fruits, a nectarine is a hairless version of a peach basically, except I happen to like the flavor and texture of nectarines better.

I was ok right after the nectarine, but about 45 minutes later, I was craving sugar, like refined, bad sugar, so I dug into my desk and found a small handful of jelly belly jelly beans.  Still feeling unsatisfied I decided to just wait it out til lunch.  At lunch I had what I brought from home, a large serving of brown rice and beans, topped with petite diced tomatoes.  It was delish as usual, but I still wasn’t satisfied, so after I went to the gym at work and exercised, I had a huge bag of honey mustard pretzels.  Do you think I might benefit from a good carb blocker now?  I’m sure it couldn’t hurt!

I’m currently rounding out the day with a bag of plain M&M’s, and I’m hoping this’ll do it, because Lord knows my poor thighs were just beginning to enjoy a bit of slimming down from previous efforts! Hopefully I can control my ravenous appetite at dinner, I’ve probably already consumed over 2000 calories today!

He says too often diets fail, and that people are really mentally ready for a life change by changing the way they view themselves and look at food, but they will try quick fix diets in hopes of getting a quick answer to their weight issues.  Bob Harper also says that he sees an “awakening” in the Biggest Loser contestants that happens after they get over the money winning factor and start to see that the show and the weight loss is going to awaken them in the way they live their lives also.

He talked also about how he has a part of the book that is an inner compass plan, where the person is held responsible for the food they eat as a starting awareness of where teh problem lies, because they have to keep a daily food journal and are essentially forced into looking at the reasons they are overweight and why their attempts at losing weight and keeping it off keep failing.

He also says that you have to accept who your are and forgive yourself for any failures.  It really helps you change the negative thought patterns that sabotage eating plans as well as weight loss and weight maintenance efforts.  He says you need to eat to lose weight, not starve yourself, like many people do.  He says skipping breakfast is one of the worst things you can do, which is what so many people do today, and they load up on the end of the day.

Bob Harper says that his book is about addressing the whole lifestyle, not a quick fix.  Amen to that!  Couldn’t agree more. 

In lab rats who were given the supplement of alpha lipoic acid, those that had lost the weight previously maybe over a period of a few months, from being on a restricted calorie diet, which is of course the best and most known way to lose weight, did not gain back their weight when they were again put on their normal caloric diet after they lost their initial weight from being on a restricted calorie diet for a significant period of time.

It is unknown from what I read on this interesting news how scientists were lead to belive that alpha lipoic acid may help those who have lost weight from gaining it back after they are off their diet, but the mechanism they are thinking is a trickery that occurs that is triggered by the alpha lipoic acid supplementation after the weight loss, where the body is tricked into thinking it is still on a “diet”. 

No numbers were really given to say how much the rats lost, of course this would have to be measured in percentages since rats are much smaller than humans, so we can scale it in our minds, but you may want to look into this phenomenon further if you have recently lost weight or are thinking about losing weight via a restricted calorie diet and don’t want to risk putting it all back on once you return to a normal diet (of course, this probably does not mean you can just gorge yourself either and not gain an ounce of it back, but this is within reason). 

However, if you are going to drink milk, make sure it is of the lowfat variety.  I like to personally drink milk that has the lactaid enzyme added to it (Lactaid brand), because it has the taste of good, fresh milk, without the discomfort that regular milk gives me afterwards, because it contains the digestive enzyme in it that makes it as though the lactose is not even present, which is a Godsend to anyone who is the least bit lactose intolerant, like me.

Low fat dairy products are suspected as a great helper in the battle of the bulge, and have even been prescribed by lots of diet gurus to those who are trying to lose pounds as a way to help take the fat off the body, and leave the lean muscle.  For whatever reason, it is thought that low fat dairy products can help inhibit fat formation on the body, or maybe that just means it somehow blocks the fat from even be digested.

At any rate, you should probably limit your consumption of dairy, but as our previous post states, don’t replace it with soy products, because these can do more harm than good, just make sure you switch to low fat varieties of dairy products such as cheese and milk, and you should enjoy a slimmer waistline!