victoria s asked:


Who is for and who is against weight loss pills? I`m doing some sort of a survey among you people so I can decide whether I will take some weight loss pills in order to lose almost 30 pounds or not. If you don`t agree to weight loss drugs, what else besides eating vegetables do you suggest?

Charles

Mrs. Nikki Sep(The One and Only) asked:


I was wondering if anyone knew what an average weight loss per week is. I started eating healthy last week at around 1200 calories *because I wasn’t yet working out* and lost 4 pounds. Now, I’ve started eating around 1600 calories because I’m alternating with aerobics and pilates and I have already lost 2 more pounds. I want the weight that I lose to stay off *just had a baby and had a few extra pounds after getting married!* What do doctors recommend losing, and if I’m losing too much, should I add more calories or willthe weight loss taper off after a few weeks?

Fleming

KimmyRox asked:


I’ve been dietig for a while, and lost a good amount of weight, but im not done and am still hoping to loose more.
I don’t know how much i weigh currently but im 13 years old and am 5′5″ and i lost my period.
I havent had it for about 2 months now and im worried.
No matter what i eat or how much i exercise i seem to gain weight, and im scared it might be from my period loss.
Is there anyway i can get my period back without going to the doctor or anything?
I need help, i cannot stand gaining anymore of my weigh back,
I want serious answers that can actually help, i really need help, and i don’t want any mean answers either.
I’m superly sensitive.
Im a virgin im not a little slut im not sexually active get real im not pregnant
im not exactly sure but i weigh aroud 120 to 125 pounds, im not happy with that.

Chadwick

You’ve heard it all before… weight loss exercise is an important part of any diet plan. And you know that exercise not only helps us shed pounds but it also improves our health and mental state at the same time.

But do you know how it works to accomplish all that? And do you know the best way to incorporate weight loss and exercise into your life? That’s what this article is about.

Metabolism and Weight Loss

Exercise not only burns calories. It also raises your metabolism. That’s your body’s ability to burn calories. So exercise can cause calories to be burned at a higher rate, even after the workout is over. You can imagine the beneficial effect this has on your overall weight loss!

Exercise is also the best way to change your body composition. Why is that important? Your body is composed of different types of tissue: muscle and fat are the two we’re mostly concerned with. Muscles require energy and burn calories even when you’re sleeping or resting. But not fat. Fat cells store calories. So it just makes sense that having more muscle than fat will allow you to eat more food (yes you read that right!), be stronger, and look more fit.

And the only way to get a greater muscle / fat ratio is through sensible weight loss exercise. As you lose weight you want to try your best to maintain muscle mass by eating enough calories and protein, and by exercising routinely.

Here’s how the weight loss exercise equation looks:

Add more muscle > your metabolism will run faster > you’ll burn more calories > and lose weight faster > and find it easier to keep the weight off.

3 Types of Weight Loss Exercise:

1. ANAEROBIC EXERCISE: This is exercise that calls for short spurts of energy, like sprinting or weight training. It burns carbs and encourages muscles to grow. That speeds up the metabolism and makes for a tight, firm physique. One of the fastest forms of weight loss exercise is weight training.

2. AEROBIC EXERCISE: Activities like walking, jogging or dancing raise the heart rate and keep it raised for some time. This uses up stored fat and can boost your metabolism for hours after you’ve stopped exercising. Great for weight loss, aerobic exercise should become a daily part of your routine.

3. INTERVAL TRAINING: This is a form of weight loss exercise that raises then lowers your heart rate in intervals. It can improve both anaerobic and aerobic capacity at once. It’s been shown to reduce fat, increase muscle, and speed up the metabolism. Try using this technique in whatever exercise you are doing — If you walk, alternate between very brisk speed walking and a slower, easy paced walk, or jog then walk. Or alternate between sprints and jogging. On a bike, alternate between fast and slow pedaling.

The Exercise Plan for Exercise-Haters

Hate to exercise? Take heart. You can achieve excellent results with even a small investment of time and energy. Use the following guidelines for a fat-burning workout that works.

Weight Loss Exercise Guidelines To Burn Fat:

1. Be Consistent. Long periods without exercise will let your body go back to where it was. Muscles will shrink, metabolism will slow back down, and fat will pile back on.

2. Exercise Everyday. For the ultimate in weight loss, exercise frequently so your body burns more fat. Your physiology changes as you do more workouts in a way that provides more energy.

3. Lift Weights. Weight lifting is considered by many to be the only permanent solution to weight loss. Exercise with weights for 30 minutes just twice a week, and the results can be lasting: better metabolism, more calories burned and turned into muscle instead of fat. And a toned, lean appearance.

4. Aerobic Activity. Get your heart working harder by starting gradually and building up to a higher fitness level. Walk, swim, cycling, dancing, aerobic classes… it all burns calories and fat while improving your heart and lung capacity.

5. Harder and Faster, or Longer and Slower. You can choose from two weight loss exercise regimes. Do several vigorous workouts that are fairly short (15 – 20 minutes each). Or a slower aerobic activity done longer, like a 60 minute walk or bike ride. Choose the workout type that fits your lifestyle and energy level best.

6. Timing is Everything… Almost. Working out in the morning before eating lets you burn a greater amount of fat. If you exercise after eating, you get a dual effect: calories being burned as a result of digestion, and calories burned from exercise. This can lead to greater weight loss results than doing the two separately.

Summary

These fitness tips will help you blend weight loss / exercise into your daily routine without requiring any drastic lifestyle changes and without depriving you of the foods you love.



By: Antonio LeMaire

About the Author:

Henry

Copyright (c) 2008 Mark Albertson

The escalation of obesity rates in this country has sparked a flurry of activity among both serious researchers and charlatans to discover the perfect weight loss method. A recent study of four diets revealed that the key to weight loss success isn’t the diet, but how closely you follow it. Investigators from Tufts-New England Medical Center (Journal of the American Medical Association, January 2005) have determined in a study of four popular diets that the key to successful weight loss is not the diet itself, but actually following the diet. In this one-year study of 160 overweight adults, the researchers split people into four diet groups:

· Weight Watchers (low calorie)

· The Zone Diet (low glycemic index)

· The Ornish Diet (low fat)

· The Atkins Diet (low carb)

The conclusion of the investigation was that all of these diets worked when the participants in the study followed them. The problem is that less than one in four were able to stay on their given diet for just this one year.

It should be noted that the hardest diet to follow was Atkins, followed by the Ornish Diet, but according to the authors of the study, “no single diet produced satisfactory adherence rates.” Hypnosis has been recognized as a both a method for helping people to adhere to their diets, and for re-training the mind to “think” like a lean person, in order to be able to give up dieting completely and to develop healthy eating habits that parallel the eating habits of lean people.

That being said, wild and exaggerated claims abound regarding hypnosis as it one of the more appealing methods dangled before the eyes of those who are hungry for a seemingly easy solution to a complex problem.

A careful review of the scientific literatures exposes many of the claims about weight loss through hypnosis on the internet as overly optimistic at best and openly fraudulent at worst.

Considerable controversy swirls around the mechanisms by which hypnosis actually contributes to weight loss. Leon (1976) suggested that hypnosis can help obese people team new healthier eating patterns and retain them. One author remarked that the hypnotic state is characterized by heightened concentration, suggestibility, and relaxation (Mott, 1982). Certain individuals are thought to be capable of achieving this state more readily than others. A so-called hypnotic “induction” whereby a hypnotist using certain procedures to bring an individual into the hypnotic state is not a prerequisite for achieving the state (Mott, 1982). Hypnosis, contrary to the claims of some intemet advertisers cannot magically reprogram people’s minds. In short, methods of hypnosis run the gamut from simple relaxation techniques to formal inductions administered by hypnotists, but should not be considered supernatural in its effects.

Studies showing weight loss as a result of hypnosis alone are few in number and suffer from methodological problems. Andersen (1985) reported that following 8 weekly treatment sessions and 12 weeks of practicing self-hypnosis subjects lost an average of 20.2 pounds. Cochrane and Friesen (1986) concluded that moderate weight loss was obtained by subjects using hypnosis. The experimental group, lost more weight than the controls and maintained the weight loss at a six month follow-up.

Mott (1982) stated that “although hypnosis is sometimes referred to as a method of treatment, it is more accurate to regard hypnosis as a facilitator of a number of different treatment methods.” The study concludes that the use of hypnosis for a moderate weight loss is effective using hypnotherapy. Hypnosis Plus Behavioral Weight Management A number of studies indicate that hypnosis combined with a behavioral weight management program contributes significantly to weight loss. Bolocofsky, Spinler, and Coulthard-Morris (1985) revealed that the addition of hypnosis to a behavioral program designed to alter eating patterns increased the amount of weight loss at 8-month and 2year follow-ups. Both the behavioral and hypnosis programs were tailored to each subject individually in the study. Bolocofsky et al. (1984) acknowledged that “the less a person weighed at the start of the program the more likely he was to lose weight and maintain the reduction”. Hypnosis combined with behavioral weight management seems to be more effective for small amounts of weight loss. Another study of 45 females found that supplementing a basic self-management program with hypnosis resulted in a slightly greater amount of weight loss at a 3-month follow-up (Barabasz and Spiegel, 1989). The group for which individualized hypnotic suggestions were developed lost more weight than those exposed only to a group procedure. Kirsch (1996) noted a weight loss of 6.00 pounds without hypnosis and 11.83 pounds with hypnosis based on a meta-analysis of six studies. Allison and Faith (1996), however, disagreed and maintained that hypnosis only enhances cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy slightly if at all. Long-term individualized hypnosis combined with a behavioral weight management program appears to contribute to modest weight loss and helps maintain it.

Hypnosis operates mainly as a way to increase participants’ attention to suggestions of behavioral programs as well as to reinforce their weight loss. Studies using behavioral treatments successfully “typically have developed incentive systems to bridge the gap between the short-term -reinforcers provided during treatment and long-term goal of weight reduction” (Bolocofsky et al., 1985). Hypnosis can fulfill this role by stepping in as a psychological reinforcer. Hypnosis may assist subjects in learning positive eating behaviors and creating healthy long-term patterns of food intake. Subjects are then more likely to incorporate the rules of a particular program into their behavioral regimes (Bolocofsky, 1985). Kroger (1970) points out the similarities between hypnosis and behavioral treatments which share an emphasis on visualization and imagination. The literature suggests that hypnosis is an ideal addition to behavioral weight management programs which tend to need supplementation to achieve long-term results.

The Hodgepodge Problem in Weight Loss Studies The use of subjects of varying ages and backgrounds represents one challenge that plagues studies of hypnosis as a useful treatment for weight loss. Andersen (1985) utilized subjects ranging in age from 21-56 years, a considerable spread. Subjects in another study ranged in age from 17 to 67 resulting in considerable potential differences between the control group and the hypnosis group (Bolocofsky et al., 1985). The fact that subjects were not matched with regard to age could exaggerate results of weight loss as a result of hypnosis that may more accurately be attributed to age differences. McCabe, Jupp, and Collins (I985) suggested a tendency for younger women to drop out of weight loss programs relative to older women leading to a possible masking of potential effects of age. Bolocofsky et al. (1984) indicated that successful hypnotic weight loss participants were higher in self-control, weighed less at the start of the study, married, and more expressive. A wide variety of factors influence whether a given subject will lose weight through a hypnotic weight loss program. Anderson (1985) cites the absence of matched subjects as a weakness in her experiment. More studies with subjects closely matched on various characteristics should be conducted to substantiate claims about the effectiveness of hypnosis for weight loss when combined with a behavioral program.

Most studies require weekly consultation with a hypnotist for 8 weeks or more in addition to self-hypnosis (Bolocofsky et al., 1984; Bolocofsky et al., 1985, Andersen, 1985; Cochrane & Friesen, 1986; McCabe et al., 1985). Internet advertisers who claim weight loss will occur following a single hypnotic session, especially a group hypnotic session, are frauds selling dreams to desperate customers. Allison and Faith (1996) underscore that “there is currently no panacea for the treatment of obesity and hypnosis is no exception”. Treatment using hypnosis then is not a quick and easy way out of weight troubles. In order to achieve any benefits from its use, hypnosis must be practiced on a regular basis for a significant period of time.

Conclusions and Limitations

Hypnosis has been shown to be an effective treatment for low to moderate amounts of weight loss. One qualification of this statement is that the hypnotic program should be tailored to each individual. Hypnosis is a process by which an individual enters a state of relaxation and heightened suggestibility, Transformation of the brain through some mysterious process defines only the hypnosis of pseudoscientists. Quick-fix hypnosis is probably much less effective than an 8 week program using both in-session hypnosis, at-home self-hypnosis, and behavioral weight management. The only people who claim hypnosis is easy, simple, and quick are those trying to sell people on their program. The largest obstacle in weight loss is its long-term retention, but follow-ups of hypnosis as a weight loss treatment have been conducted at the longest after two years. Weight loss tapes lack scientific evidence to support their success and should be purchased with this knowledge in mind. Weight loss through hypnosis has been largely ignored by scientists and more studies with control groups and large subject pools are required to understand its action and import.



By: Mark Albertson

About the Author:

Forrest

laurans06 asked:


I am 15 1/2 boy and am overweight i weight about 80 Kg’s and wanna get to 60 by dec. I have this weight loss stuff. I just wanna kno if its safe to take? Not ganna affect reproductive systems or stunt growth etc? Thanks. And i know tht you have to diet and excercise alot with it too work.

Rupert

Elaine asked:


I’m 14 and I’m 4′6 and I weigh 68 pounds. I’m a competitive gymnast and fat is really not good so I need to lose weight. Some of the girls on my team use weight loss pills, and they say they work really well. Oh and also are they expensive? Do you need a prescription?
Exercise and diet aren’t the problem. I train 6 hours a day and eat about 1300 calories.

Jasper

lookinforexcitement asked:


I’ve been working out consistently for about a year, but my weight loss has been really slow. I’ve only lost about 15-18lbs. I’ve also changed my diet and started eating a lot healthier. I haven’t been intaking much protein and I believe that is a reason why my weight loss has been slow. How much protein should I take to speed up my weight loss? Are there any recipes, shakes or vitamins I should be taking?
I workout at least 3-4x a week. On average I’m at the gym for 1hr. – 1.5hrs. I’ve been attending the RPM & Body Pump classes at least 2x a week. On the other days I’m doing cardio and weightlifting. I also do resistence training.

Humphrey