There are several reasons why we gain weight of which we will delve into in more detail.

What We Eat – Our Calorie Consumption

When we consume more calories than we burn our bodies store the excess away as fat. As I mentioned before our bodies are extraordinary creations and tend to store away any excess fat we don’t need in case of leaner times that might lie ahead.

However today those times are few and far between and because we live in the developed world rarely are there ever any times when food is truly scarce so we continue to keep storing at away.

Compared with 100 short years ago, you would be hard pressed to find any of our ancestors stricken with obesity because they worked hard in order to eat. They would either have to grow and harvest their own food or go to great lengths to get it. Because there was a certain amount of effort that went into daily survival they burned more calories compared to our readily accessible society where everything we want is at our fingertips.

Even what was considered luxury items such as flour, sugar and chocolate to our ancestors have become everyday fixtures of the modern pantry. Things are too readily available to us that nothing is a treat anymore and we tend to over indulge ourselves on a regular basis.

As a result of this way of living we are left to find ways to get rid of the fat we spent years gaining. If only we could look at our lifestyle and realize the answer is staring back at us from our pantries and not in the bottom of a jar of diet pills or the next fad diet that blows our way.

Understanding how our bodies operate, how they burn fat, what makes them gain weight is all instrumental in your own personal weight loss journey. Educating yourself on how your body works only empowers you to make better decisions for yourself.

Why We Gain Weight

We are all different. It’s frustrating to see people who eat like a horse never gain a single pound. They probably have very active metabolisms which acts like the body’s natural furnace burning calories effortlessly the moment they are absorbed into the body. These people are like the hummingbirds of society, no matter how much they consume their weight remains perfectly controlled.

But like the rest of us mere mortals, we may be disheartened when we experience the exact opposite by having what is known as a low metabolic rate. As you can guess when you have a low metabolic rate anything you eat seems to be directly deposited on your love handles without much effort.

Low Metabolism

Our metabolisms are sensitive to our activity levels and the proportion to lean muscle tissue we have in comparison to fat.

Our muscle tissue burns calories for energy. The more muscle tissue the more fat we burn. The less muscle tissue we have the more fat escapes into our bodies and gets deposited into fat cells for storage. Think of your fat cells as storage space where the excess fat is deposited if not burned. Everything has a destination it is either stored or burned.

If we live sedentary lives and we are not physically active our metabolism reacts by slowing down. When our metabolic rate is slow we lose the ability to properly burn calories and we store the unburned energy as fat. This is why we gain weight if we are not regularly exercising.

People that are more physically active have a greater muscle mass which burns more calories and hence more fat. Some people however are genetically predisposed to having a higher metabolism and will always be able to burn calories effortlessly. I know, it doesn’t seem fair but just because you may not have been genetically blessed with a fast metabolism doesn’t mean you can’t have one.

Little fact:

Did you know that 2 people one with greater muscle mass than the other can be sitting side by side enjoying a movie together. Although they are undertaking absolutely no physical activity for that time period, the person with the greater muscle mass will actually burn off more calories than the one with the lesser muscle mass. Incredible what having a little more lean muscle mass can do.

Here’s How You Increase Your Metabolism

Start exercising more, no matter what type. Any form of exercise will impact on your metabolism. You will burn lots more calories than doing no exercise at all.

Instead of having larger meals, why not try portioning? Smaller meals at regular intervals will keep your metabolism burning steadily rather than weigh it down with heavy meals. Ever feel lethargic after a large meal? Energy is diverted away from the extremities and put into digestion which makes you tired. Don’t weigh down your metabolism with large meals, small is the way to go.

Avoid crash dieting and restrictive calorie control. Starvation will only throw your body into survival mode and will derail you from your weight loss program completely. Remember fad diets only work temporarily, any weight loss is almost guaranteed to return once coming off these programs. So if you want to lose weight, you have to feed your body. Don’t drive your body to the point where it’s so fed up it will force you to binge to get some food.

Try the miracle exercise almost anyone can do and best of all it’s free. Walking is fantastic for exercising all of your large muscle groups while getting your heart rate up. Just walking for at least 30 minutes per day for 3 times per week can greatly increase your metabolism and your weight loss efforts than from just dieting alone.

This is often a hot topic of debate however most doctors believe you should always start the day with breakfast. The results have shown that those who skip breakfast are more inclined to overeat later on during the day which of course diverts precious energy into the act of digestion. It also gives you the energy you need to get through your day. Did you know that you still burn calories as you sleep so that you need to replenish them when you wake? This is why the meal is called “Break” “Fast”.

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Not only how much you eat can impact your weight loss efforts but also how you are eating plays a huge role in your ability to lose weight. Are you aware of how you are eating?

Even the speed at which you eat can have an effect. Being aware of how much you eat at a meal and being aware of every bite will decrease the need to top up your plate.

How many times have you sat down to a meal and ate so fast you wondered where the food went? Being aware how you are eating will make the food last longer and seem like more. You will be less likely to get extra portions and will be more satisfied on less.

Remember it takes at least 30 minutes for your brain to register that it is full so give it time. I also mentioned earlier that sometimes we mistake hunger for first, instead of eating more food try having a glass of water instead.

Your Genetics And Your Metabolism

Your genetic makeup may have an effect on your metabolism but only a minor one. Don’t think that because your predisposition to being obese is a death sentence and that you can’t lose weight. You absolutely can, there are several things that are within your power that you can do so don’t think for a second that you are doomed by your genetics because you are not. Because genetics only counts for a small amount when it comes to your weight loss the tools you have at your disposal lies within what you eat and how much you move.

How Much You Move

Let’s face it. If you want to lose weight exercise is an integral part of the process. You simply cannot get around this fact because it is by this process of exercise that you burn fat. It is the only way for your body to shift the rolls of fat or the love handles that were deposited over time.

Exercise can be something as simple as walking. Don’t feel you have to hit the gym to burn the pounds or step onto a mechanical treadmill while being subjected to blaring music. With walking you can enjoy the outdoors, breathe the fresh air, enjoy the view and get real benefits from genuine hill climbing. And best of all it’s free.

Exercising just 30 minutes per day 3 times per week or more has so many benefits that have far reaching consequences long after you’ve done the exercise.

Exercise reinvigorates and energizes you.

Exercise releases your natural feel good chemicals known as endorphins. In fact even the 30 minute walks 3 times per week can greatly lower your stress levels and make you feel euphoric, calmer and relaxed.

With exercise also comes the repairing and building of muscles mass which in turn increases your metabolism. Don’t think that you have to look like The Incredible Hulk muscular to burn fat, even the slightest extra muscle tissue can greatly increase your fat burning efforts. The kind of muscle mass will be the shapely and attractive as the fat burns away. So don’t think for a second when you are building muscle mass that you are building bulk. You are simply creating more lean muscle tissue to burn more fat.

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A Ship’s captain and an airline pilot have the same thing in common, before they even leave port they have a destination already set.

Before you embark on your program, you too need to have an end in mind. You need to have a destination, an arrival point. In other words, what weight will you finally arrive at?

Don’t take it as the weight you think you will look good at and just because you may have looked great at that weight as a teenager or when you were younger does not necessarily mean you will now.

The best thing to do when determining your goal weight is find a program that can calculate that for you. It takes several factors into consideration and will arrive at an average weight it feels you should be based upon your age and your height.

So, what weight should you be?

Find out here:

http://www.halls.md/ideal-weight/body.htm

Take your body measurements so that you can keep track of your progress. You never realize how far you really come until you know where you initially started. Keeping track of your measurements is a rock solid testament to your progress and gives you burning incentive to stick with it.

Here Is What Should Be Included In The Measurement

The Date: _____________________________

Height: _______________________________

Current Weight: ________________________

Bust (women): _________________________

Waist around the belly button: _____________

Hips: _________________________________

Thighs: _______________________________

Right upper arm: ________________________

Left upper arm: _________________________
Make sure that you purchase a notebook to keep tabs of your measurements. Don’t forget to re- measure yourself every month which will encourage you to stay focused on your goal.

As mentioned before, weigh yourself every two weeks, once a week at the very most to avoid becoming discouraged with the natural weight fluctuations as your body begins to change and transform.

The other great thing about goal setting is that not only do you have a real purpose and you are solidifying and materializing those dreams into reality but it also gives you achievable steps to attain it. Think of it as a blueprint to your weight loss.

Which would keep you motivated longer?

I will lose 100 pounds in 12 months of which I will be at my goal weight of 120 pounds.

Or…

By December 31st 2009 I will weigh 120 pounds. My current weight is 220 pounds therefore I need to lose 100 pounds.
To achieve my goal of a 100 pound weight loss I will need to lose at least 2 pounds per week for the next 12 months.

Then create mini weight loss goals which will eventually contribute to the overall weight loss goal of 100 pounds because how do you eat an elephant?, one bite at a time.

How do you achieve such an overwhelming amount of weight loss?, one pound at a time. It is these small, simple, unglamorous steps that add up to the life changing 100 pound goal.

Get very detailed and specific.

So if you started your program on January 1st, by January the 8th you would have lost 2 pounds with your new weight being 218 pounds.

By January the 15th you should weigh 216 pounds

January the 22nd your weight will now be 214 pounds

January the 29th you will now weigh 212 pounds

See what I mean? It’s more realistic to break your overall goal into achievable little bite sizes so that you can see your progress and where you are headed. You appreciate that these little mini achievements add up to a your overall goal.

Doing it this way makes it doable and removes the pressure from having to lose 100 pounds now like most of those fad diets would have you believe.

You set yourself up for failure when you see you’ve only lost 2 pounds in your first week because you have that huge monumental goal in mind, never mind the fact that weight loss is just a collective of little weight loss successes that form the overall bigger picture.

Knowing that massive success with weight loss comes in little steps as you will know that with each pound you lose.

If you half kill yourself with punishing calorie restriction and excess exercise and find yourself losing over 5 pounds per week, just remember that most of that weight will be water and some desperately needed lean muscle tissue. That means that all of it will return almost overnight. So stick with a realistic, healthy, permanent 1 to 2 pound per week weight loss.

Watching What You Eat – Keeping Tabs On Those Calories

What Exactly Is a Calorie?

Before we start what exactly are calories? You hear that word touted around loosely on so many diets but what exactly are calories and why is important that you keep track of them?

All a calorie is is a measure of heat energy. One calorie is the amount of energy being required to raise the temperature of a gram of water by one degree Celsius. Calories are found in fats, proteins, carbohydrates or alcohol so pretty much everything except water.

A gram of carbohydrates contains 3.75 calories
A gram of fat contains 9 calories
A gram of protein contains 4 calories
A gram of alcohol contains 7 calories

You can see from the above figures that it’s easy to gain weight from consuming foods high in fat and drinking too much alcohol as they are laden with more calories than protein or carbohydrates.
Monitoring Your Calories

Up to this point you know how important diet and exercise are with respect to your weight loss. You know that to lose weight you have to eat. Severely restricting your calories to crash diet levels won’t only hinder your weight loss effort but it will damage your body in the process.

You have also learned that when you deprive the body of food it will feed off itself for survival including burning precious muscle tissue which alarmingly also includes the heart. This is why some dieters on extreme calorie restriction diets often die of heart failure because the heart has been broken down and weakened. So please don’t shock your body by starving it.

The approach you should be taking is from a scientific standpoint, don’t worry anyone can do this and you certainly don’t have to be a doctor to understand it.

Make sure you eat from all food groups but eat smaller meals, say 5 to 6 meals per day to keep your energy levels balanced. When we severely restrict calories we jump start our set point to kick in and make us eat. So to avoid that evolutionary mechanism response we need to work in alignment with our body and feed it good food, and frequently. Your body won’t think that it’s being starved or deprived and it will allow you to lose the weight.

So how can we lose weight by eating? By monitoring our caloric intake. Did you know that if you can create a 500 calorie deficit every day from just your diet and exercise that you will be able to lose around a pound of fat per week?

A pound is great, it doesn’t sound like much however remember how I mentioned before that volume for volume fat by far takes up more room than muscle tissue. That means that every pound you lose you are losing bulk and rolls from your body. This is why that even if you lose 3 pounds of fat that you notice your clothes getting looser because even though muscle is heavier than fat, fat actually occupies more space than muscle does. Keep that in mind when you weigh yourself. The scale isn’t always an accurate reflection of your true fat loss.

The Number Of Calories You Consume

Every food you consume has a caloric value associated with it.

To really lose weight you need to create a deficit of calories every day. For example, if you eliminate 250 calories less each day from your diet either by eating a little less or by removing high sugar, high fat foods from your diet and you exercise and burn off 250 extra calories per day you can lose up to 3,500 calories per week which totals one pound of fat lost.

To do that you have to be burning 500 extra calories per day. This is 500 calories over and above what you are eating. If you simply burn off what you eat you are maintaining your weight level. If you are burning over and above what you are consuming then you begin to burn your excess fat stores.

To lose 2 pounds per week you simply double the amount of daily exercise you do and eat more lean, healthy foods.

How Many Calories Should You Consume A Day?
Women should consume no less than 1,200 calories per day to ensure weight loss and that they are receiving the balanced diet they need.

Men on the other hand should consume no less than 1,800 calories per day to lose weight.

To determine accurately the number of calories you should be getting in your daily diet use this handy tool to calculate yours:

http://www.dietblog.com/archives/2005/12/26/how_to_calculate_your_daily_calorie_needs.php

Remember the more lean muscle mass you have the better. If you decide to go below the recommended calorie amount for a balanced diet then you will be losing precious muscle tissue which is instrumental in the burning of fat. Don’t forget that the more lean muscle tissue you have the better your body at losing weight.

You will not experience permanent, sustained weight loss by eating too little but you will also run the risk of slowing your metabolism to the pace of a snail. Anyone who’s been on restrictive calorie diets in the past will know that it is difficult to exercise when you simply don’t have the energy to do so. So the key here is to make sure that you consume enough calories to have lots of energy and to enjoy life while losing weight at the same time. It’s all about balance.

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