Exercising in the morning is an extremely important part of losing weight in general.  If you exercise in the morning instead of at night and you keep up the same amount of time and regimen, you are more likely to burn more fat and lose more weight.  Why?  You are exercising for the exact same amount of time and putting out the same amount of effort.

For one thing, you are actually exercising usually on an empty stomach, which means that you are burning off more fat rather than having to burn off those calories.  But that’s not all.  You are actually burning more fat throughout the day instead of just at the end before you go to bed, by increasing your metabolism by about 3% throughout the day.

But in addition to that, you are actually increasing your mental function.  Basically speaking, it gets the adrenaline running throughout your body, which helps with the whole idea of a higher metabolism, and it wakes your brain up, gets it going first thing in the morning.  You can imagine all the benefits of this kind of function.

And finally, when you are exercising in the morning rather than at night, you are actually improving your mood.  For those who are clinically depressed or even slightly depressed, exercise in general has been recommended.  But usually when you are depressed, it’s the worst in the morning.  So start your day off with exercise, and it will boost your mood throughout the day as well as making it easier to get going in the first place.

If you are dieting, to be honest, a restaurant can be your worst enemy. You want to go out to restaurants, and you want to hang out with your friends, and this is part of why so many diets fail. Many people feel like they are cut off from those around them and their social lives, because they are essentially speaking on a diet. With this in mind, it is possible to eat at a restaurant while dieting, you just have to be careful.

Now you can always use a restaurant as your cheat meal or cheat day. But realistically speaking, that’s only once a week at most or once a month in some stricter cases. Are you really ready to limit yourself like that? Most would say no. Instead, if dieting at restaurants, you should know what foods you are looking for.

Some restaurants are nice enough to label them low carb, low calorie, or otherwise. That is definitely helpful to say the least. But quite a few restaurants don’t. And just because it’s a salad doesn’t mean you should assume it’s healthy. That doesn’t always work out as you think. So you can start by looking for dishes with more vegetables and less sauce. For example, lemon chicken doesn’t really have lemons in it, it has sauce and a lot of sugar. So forget it. On the other hand, even say cashew chicken is better.

One of the easiest ways to go about it is to get a vegetable dish or a salad. But the big caution I have with salads is that you should actually ask for your dressing on the side. Most often, they use a lot of dressing, and you should also choose a lower calorie vinegarette. All of these things will give you options in restaurant eating on a regular basis.

There has been a lot of talk lately about a list of foods that increase weight loss. Can this really be true? There is this idea that there are foods out there that have negative calories that basically counteract the calories in the other foods that you eat. I’ve looked all over the internet and have not been able to find any clinical evidence to support this idea.

While there are not foods that increase weight loss there are certainly foods that will help you lose weight. Basically, any food that has a low calorie count that you are consuming in place of a food that has a higher calorie count is considered a food that is good for losing weight. Sounds simple I know. But there are so many easy substitutes that you can make every day that will decrease your calorie count and you won’t even notice the difference.

There’s a great book called “Eat This, Not That” that shows some of these substitutes. It’s worth the money. It goes through everyday things we all eat, including name-brand foods, and shows what some easy substitutes would be that will help lower the number of calories we’re consuming and are also more nutritious in a lot of cases. Finding foods that increase weight loss isn’t just about low calories – it’s about foods that provide your body nutrition AND are lower in calories.

One of the best ways I’ve found to lose weight is to stop providing yourself with an escape plan.  Throw away your fat jeans or give them to charity, and overall stop stocking chips and other junk food or bad snacks.  You may have used the excuse that your boyfriend, kids, or otherwise still need to eat them.  No they don’t need to eat them.  In fact, they really shouldn’t be using them either.  They are unhealthy, no matter who you happen to be. 

But they are especially bad if you are actually trying to lose weight.  They get in the way, and you sneak in there to get your ice cream, to get your chips, etc.  It’s okay to have them every once in a while.  But having them stocked on a regular basis just tempts you to eat them in general on a regular basis.  So stop stocking them, buy them as needed in a way when you are having a cheat day or something, and buy healthy snacks instead.  Having those healthy snacks to replace them will without question actually ease the transition.  And frankly, over time you will actually learn a better appreciation for those particular types of foods.

This is a recent trend I’ve heard of, people buying plastic clothes so that they can sweat more and therefore lose more weight when they are actually working out.  It’s not completely unfounded.  After all, if you heat up your body and turn it into a virtual sauna, you will burn off more weight.  The thing you need to keep in mind is that all that weight would realistically speaking be water weight.  It feels like you are getting skinnier and flushing out the pounds in so many ways. 

But frankly, water weight will always come back.  Over time, it can actually be quite dangerous, because you can easily get dehydrated and have other problems in general terms.  Water is the element responsible for keeping your body from overheating to some degree and for keeping it hydrated of course.  You need water, and to lose water weight is misleading at best.  But at worst, it can be potentially dangerous of course.  They reported in 1997 on 3 athletes who went to extreme measures to lose weight.  They wore plastic sweat suits while performing intense exercises in already hot environments.  All 3 of these particular athletes died.  So it’s something to keep in mind when you think this is the way to go.

The pear shape is rather common among women and often complained about.  Women want to know how to specifically target those saddlebags and butts.  But unfortunately, you cannot target one area, it’s hereditary.  Frankly, even if you shrink down, while your butt and saddlebags will shrink along with you, they will always be proportionally larger than the other half of your body.  And frankly, there are fewer fat burning enzymes in the thighs than say the abdomen in most people, making it harder to target that particular fat. 

Estrogen actually also favors fat in the hips and thighs whereas testosterone favors fat in the belly.  But on the good side, having the fat in that area is better than in the abdomen, because it’s not surrounding the vital organs.  However, while hard to budge, you can try using high intensity activities for at least 30-45 minutes if not longer.  You need to clock up the cardio and fat in general will come off, and over time this will also include that area around your butt and thighs.  You should also of course use a good diet in general terms for weight loss as a whole.  All of this will help you in your needs.

Working out and stretching are absolutely essential.  If you don’t stretch, you end up like Mr. Meathead who can’t actually touch the small of his back because his muscles don’t stretch that far.  You may not end up that extreme.  Btu you get the basic idea, nobody really wants to reach that point.  But some of the most flexible people I’ve seen have been really big, muscular guys who have taken the time and care to balance things out.  Yet they have retained larger muscle mass. 

 That being said, the reality is that while some people follow pilates and yoga to be slender and lean, it doesn’t exactly work that way.  Your body’s bulk and shape at basic level is actually determined more by your genes in general, especially in your calves.  This is not to say that you shouldn’t stretch, you should definitely stretch.  But unfortunately, stretching does not create longer, leaner muscles or a more slender body in general. 

You will become more flexible, better able to do certain things, and so on, but your body type will not change.  There are two types of muscle fibers, and on average people have a 50-50 split of fast twitch and slow twitch muscles.  Higher grade athletes have reached those levels because they were born with the right muscle fibers along with other attributes such as the fact that one famous swimmer we all know is basically built like a fish.  But if you have more fast twitch fibers, you are more likely to bulk up.  That is the simple fact of things.

If you are pregnant, one of the big things is that you should still eat a balanced diet and exercise.  Many women gain a lot of pregnancy weight and have a hard time taking it off.  They rationalize it by saying well I’m eating for two.  Yes, you are eating for two.  But the second of you is about 1/10 of the size or less at certain times.  So it’s not exactly the mentality of eat twice as much. 

 Still focus on eating healthy foods such as whole grains, fruits vegetables, and otherwise.  Still focus on exercising.  Of course, you don’t have to go running every day or anything like that.  But many find that lower impact exercises like walking, yoga, and pilates work for their needs.  In addition, with any class like yoga, pilates, or others, there are instructors who are specifically willing to help pregnant women to adjust their positions and exercises to accommodate the baby. 

But in all reality, there is no reason that pregnancy should result in long term weight gain for most women.  The biggest thing to remember is that you are not eating for two adults, and exercise is still entirely necessary.

Thyroid disorders are not that common, but they do occur both in humans and in animals alike.  It happens from time to time, and with thyroid disorders, this little butterfly shaped gland in the neck is responsible for producing certain hormones and starts over producing or under producing and controls your ability to lose weight or not lose weight along with other things.  It regulates your metabolism, and it can become a serious problem.

If you have a thyroid disorder you should consult a doctor.  It takes professional help, especially if it gets more serious, and you should consider that both extremes are just as common as the other.  So you may have too high a heart rate, metabolism, etc or too low. But there are some natural ways to optimize a basically healthy thyroid to avoid problems or at least optimize your metabolism in a certain way.

First use iodine.  Iodine has been known to help to optimize the thyroid gland, and while it won’t help if you have problems, it can help if you have a basically normal thyroid.  Second, you should look for thyroiditis.  This is a basic gland that has been connected to various benefits, and with it you could achieve serious results.  It should be remembered that these things are not to be taken lightly or taken instead of valid medication.

Some dieters, especially women tend to be somewhat afraid of muscle.  They don’t want to look bulky rather than thin and toned.  But to get that toned appearance and to keep up results and to really lose weight in long term amounts, you have to have a certain amount of lean muscle mass.  This is something body builders seem to have a better grip on than the rest of us.  And while you may not want to do everything that a bodybuilder does, there is at least one thing that they have right. 

The average bodybuilder consumes at least one protein drink on average along with other protein supplements on a daily basis if not at least a weekly basis.  And even if you don’t want to reach the heights of Arnold, you can still benefit from these protein packed smoothies or supplements.  If they are homemade, you tend to have more control over what goes into them and therefore how much or how little fat you will find in them.  You can pack them with not only soy or whey protein, but also with fiber, essential fats, yogurts, and other energizers and important elements.  And if you do it right, it can fill you for hours, resulting in you consuming fewer calories and not starving yourself at the same time, so your body will not panic.

This is only supported by the New York Obesity Research Center which conducted a study on the use of GNC’s soy based shakes.  Those using the shakes lost 3 times more weight than those with the same meals but without the protein shakes.  Kashi GoLean Meal Replacements were also shown to help people lose a significant amount more weight in 12 weeks than those on a traditional low calorie diet.

No matter what your weight loss goals, protein shakes will help if used at breakfast.  Harvard studies have shown that 6 hours after breakfast, those who consumed a protein shake showed more energy and efficiency than those consuming a high carbohydrate breakfast as well as a higher rate of metabolism.