Losing weight takes time, it takes patience and most of all it requires a willingness to try things new to your world. Whether its eating sushi or simply trying a new vegetable you’ve previously considered ‘yucky’, getting out of your comfort zone is a great way to facilitate fat loss.

{Just because you don’t like broccoli doesn’t mean there aren’t other greens you can enjoy.}

When your goal is weight loss you should be looking for foods with lots of protein and fiber and enough carbohydrates to keep you energized throughout a long work day. Keep reading for some of the best diet foods for fat loss!

Tilapia

When you’re looking for one of the best diet foods that’s low in calories and high in protein, tilapia has just 145 calories per serving and nearly 30 grams of protein! Since we know our bodies require more energy to process proteins, we also know that protein helps burn more calories! Another reason tilapia made the list of best diet foods for fat loss is that it has no carbs so you’re free to choose a healthy carb of your choice for a healthy and well-balanced meal.

In addition to being loaded with protein, you can find other nutrients in tilapia including calcium and 429mg of potassium per four ounce serving! That’s tons of nutrients—many of which that aid in fat loss—and very few calories which also aids in fat loss.

Add tilapia to your diet: add 1 to 2 cups of your favorite vegetable for a low calorie meal that’ll leave you feeling good about your diet.

Cereal

Cereal is a great diet food for fat loss, and not just because many cereals are high in fiber. The fiber content is obviously one of the things that makes it an awesome diet food for fat loss, because fiber makes you feel more satisfied without consuming as much food.

But what really makes cereal one of the best diet foods for fat loss is that its low calorie count makes it a great late night snack! Eat a bowl of cereal with a bit of milk instead of potato chips or brownies with ice cream, and your hunger will be satisfied in just a few calories. Cereal like Cheerios provides you with a satisfying snack that won’t pack on the pounds at bedtime.

Add cereal to your diet: add 1/3 cup of milk for breakfast, or snack on 1 cup of cereal in lieu of a late night snack. Sprinkle with cinnamon and bake for a semi-sweet treat.

Collard Greens

Long associated with Southern cuisine and its indulgent dishes, collard greens are actually quite a good diet food to help you lose weight! On their own, collard greens have tons of nutrients that aren’t just good for weight loss, they are good for your health!

{Get maximum benefit by combining tilapia and collard greens in one meal! Hot sauce optional.}

Loaded with Vitamin A (522% of daily value), D (189%) and calcium (57%) eating a cup of collard greens can yield positive results when you next step on the scale. The beta-carotene in collard greens helps fight weight-related illnesses that include cancer and heart disease, which is another reason it’s considered one of the best diet foods to help you lose weight.

With just 94 calories per 10-ounce serving, you get loads of nutrients and satisfaction without a lot of calories. Add collard greens when you need to create a calorie deficit for weight loss.

Add collard greens to your diet: add 1 cup of frozen collard greens to an omelette or lasagna so you can get used to the flavor.

Garlic

Although garlic isn’t something you just sit down and snack on, it does provide those of in in need of weight loss with a great way to season dishes without a lot of calories. Whether you chop up a few cloves for soup or grate some on top of your salad so you don’t go crazy with salad dressing, garlic is one of the best foods to help you lose weight because it saves you from yourself!

Garlic has a little bit of all the important weight loss nutrients—fiber, protein and carbohydrates—in just a few calories so you get lots of flavor without a lot of salt, cholesterol and fat. In addition to all of this, garlic improves your immune system!

Add garlic to your diet: Grate or mince garlic into eggs before scrambling, add to salads to season instead of salt, or smash a few and add it to your favorite 1 pot wonder!

Learning how to lose weight requires you to get acquainted with the best diet foods. These foods will make the difficult task of losing weight much easier, which increases your chances of success. Get your food issues resolved for weight loss success by reading our Eat Stop Eat review.

One of the most difficult aspects of losing weight is finding low calorie desserts that don’t taste like cardboard. Generally finding low calorie desserts is like Goldilocks trying to find the right bed; some taste gross but have very few calories and others taste delicious but have more calories than you care to admit.

Enter the McFlurry, an ice cream dessert made even more decadent by handfuls of candy or cookies. Keep reading to find out why the calories in a McFlurry should make you reconsider what counts as a low calorie dessert.

Major Nutrients Found in a McFlurry

You should never be surprised to learn that anything with ‘Mc’ preceding it has a ton of calories and sugar added. The calories in a twelve ounce McFlurry are enough to constitute an entire meal…and this is just dessert!

With nearly 30 grams of fat the McFlurry is not a dessert you should turn to if calories are your concern. Looking at McFlurry nutrition facts indicates that this dessert has too much sodium, carbs and cholesterol for a snack. Of course because it is ice cream the McFlurry is paced with calcium and potassium not to mention protein.

Storing/Selecting

Choosing a McFlurry is simple; just decide what sugary candy or cookies you want mixed in. You do have the option of fruit in some restaurants, which could slightly reduce the calorie count, but not enough to allow you to enjoy this sweet confection without worry.

Store your McFlurry in the freezer until you’re ready to eat it. Keep the McFlurry in a cold place to prevent it from melting.

Eat It With:

If you feel that you must have a McFlurry you should have it with nothing. A 12-ounce McFlurry is nearly 600 calories so if you pair this with another dish you can easily exceed 1,000 calories in one sitting. The snack size has slightly fewer calories, but not enough to allow you to pair the McFlurry with another item and feel good about your weight loss efforts.

Burn Off A McFlurry

To burn off the calories in a McFlurry, you would need to do:

• 161 minutes of walking
• 61 minutes of  mountain biking
• 142 minutes of Windsurfing

Losing weight and counting calories go hand-in-hand, and despite what those peddling weight loss products tell you, weight loss cannot happen successfully without counting a few calories.

{The best time to count calories is before you buy the food item!}

Today we will focus on teaching you how to count calories for weight loss. Keep reading to find out more!

What Is A Calorie?

Put simply, a calorie is a unit of measurement. Calories measure how much energy a food or drink contains.

So, why are calories so important? Well our bodies use calories to help us do stuff. That can include walking, working out or just plain working. This means that seriously cutting calories for weight loss is a bad idea as you still need calories to live. But counting calories will help you achieve weight loss.

Counting Calories for Weight Loss

You want to lose weight and keep it off, which means you need to get acquainted with calories. You need to know how many calories you consume and effective ways to cut calories for weight loss.

The first step is creating a calorie deficit. This is why counting calories for weight loss is so important; because if you don’t know how many you consume already, how can you decrease it?

The good news is that there are 2 ways you can count calories for weight loss—eliminating it or burning it.

The Magic Number

Counting calories for weight loss has a magic number so to speak, the number that will help you achieve gradual and long-term weight loss. Creating a calorie deficit of 3,500 calories per week will help you lose about 1 pound each week. That is how counting calories for weight loss turns into results!

The difficult part is finding ways to create this deficit, but as we said before there isn’t just one way to go about this.

Burning Calories for Weight Loss

You can create a 3,500 calorie deficit by burning it through exercise or other physical activity. This, in my opinion, is the most effective way for most people to count calories for weight loss. By actually eating enough food your body has energy to work a little to burn off a few hundred calories, unlike the groggy constantly tired feeling you get from severely eliminating calories.

{A healthy dose of daily exercise–like cardio kickboxing–will keep those calories burning!}

Regular exercise and a more active life in general will make sure that you burn calories to create the calorie deficit needed for weight loss. Counting calories for weight loss means counting calories consumed as well as calories burned.

Cutting Calories for Weight Loss

The other important aspect of counting calories for weight loss is to make sure you are eating only what you need. If you aren’t sure, click here for information on how to lose weight on a 2,000 calorie diet.

Pay close attention to your diet, making sure you eat fresh fruits and vegetables, lean meats and high fiber foods. Reduce or eliminate foods that are high in fat and sugar, as they give you plenty of calories without making you feel satisfied. You don’t have to eat lettuce all day every day, just make sure some of the best  foods for fat loss are on your shopping list.

Making It Work

The only way counting calories for weight loss will work for you is if you tackle this problem from both angles.

First, make sure you include healthy foods in your meals & snacks and reduce the amount of fatty, high calorie foods you consume. By getting your diet under control and living on a 1,800 or 2,000 calorie diet, you will make your weight loss efforts more successful.

Next, make a concerted effort to get more physical activity in your daily life. Yes, this means you need to get regular exercise, but it also means that you need to lead a more active life. Take small steps to burn a few calories here and there like taking stairs or walking to lunch from the office instead of driving. Small steps such as this will get you off the sofa (an impossible task for me at times) and into the world!

Counting calories for weight loss doesn’t have to be a burden, if you don’t let it. Pay attention to simple things like the nutrition label on items before you place them in your basket to keep your calorie count under control. Eventually you’ll have such great food knowledge that you won’t have to look at every single package!

Getting Started

Counting calories for weight loss means you need to familiarize yourself with the calories found in food you like to eat. Get more food information by reading our review of The Diet Solution Program; it’ll teach you how to avoid common food traps at the supermarket!

Going out to eat is something we all enjoy…except when we’re on a diet. Eating healthy and eating out are not mutually exclusive; it’s totally possible to do both.

{Dining out like this will not do your weight loss efforts any favors. Any!}

You can dine out occasionally and still lose weight, if you’re willing to make a few smart choices on behalf of your weight loss efforts. Keep reading to find out how you can dine out and still lose weight!

Dine Out Less Often

This is one of those times that losing weight will require you to place a few restrictions on yourself. While it is highly possible to dine out and keep up weight loss, it becomes less possible the more frequently you eat out. If you dine out more than 2 nights each week, eating for weight loss becomes less possible.

Studies have shown that those who dine out 2 or more times each week were less successful at maintaining their weight loss than those who simply did not dine outside the home.

Appetizers

Rather than ordering a gigantic entrée, pick a light and tasty option from the starter menu. Don’t believe me? Well how do you explain that portion size increases coincide with the increasing prevalence of obesity? Appetizers today are the same size as a dinner entrée 15 years ago, so don’t think you’ll be left hungry if you order an appetizer for dinner.

Creating a calorie deficit requires you to consume fewer calories; an appetizer will help you achieve that without the temptation of a huge plate of food staring back at you!

On The Side, Please

Even if your server stares holes into you, order indulgences like salad dressing on the side. Salad dressings, especially the creamy varieties can be packed with calories and fat, two things you definitely need to reduce for weight loss. This is also true for high calorie condiments like mayonnaise, so feel free to happily say “on the side, please” to your server!

{On the side orders let you choose how much dressing you eat with your salad.}

When you order these ingredients on the side, you’re taking control of how much you consume instead of letting the cook decide that today is your cheat day. It’s your body and you get to decide what goes in it and how much.

Have A Drink

No, not that kind of drink. Dining out and still losing weight requires self control. If you lack that self control use this trick to help. When your dining companions are ordering cocktails, ask for a cup of green tea or sparkling water with a slice of citrus. This tiny dining out tip will reduce your appetite so you don’t order the highest calorie dish on the menu…and finish it!

Now, on to the other drinks. It is okay to have some alcohol when you’re out having a good time, but the key here is some alcohol, not tons of it! Alcohol adds liquid calories that don’t make you feel satisfied (at least not food satisfiedJ), so if you’re going to drink make it spirits that don’t require lots of drinks to feel the effects.

Just keep in mind that alcohol will dehydrate you and make you feel awful and bloated in the morning so enjoy the booze but enjoy it…IN MODERATION!

Tomato, Not Cream

Sauces are amazingly delicious and high in calories, making them truly dangerous for anyone trying to shed the fat. When you’re dining out on a diet, say no to cream-based sauces that include béchamel and béarnaise sauces. These sauces are quite high in calories and can make a simple pasta or chicken dish, explode with calories.

When ordering sauces, tomato-based sauces and pesto are healthy food choices for weight loss. If you must try a cream sauce, order it “on the side”!

Doggy Bags

This should go without saying, but the key to dining out and still losing weight is to take it home if you can’t finish it. Don’t stuff yourself in an attempt to clean your plate…unless you get the meal for free for being completely gluttonous!

{Doggy bags can go a long way in helping with portion control while dining out.}

Restaurants invest in items like Styrofoam containers and paper bags for a reason…so you can take their extremely large portions home and feed the rest of the family! Ok I’m sort of kidding about that last part, but really if you can’t finish your dish, make it tomorrow’s lunch.

Dining out while trying to lose weight is a great time to think about recycling…as in recycling your leftover dinner into tomorrow’s lunch or dinner. If you’re feeling especially creative, make it a tasty twist on a healthy breakfast.

Losing weight doesn’t mean you’re stuck at home while your friends are out slamming chili cheese fries and beer. Losing weight successfully means making smarter food choices when you go out.

If you’re still having trouble eating out and eating healthy, maybe your body needs a break. Read our Eat Stop Eat review to find out if intermittent fasting will help you dine out and lose weight at the same time.

26 years ago I started running if an effort to prevent gaining weight after I had quit smoking. During the past 26 years, running has been the most notable staple in my life. It has not only kept my weight in check, but has provided me with more health benefits, body, mind and soul, than I could list.

{Running has so many health benefits that there’s no reason you shouldn’t give it a try!}

Like me, many people start out running for one or more of the recognized health benefits. But what makes them continue is the love of running. And it’s this love of running that builds the commitment to continue running and include it in their total lifestyle plan.

From a practicality standpoint, running is a very easy sport to get into. With few exceptions, you can almost run anywhere, anytime and all that is needed is a good pair of running shoes and some comfortable clothing. No gym, weights, mats or equipment needed.

What Makes Running So Special?

Running is a very liberating experience that improves one’s self-awareness. It takes a degree of self-discipline and personal commitment to find the time, to get your runners on and to start pounding the pavement. Even more so on bad weather days.

Then during the run, we are often humbled by our physical and mental limitations. These limitations ultimately give through to the determination to continue and improve. As a result, future runs will then build on the successes of past runs.

With all that in mind, the satisfaction that one achieves through this greater self-awareness is what makes running so special.

But let’s talk about some of the other aspects of running which make it important

Weight Loss or Maintenance (my personal favorite)

I mention weight loss first because losing weight is the key that unlocks the door to further health benefits. Losing weight can lower your risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, type 2 diabetes, breathing problems and more.

{Weight loss is the best, and most common reason many people take up running.}

Running provides one of the highest energy expenditures of any sport. Depending on the weight of the runner and the intensity in which they run, roughly 100 calories for every mile gets burned. Then, with a deficit of 3,500 calories, the body will lose a pound of body fat. A good calorie-reduced nutritious meal plan combined with running will help to shed pounds of unwanted body fat.

Mental Health

There are many studies and opinions on how running helps your mental health. What’s important to note is that they all conclude that running DOES help your mental health.

Along with improving one’s self-awareness, which was discussed earlier in the article, running is also great for one’s self-esteem. In running there are goals and milestones that most runners enjoy setting and achieving. The simple reason why we like to set goals is that the sensation of accomplishing these goals is immense. It’s a feather under the cap which is tickling one’s self-esteem.

Our self-esteem also soars as we feel our body changing. We lose weight and/or we gain muscle. We feel healthy, look healthy and it shows, inside and out.

And to top it off, runners get high. I’m talking about a “runner’s high”. During a run, endorphins get released, which causes a feeling of euphoria known as “runner’s high”. It’s difficult to feel stressed, worried, anxious or sad during a run. Whether it’s been runner’s high or not, I can honestly say that in 26 years of running, I have never felt any negative emotions during my run, and this feeling or mood usually carries with me throughout the day.

Blood Pressure and Heart Health

Think of your arteries contracting and expanding. Now think of how fast they contract and expand while you are running and your heart is pumping fast. All this contracting and expanding of your arteries helps maintain their elasticity. And those healthy arteries will help to ease the flow of blood, which not only reduces blood pressure, but also lowers the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

I should also mention that running has been proven to prevent type 2 diabetes, raise good cholesterol and boost the immune system.

Cancer

It has been agreed upon by most experts, that regular exercise reduces the risk of some cancers, including colon, endometrial, breast and lung cancer.

One study in particular published by the National Cancer Institute studied women who were of normal weight and participated in vigorous activities (which included running). The results concluded that they had a 30% lower risk of breast cancer than their less active counterparts.

Although it’s not my intention to discount the health benefits achieved through moderate exercise, the more vigorous and frequency the exercise, the more health benefits that will be reaped.

I could easily write more on the health benefits of running, but after composing this article, I now have a burning need to go for a run. There are countless more studies, which could be quoted from, on the benefits of running. But I think it is clear that choosing running as your exercise of choice will improve the health of both your mind and body.

Jacquie Cattanach is an enthusiastic runner and triathlete who uncovers her biggest achievements in every run she runs. Jacquie has learned and experienced many trials and tribulations along the way and enjoys expressing her views through writing running related stories and reviews on running products such as running sunglass reviews on her Running Gear Blog

Losing weight is easy…in the beginning. Once the easy fat has gone, weight loss becomes much harder. Keeping it off seems to be even harder, but not all is what it appears to be!

{Learning to cook is one of the best ways to aid weight loss efforts.}

Long term weight loss success requires you to learn, actually learn what is required to lose weight and DO IT! Keep reading for more information on how you can have long term weight loss success.

Tip #1 – Learn to Cook

One of the best things you can do for long term weight loss success is know your way around a kitchen. You don’t have to be Bobby Flay but you should channel your inner Flay. Learning to cook will help with weight loss because you’ll always have quick meal ideas at home.

This doesn’t mean you can’t have takeout once in awhile, but it does mean that you should only have takeout once in awhile. Learning to cook for long term weight loss success lets you put your best—and healthiest—spin on a Big Mac right at home.

When you cut down on fast food and make it at home you can use healthier cooking options that take a little longer, but are far friendlier to those of us trying to create a calorie deficit.

Tip #2 – Turn Off the TV

Don’t get me wrong I love TV; I mean I absolutely adore it. By the end of the week my DVR is filled to the brim. BUT, yes there’s a but, that’s why we have those handy little pieces of technology—to live our beautiful young lives!

Long term weight loss success means you have to turn of that TV once in a while and get moving around! Clean the house, take a walk, exercise or make pasta from scratch. Being active is key to long term weight loss success and there’s no such thing as being too active.

Even if you exercise regularly, don’t just sit in front of the TV for hours. You lose weight by being active and you’ll keep that weight off by continuing to be active. Besides being more active keeps away pesky health problems like diabetes, depression and hypertension.

Tip #3 – Be Honest

Don’t make excuses when you indulge on your favorite dessert; just own up to the fact that you ate more than you should. Keep monitoring your food, but especially desserts because they can really send your calorie count off the charts.

Long term weight loss success requires a lifestyle change, which means that you will occasionally slip up and eat 3 brownies in a row…we’ve all been there. The key is to acknowledge it was an indulgence and continue eating healthy and exercising regularly. Don’t give up though, because one night of fun and indulgence shouldn’t ruin months or years of hard work.

Tip #4 – Try New Things

Trying new things is what keeps life exciting. Whether it’s eating an Eel Roll for the first time or your first day of kickboxing cardio class, trying new things will keep you excited about food and exercise. Not to mention that a life of excitement is a life of action!

{Trying something new might lead to a new food favorite.}

Think about the last time you bought or made a new dish…was it that long ago? How about the last time you did something other than yoga or weight lifting?

There’s nothing wrong with tried & true, it’s called ‘tried & true’ for a reason. But new things are new, and there’s plenty of new stuff out there just begging to be put on your favorites list! If you can always be active in your food choices and your life you can experience long term weight loss success.

Tip #5 – Live Your Life

When you first start living a healthier life it can feel a lot like a diet, a lot. Then it begins to feel like a way of life. When that happens, you don’t have to monitor every single calorie because you already know how many calories are in bacon & eggs! This is where living your life really begins.

You got this far by enjoying—seriously, enjoying—a well balanced diet and an active lifestyle, so you should keep doing that. Many people who re-gain lost weight stop doing the very things that lead to weight loss! Studies have shown that regular activity and a low calorie diet are the keys to maintaining long term weight loss success.

Looking for more time to be active? Read our Fat Burning Furnace review to find out how 20-25 minute workouts can help you achieve long term weight loss success.

When it comes to weight loss, many yo-yo dieters keep trying the same old methods and expecting different results. Isn’t that the very definition of insanity?

{Weight Watchers (allegedly) helped Jennifer Hudson shed the fat…can it help you?}

Well the good news is that Weight Watchers has done something very few weight loss programs have done—change their methods to keep up with weight loss science! Keep reading TLFA’s Weight Watchers review to find out if the new Weight Watchers is for you!

Weight Watchers PointsPlus™

The old Weight Watchers program focused on points through calorie counting, with a penalty handed out for fats. In 2010 however, Weight Watchers began a new weight loss points system that takes into account important dietary factors that include a diet rich in fiber and protein. Weight Watchers new and improved PointsPlus™ allows you to eat virtually unlimited fruits and vegetables as they have a point value of 0!

This new PointsPlus™ system by Weight Watchers is based on what has been learned in the last few years about losing weight and keeping it off.

How Weight Watchers PointsPlus™ Works?

Although Weight Watchers does have a new points system to help dieters shed unwanted pounds, the basics of how it works are still the same. You will receive a PointsPlus™ target from Weight Watchers, which lets you know how much food/how many points you are allowed for the day. These points are intended to make sure you lose weight without feeling hungry.

The new PointsPlus™ system by Weight Watchers gives food ‘points’ based on its protein, carbs, fat and fiber count. While researching our Weight Watchers review, we also found that there is an option for ‘Power Foods,’ which are defined as foods that make your body work harder to burn them while also giving you greater nutrition each day. These power foods include whole grains, lean proteins, low fat dairy products and of course…fruits & vegetables.

What’s Good About Weight Watchers PointsPlus™

What’s encouraging about Weight Watchers new point system is that it puts the power of food choices in the hands of the dieter, rather than a pre-determined amount. Instead of just eating whatever you want within a specific amount of points, the PointsPlus™ system gives greater value to proteins and fiber and less value to fat and other foods that your body can break down without much effort.

{This little logo lets you know you’re on the new weight loss program…the one that works!}

Weight Watchers also places greater emphasis on fruits and vegetables by giving them a zero value, so dieters feel encouraged to eat more produce without worrying about points. Now that dieters actually have to think about healthy food choices, Weight Watchers is showing that they really do care about weight loss and maintenance.

What’s Bad About Weight Watchers PointsPlus™

It’s difficult to say that the new and improved version of Weight Watchers weight loss program is bad, however if were things that concerned TFLA it’d be the prepared meals by Weight Watchers. These meals and food items are a great way to help dieters learn more about what foods they can and cannot eat. Unfortunately they are also a great excuse to not really change your eating habits, because someone else is doing all the work for you!

The other double-edged sword with the new points plan is that all fruits and vegetables are treated equally, which means the calories in watermelon count as much as the calories in an avocado, which has nearly 200 calories more! For a person with a certain body type–short people for example–an extra 200 calories every day or even a few days each week can put you much farther away from your weight loss goal than you think. What Weight Watchers fails to take into account is that some  fruits and vegetables have high calorie counts and should not be eaten in excess.

Because Weight Watchers is a weight loss program they do remind you that a calorie deficit is required for weight loss and an active lifestyle is promoted. However they do not explicitly encourage exercise, which we believe is a key component to successful and ongoing weight loss.

Support

One area in which Weight Watchers has always excelled is providing support for its members. Weight Watchers PointsPlus™ system allows you the same support as before; online for privacy or in person for a shared weight loss experience.

Weight Watchers PointsPlus™ Verdict

The new version of Weight Watchers point system is an effective way to experience successful weight loss. By using an improved method of assigning point values to foods, Weight Watchers has given customers a chance to learn how to lose weight rather than simply following orders.

Encouraging dieters to eat more fruits and vegetables is always great advice, and it is much easier to do when they have no points! Unfortunately the point value of fruits and vegetables will likely lead many to experience weight gain or stagnation. A new method with tons of recipes to follow, a point guide for when you dine out and an iPhone application makes using Weight Watchers easier than ever. Use Weight Watchers PointsPlus™ as a stepping stone to independent weight loss and you’ll learn much of what you need for successful weight loss.

A healthy diet and an active lifestyle are keys to weight loss and Weight Watchers PointsPlus™ system can help.

If you’re still skeptical of Weight Watchers, read our Eat Stop Eat review for other methods of breaking your food addiction and losing weight, not to mention KEEPING IT OFF!

Losing weight and keeping it off requires you to control what you eat as well as how often you eat. Many diet pill creators unfortunately believe the key to weight loss success is pretending that your body doesn’t get hungry—legitimately or otherwise.

{Pretending some hunger isn’t legitimate is a recipe for binge eating.}

Hoodoba Pure is the newest hoodia gordonii diet pill to hit the market. The TFLA Hoodoba Pure review will delve into Hoodoba Pure ingredients, side effects, price and overall effectiveness. Keep reading to find out if Hoodoba Pure is the answer to your weight loss prayers.

What is Hoodoba Pure?

Hoodoba Pure is an appetite suppressant pill that contains Hoodia gordonii.

How Does Hoodoba Pure Work?

According to the Hoodoba Pure website, eating food causes your blood sugar levels to increase which lets you know that your body is satisfied from eating. Weight loss occurs because many people ignore that reminder that your body is full and continue eating. Well Hoodoba Pure works because it contains a “miracle molecule” called P57 that makes you feel full from eating, even when you haven’t eaten a bite!

[Hoodoba Pure is 100% vegetarian so it must be good for you, right?]

So basically Hoodoba Pure works by making you feel hungry before you’ve had a chance to eat or overeat. Sounds like a guaranteed path to weight loss, although not the healthiest.

Hoodoba Pure Ingredients

The most important question you should ask yourself before taking Hoodoba Pure is what’s in it? So many diet pills make false claims and are very tight-lipped about what’s in their pills, that you have to ask or risk adverse side effects.

Hoodoba Pure contains 750 milligrams of “100% pure South African Hoodia gordonii succulent”. According to the label of Hoodoba Pure, there are no other ingredients or stimulants added to enhance the effectiveness of the pills.

How Much Is Hoodoba Pure?

Hoodoba Pure is one of the more expensive appetite suppressants on the market, at $54 for 60 pills. As with most other diet pills, the more bottles you buy, the bigger your savings.

How Often Should I Take Hoodba Pure?

Hoodoba Pure gives dieters two choices for taking the appetite suppressant. The recommended Hoodoba Pure regimen consists of taking 1 or 2 capsules up to 1 hour prior to meal time. This regimen should be completed 3 times per day before each meal.

The second option for taking Hoodoba Pure requires you to take 1 to 2 pills mid-morning, mid-afternoon, and before & after dinner to prevent late night snacking.

Hoodoba Pure Side Effects

The makers of Hoodoba Pure claim the capsules are all natural, completely vegetarian and made up of nothing but hoodia gordonii. As such there are no harmful side effects listed for this product. Unfortunately hoodia gordonii is too new for in-depth studies of long-term side effects.

Hoodoba Pure – The Verdict

Unlike many appetite suppressant pills on the market, Hoodoba Pure doesn’t contain any stimulants that speed up the heart rate and cause unnecessary agitation. With no known side effects associated with being on a Hoodoba Pure regimen, the only real downside to taking this product is that it probably isn’t effective for weight loss.

Appetite suppressants make you feel less hungry; they don’t make you un-hungry and therefore cannot stop you from eating or overeating. Even though Hoodoba Pure may have prevented the San people of South Africa from being hungry, the San people didn’t live in a society filled with an endless supply of junk food.

The only way to make sure you lose weight and keep it off is to eat less food and exercise regularly. However since there are no harmful side effects to taking Hoodoba Pure, the only thing you’d be wasting is time and money.

Weight Loss Help

If you really want to stop overeating and lose weight, read our The Diet Solution Program review. It’ll teach you the truth about healthy food choices so you eat a well-balanced meal when you’re hungry and nothing when you aren’t.

Having six pack abs that you can show off seems to be all the rage lately, whether you’re a professional athlete, stage performer or reality television star. The question many readers have for me is; how can I get six pack abs?

{Need to have ripped abs? Twinlab Ripped Fuel says it can help…}

I’ve scoured the internet looking for products that promise to help you get “ripped abs” and today we’ve another to review. Keep reading for TFLA’s Twinlab© Ripped Fuel review!

What is Ripped Fuel?

According to Twinlab©, Ripped Fuel is a thermogenic fat metabolizer that comes in pill form. This ephedra free version is supposed to stimulate fat loss while also preserving lean muscle mass. Sounds good so far, right?

How Ripped Fuel Works

Losing weight on Twinlab Ripped Fuel requires a daily regimen of pills. To start, take 1 pill prior to each meal to determine how Ripped Fuel capsules will affect you. A regular dosage of Ripped Fuel—2 capsules before each meal—combined with a low fat diet and regular exercise is how Twinlab Ripped Fuel works for fat loss.

Twinlab Ripped Fuel Ingredients

Recently Twinlab has had to make a few adjustments to its Ripped Fuel formula, namely removing the now illegal (in the U.S.) ingredient ephedra from the formula. The ephedra free version of Twinlab Ripped Fuel is made up mostly of Guarana seed extract (800mg), is almost 25% caffeine. Other ingredients include bitter orange fruit extract (325mg), which is supposed to replace the ephedra, however studies have not backed up Twinlab’s weight loss claims concerning bitter orange fruit extract.

[It's important to look at all Ripped Fuel ingredients to see how they affect you.]

The third largest ingredient in the Twinlab Ripped Fuel formula is the ‘metabolic fat loss blend’ that contains St. John’s Wort extract, green tea leaf, ginger root, cayenne fruit and a few other ingredients. This blend totals 310 mg, which is far less of each ingredient than is needed to reduce body weight and fat loss.

Twinlab Ripped Fuel Pros & Cons

There are things that are good about Ripped Fuel and things that are bad. Ultimately it is up to you to decide if the good outweighs the bad enough for you to use this product safely.

What’s good about Ripped Fuel is that they have removed the ephedra from it, so it is now much safer to use. Because it is sold over the counter and online, Ripped Fuel has wide availability for customers without a prescription. Twinlab Ripped Fuel comes in an easy to swallow capsule with instructions that all adults can follow.

What worries us at TFLA about Twinlab Ripped Fuel is that it contains large amounts of caffeine (more than 500mg per dose), which can cause a host of health problems especially for those who are overweight. Although reasonably priced–$21 for 60 pills–Twinlab  Ripped Fuel does not contain enough of its key ingredients for effective weight loss.

Does Ripped Fuel Work for Weight Loss?

There are plenty of anecdotal tales regarding the effectiveness of Twinlab Ripped Fuel for weight loss, however the science just doesn’t bear it out. Many of the ingredients contained in Ripped Fuel are effective for weight loss…in larger doses. Twinlab recommended doses that are much lower than the levels deemed effective for weight loss.

However because Twinlab Ripped Fuel is supposed to be used with a regular exercise regimen and a low fat diet, some weight loss should occur. Keep in mind though that when combined with a balanced diet and regular exercise, just about any fat burning, weight loss supplement will show some signs of success.

Unfortunately the Ripped Fuel side effects just aren’t worth it.

Want to find out how to really burn fat and keep it off through a healthy diet and regular workouts? Read our Fat Burning Furnace review and take control of your fat loss!

It’s a natural response to want to detox your body when you want to get rid of gross things inside your body like fat and sugar. But, before you decide on your next body detox diet you should ask yourself what these detox diets are doing for you.

[Plenty of people choose liquid diets and not all have the desired effects.]

Body detox diet creators claim that toxins are why you have such a hard time losing weight, but the truth is weight loss is impossible if you don’t burn more calories than you consume. If you think body detox diets are the answer to your weight loss woes, keep reading.

How Body Detox Diets Work

Body detox diets require you to consume lots of juice and water to “flush out” the toxins from your body. Typically lasting anywhere from one week to one month, body detox diets allegedly decrease the toxins your body takes in.

By undergoing a body detox diet for at least one week, proponents claim you will have more energy and improved digestion so your body absorbs the maximum amount of nutrients. It has also been claimed that body detox diets increase your metabolic rate for more successful weight loss.

Body Detox Diets

There are plenty of body detox diets on the market with the Master Cleanse, Colon Detox Diet and the Lemonade Diet being among the most popular. What these detox diets have in common is that they both require you to consume very few calories through juice or water consumption.

Of course you need to create a calorie deficit for weight loss to occur, but this kind of calorie deficit drains your body of the energy it needs to perform important functions like exercise. These diets all claim that toxins and contaminants in food contribute to illnesses and weight gain, which is true. What they fail to mention however, is that your liver and kidneys do a pretty fine job of clearing unnecessary toxins from your body.

Detox for Weight Loss?

Body detox diets may help you get rid of unwanted chemicals in your body, but paying closer attention to the foods you consume will also keep those unwanted substances out of your body. What these body detox diet proponents neglect to tell desperate dieters is that by cutting out foods that are full of crap, you minimize your chances to get sick or gain weight.

Forget how tempting these so-called toxic foods are and think about what they do to your body. Sure it’s difficult to say no to fried chicken, mac & cheese and fudge cupcakes, but the alternative is a month-long liquid starvation diet just to get back to normal. How you handle weight loss decisions like this will determine your overall success or failure in losing weight.

[The only way to guarantee weight loss is to burn more calories than you consume...through diet & exercise!]

Most dieters know and understand that a balanced diet and regular exercise are the only guaranteed ways to lose weight and keep it off. Unfortunately enticing weight loss programs like body detox diets prey on your need to lose weight NOW.

Body Detox Diets All Bad?

Not all body detox diets are bad, just the ones that push your caloric intake to dangerously low levels. The main issue with these diets is that you are required to take in very few calories over a very long period of time. The human body cannot function properly without adequate energy in the form of calories and body detox diets require dieters to consume too few calories to workout regularly.

Body detox diets mostly focus on reducing toxins in the body, with weight loss and health improvement being secondary factors. However intermittent fasting like that advocated by Brad Pilon is a safe alternative to body detox diets that help break your addiction to food as well as your need to overeat.

Read the TFLA Eat Stop Eat review to find more about intermittent fasting for weight loss.

Most people think that losing weight requires you to pretty much starve yourself. Unless you eat like its Thanksgiving everyday, nothing could be further from the truth.

[Unless you eat like this every day, you won't starve on a 2,000 calorie diet.]

Eating for weight loss means limiting caloric intake to create the calorie deficit required for weight loss. Keep reading to find out how to lose weight on a 2,000 calorie diet!

Know Your Food

Losing or maintaining weight on a 2,000 calorie diet requires you to know what you’re putting inside your body. The first thing you need to know is how many calories are in the foods you eat. If you love to grill burgers, find out how many calories are in a burger so you know how frequently they’ll be allowed on a 2,000 calorie diet.

Losing weight also requires you to actually read the nutritional labels. Most labels give information based on a 2,000 calorie diet so you can see how much salt and fat from calories you consume. Information such as this is crucial to weight loss and it’s provided on the outside of most foods. Can’t get easier than that, can it?

Pay Attention to Serving Sizes

The biggest mistake you can make on a 2,000 calorie diet is ignoring serving sizes on food labels. The money has been spent on the ink so you may as well glance at it. Adhering to serving sizes will make sure you consume no more than 2,000 calories a day. Measure your pasta—even whole grain pasta—before tossing it in the water because those calories really add up.

[Weigh your pasta to exact measurements to stick to a 2,000 calorie diet.]

You’ll notice that living on a 2,000 calorie diet isn’t as difficult as you thought once you listen to the labels. Just because it seems like it’s not enough food doesn’t mean its not. Your 2,000 calorie diet will be much easier with measuring cups & spoons and a kitchen scale. Measuring your meat before you cook it will help you save so many calories you’ll smack yourself for not doing it sooner!

Watch Out For Fat

A diet that’s high in fat will do nothing to help you stick to a 2,000 calorie diet. One gram of fat has 9 calories so paying attention to how much of your daily calories come from fat will help you cut down on calories. Reducing your fat intake will help with fat loss and overall health.

Exercise

A 2,000 calorie diet allows a normal size human enough food to keep energized throughout the day without making you sluggish. The best way to lose weight on 2,000 calories is regular exercise. Burning 3,500 calories per week will allow you to lose 1 pound a week for healthy weight loss and the only way to create that kind of deficit healthilyis to burn it off!

Whether you prefer a game of soccer or interval training or weight lifting, regular exercise is vital to weight loss. And those of you out there who consume way more than 2,000 calories currently will experience a lot of weight loss initially as your body adjusts to not overeating. After a few weeks, you too will notice an average weight loss of about 1 pound per week.

[Running...its a great excuse to hit the beach!]

How you get your exercise and how frequently you workout will determine how much weight you lose on a 2,000 calorie diet. But remember that just to lose one pound you have to lose 3,500 calories, which is an average of 500 calories per day.

Before You Begin

Starting a new way of eating can be difficult, especially when you still crave food that’s bad for you. But a 2 or 3 day fast can help you break your addiction to food and give you a great chance to experience long lasting weight loss.

Don’t take my word for it, read our review of Brad Pilon’s Eat Stop Eat!

When it comes to losing weight, intelligent dieters know that success means a healthy low-calorie diet and regular exercises. However when a diet plan comes along that makes a smart argument, it’s difficult to ignore. I found that to be (mostly) true with the Paleo Diet.

[Are these svelte frames from a Paleo diet or the paleo exercise regimen of hunting & gathering?]

The Paleo Diet is a diet plan that follows the same nutritional diet that our ancestors ate during the paleolithic period. Keep reading to find out if the Paleo Diet is just another fad or if it really works for weight loss.

The Paleo Diet

The Paleo Diet focuses on foods that contribute to good health, and cautions dieters to stay away from foods that contain nutrients which cause or contribute to weight gain. The main purpose of the Paleo Diet meal plan is to reduce fat and decrease the risk of contracting weight-related illnesses that include diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and many others.

The Paleo diet is very simple, consisting only of foods that were available prior to widespread agriculture. Below is a list of foods you are allowed to eat on the Paleo Diet:
Lean meats
Offal
Fresh Fruits
Fresh Vegetables
Shellfish
Fish
Roots
Tree Nuts

Like any diet, the Paleo Diet comes with a list of prohibited foods as well. The foods you may not eat on the Paleo Diet includes foods that were unavailable to paleolithic humans. Those foods include:
Salt
Refined Sugars
Grains
Processed foods
Dairy
Saturated & Trans fats
High glycemic carbs (refined grains mostly)

[If you run out of ideas, you can purchase a Paleo Diet cookbook for $20. It has 150 recipes.]

What’s Good About The Paleo Diet?

What’s good about the Paleo Diet is that it focuses on weight loss from a health standpoint. Although the main goal of the Paleo diet is to help lose weight, there is an undeniable focus on reducing risks of obesity related diseases, which is always a positive thing. The best thing about the Paleo diet eating plan is that avoiding processed foods is encouraged. Processed foods are often made from saturated and trans fats, as well as high-glycemic carbohydrates like glucose and fructose.

The meal plans provided in the Paleo Diet allow the dieter to take more control of their meals, and that’s always good for weight loss. When you have to look for ingredients and cook your own meals, you feel more invested in your weight loss and tend to take it more seriously. This, in my opinion, is probably one of the most positive aspects of the Paleo Diet meal plan.

What’s Bad About The Paleo Diet?

There are 2 main issues I have with the Paleo Diet. First I have to question the wisdom of completely eliminating grain products and legumes from a diet. Grains, especially whole grains are packed with nutrients like fiber and iron that the body needs. Furthermore, new evidence suggests that our paleolithic ancestors did eat grains.

The other fault I see with the Paleo Diet is that it does not give exercise a proper focus. Thinking back on the lives of hunters and gatherers, it seems odd that exercise isn’t credited more with the svelte frame and overall health of our ancestors. Exercise is mentioned only as an afterthought, and that is not something TFLA endorses.

[Rock climbing is a great paleo-esque exercise that'll give you a full body workout!]

Successful weight loss requires a calorie deficit, which most of us create through eating less AND exercising. Trying to simply eat less to lose weight, is possible, but not advised.

A sedentary lifestyle (being a couch potato) is responsible for many of the diseases associated with obesity, including heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and death. With this information available, how can the Paleo Diet produce effective weight loss without exercise?

Does The Paleo Diet Help Weight Loss?

Yes and no. A meal plan based on the Paleo Diet will very likely lead to weight loss, as long as you stick with the allowed foods. However you can eat lean proteins and fresh produce as much as you want, but if the body isn’t getting enough exercise weight loss won’t be significant. Creating a calorie deficit is key to weight loss, which the Paleo Diet does endorse. Unfortunately it is virtually impossible to create a calorie deficit through eating alone AND have successful weight loss.

No diet or lifestyle change is complete unless it includes an exercise regimen that will help you tone and get healthy. A healthier diet is necessary for many things, but successful weight loss requires proper diet and exercise.

The Paleo Diet aids weight loss because the major focus of the meals plans is lean proteins along with fresh fruits and vegetables. These foods don’t have a high fat or calorie content so they are a great way to start creating a calorie deficit, especially if your current diet is filled with processed foods. This first step get the weight loss ball rolling, but it will stop shortly if you don’t add regular exercise.

Paleo Diet Verdict

Since there is still some scientific debate about whether or not human genetics have “adapted” to a paleolithic diet, the jury is still out on the long-term effectiveness of the Paleo Diet. However since TFLA does endorse a diet filled with lean proteins and fresh fruits & vegetables, a meal plan similar to the Paleo diet plan is recommended.

If you’re just starting your weight loss regimen, the Paleo Diet is a good reference of the types of food you should be eating. We think you should also be eating whole grains and legumes in moderation as well as getting regular physical activity. Other good bits from the Paleo Diet includes avoiding processed foods, salt, saturated & trans fats, and refined sugars.

Find a less restrictive way to break your food addiction by reading our review of Eat Stop Eat.

Losing weight shouldn’t take the joy out of life. Celebrations and spending time with good friends is a part of being happy. Those types of gatherings or occasions are usually coupled with a bottle of wine or some other spirits. When someone hands you a glass you don’t want to be mentally calculating the calories in white wine.

[A bottle a day...wait that's an apple. The key to white wine is moderation.]

Read more about the calories in white wine…

You’ve probably heard over and over again how alcohol is bad for losing weight. Just 4 oz of white wine can have over 100 calories!

Red wine is recommended as the best choice of wine for its antioxidants, but when it comes to calories, white wine has just a few more than red wine per glass.

Of course, depending on your taste, there are many different types of white wine and each has a slightly different calorie content. For the most part, the calories in white wine come from the alcohol. The lower the alcohol content, the less calories it would contain.  Let’s take a look at what you need to know.

Nutritional Content

Apart from the alcohol found in white wine, the only other macronutrient you’re going to get is carbohydrates.  Even though the average glass only contains just over 5 grams total, this will still contribute to your daily calorie intake.  For those who are low carb diets, this may be too much to spend on a beverage when it could go towards your food instead.

If you opt for one of the sweeter dessert wines out there, this calorie count will be even higher yet, so that’s something that you definitely need to be aware of.

Here are the problems associated with drinking white wine.

Bad Calories in White Wine

There are two downfalls to the calories consumed from alcohol.

The first is way the body uses alcohol. When the body detects alcohol acetate in your body, it directs all its attention to it, leaving fat on the back burner. So long as you supply the body with alcohol for energy, you will burn no fat.

The second is the not-so-pretty effect that alcohol has on people. Inhibitions are left behind. The more you drink, the farther behind they fall.

Completely sober, you might be able to stay on track. After a few too many glasses of white wine, you easily start to justify why you need to eat that rack of ribs or double meat nachos.

Too much white wine can lead to regrets. Poor Stewie

So, those slightly innocent calories from white wine can lead to many more calories than you planned for. Believe me, you’ll feel guilty in the morning, among other things.

Burn Off A Glass Of White Wine

In order to burn off a glass of white wine you would have to do:

• 12 minutes of moderate paced jogging
• 25 minutes of light circuit training
• 36 minutes of window shopping

Cooking For Low Calories in White Wine

Luckily, there is a way to use white wine in your favor for a weight loss programme.

White wine is a great addition to your recipes. Here is the best part about cooking with white wine:

The calories in white wine virtually vanish when you cook it.

Why?

The reduction process, as fancy chefs call it, evaporates all the alcohol in the wine, leaving nothing but the wonderful flavor behind to sweeten your food.

White wine can be used in marinades, soups, and sauces. Just make sure you use it in cooked recipes. White wine is great in salad dressings, too, but all the calories are still there in its full form.

Try this recipe for a low calorie white wine dish:

White Wine Steamed Seafood and Spring Vegetables

1/2 lb of each- mussels, prawns, and scallops

2 cups of mixed spring vegetables (red pepper, snow peas, carrots, broccolli, onions)

1 Tbsp crushed garlic

1/4 cup white wine

1 Tbsp soy sauce

1 Tbsp cajun seasoning

2 Tbsp olive oil

Marinade seafood and vegetables in remaining ingredients for 2 hours. Remove seafood and vegetables from marinade and steam in a steamer for 10-15 minutes occasionally drizzling with remaining marinade.

Serve with a lemon squeeze. Bon Appetit!

And if you’re looking for a new way to think about eating so that your diet doesn’t have to turn you into a total stress bag, check out our review of Brad Pilon’s Eat Stop Eat program.

Burning fat and losing weight is hard enough. But for most of us, losing those last 10 or 15 pounds – and keeping them off – seems nearly impossible. And let’s not forget that we want to keep the muscle we’ve built along the way, right?

OK, time to drop the word “nearly” and just call it impossible?

Not so, says personal trainer and fitness blogger Chad Howse.

Chad has a great personal story of his own which includes boxing and putting functional muscle on his skinny frame, but today he stopped by to share 3 tips for burning fat and how he went from fighting at 165 lbs to 152 lbs without sacrificing any muscle.

Here are Chad’s tips for dropping those last pounds and making sure they stay gone.

3 Tips for Burning Fat Without Sacrificing Any Muscle by Chad Howse

I started my brief fighting career at middleweight, which is 165lbs in amateur boxing, and soon found it tough to keep that weight with all the training I was doing.

So, I had a decision to make. Do I stay at 165lbs and just eat more or do I cut weight all the way down to 152lbs and give welterweight a go?

The thing with fighting is you want to pack as much power and muscle into whatever weight you’re fighting at as possible. So it’s not just a weight loss thing, it’s completely about fat loss.

I had to burn as much fat as I could while sacrificing as little amount of muscle as I could, which is a hard thing. So how did I do it?

1. No distance running

For over 100 years boxers have been running first thing in the morning to cut weight and to stay in shape. Everyone’s seen Rocky right? Remember when Balboa drinks the eggs in the morning, one of the greatest training sequences of all time?! Well that’s pretty typical, minus the eggs maybe.

The problem with long runs is that you burn too much muscle and not enough fat. Your body doesn’t feel the need, because of the lack of intensity, to tap into its fat-stores for energy. Instead you end up burning proteins and carbohydrates, much of which are found in the muscles you’re working to keep going.

Have you ever heard of a hormone called cortisol? It’s a stress hormone that’s triggered in response to stress, anxiety and prolonged exercise. It has multiple negative effects on your body, including the weakening of your immune system and the ‘burning’ of bone and muscle. This is why prolonged bouts of exercise can result in the storing of fats and the burning of muscle rather than the opposite which is the intended result.

So, I focus only on High Intensity Interval Training. Things like sprints, stairs, and plyometric circuits. Because of the intensity of the workouts your body needs to tap into its stored fats for energy. Quick bursts of power, like sprints, also release growth hormone throughout your body which aids in the building of muscle, yet another bonus.

2. Lifted more weights

This may sound a bit odd, especially when boxers have shied away from weights for years because it gets you too bulky, too stiff, and can actually take away power and speed. But I did things differently and it allowed me to increase my power and speed and hold on to my muscle.

I focused all my lifting around power, explosiveness, and muscular endurance.

I’d mix up my reps and sets as much as possible, which I recommend for you to do as well, and did all my lifting in circuits of 3 or more exercise, doing each circuit 2-4 times, with rests going from 30 – 60 seconds.

Here’s an example:

Cleans – 6 reps

Box jumps – 15

Burpees into a pull-up – 10 reps

I also stayed away from all concentration exercises and focused only on compound exercises. If your goal is to burn fat, which I’m betting it is as you’re reading articles on thefatlossauthority.com, then stay away from concentration exercises as much as possible, especially if they’re focusing on your smaller muscles – arms.

You’re not going to burn as many calories because you’re not activating as much muscle as you are if you’re working more than one muscle group at a time (compound exercises).

3. I ate early and often

I’d get a big meal in at around 6am, then taper down for the rest of the day. And by big meal I mean big!

8 eggs, 1 slice of toast + peanut butter, salsa, avocado, salmon oil and multi-vitamin.

Making that first meal a big one sets you up to burn a boat load of extra calories during the day. After that first meal I’d eat every 3-4 hours, always having protein, good fats, and good carbohydrates with every meal.

Not only did I want to boost my metabolism through my workouts, but I also wanted to give it a boost through my diet as well which is why I ate every 3-4 hours, and which is why I made that first meal such a big one.

****End of Post****

A big thanks to Chad Howse for sharing his experience with fat loss. If you have any questions for Chad, please don’t hesitate to drop one in the comments section and by all means travel over to Chad’s Fitness Blog where his focus is about getting a great body with a busy schedule.

It’s not easy losing weight – at least for most of us – which is why fat loss is always a mainstream topic being talked about on almost every talk and news show (Larry King with Carnie Wilson and Jillian Michaels last week was the icing on the cake!). Most of you reading this probably want to burn up that fat and uncover your abs sooner rather than later.

Who wouldn’t want a midsection that looks like a cheese grater?

[This pic is for anyone stuck shoveling snow this past week. Must go somewhere sunny very soon!]

NOTE: I would’ve used the old “washboard abs” metaphor but I think it’s time to retire that one since anybody under the age of 30 probably has no idea what the hell a washboard is?

So to get you on your way to burning up the fat around your belly, here are five crucial fat loss tips to help your diet and exercise regimen for the new year:

1. No junk food…most of the time.

You may think this is common sense by now, but you’ll be surprised at how those few chips, sodas, and chocolates on a regular basis add up. NOTE: I just saw a cookie package that packed 125 calories in EACH cookie! Eat 4 and that’s about 25% of your calorie intake at 500 calories!

Great! Now what’s with the “most of the time” part?

Allowing a treat once or twice a week will prevent those all-you-can-eat binges. And besides, a loose eating day with a higher-calorie jolt prevents your metabolism from slowing down so it’s a good thing.

Also, a common mistake is to make a huge calorie cut all at once. Many people get so motivated to lose fat that they starve themselves right from the beginning. That causes your metabolism to slow to a crawl and your body thinks it’s starving sooo… it starts hording your fat and burning your hard-earned muscle instead. And that’s when you get so frustrated that you give up!

The lesson is to reduce calories gradually, and the first action is to eliminate junk food… most of the time.

2. Blame it on the alcohol.

Sure a few beers with the boys every so often won’t hurt, but if you do it regularly (happy hour on a Monday? Not good) you switch off fat burning. The reason is that your body burns off alcohol first – it becomes your energy substrate – so as you’re burning off the alcohol, what happens to the food you eat? It’s merely surplus calories going directly to fat cells. Yikes!

That means when you do choose to drink, limit the food intake.

3. Slow down your workout.

On at least one set of your exercises, lift the weight at regular speed but then slowly lower the weight back to starting position for every rep (three mississippis work nicely here).

Emphasizing the negative creates more muscle trauma, and that’s a good thing for fat burning. That’s because it takes energy to repair muscle damage. Your metabolism kicks into gear for the entire recovery process which usually takes two days or more after your workout.

So you’re burning fat essentially days after your work even while you sleep!

4. Cardio is ok!

There’s a time and a place for cardio and it’s right after your weight training. You burn off all the sugar in your bloodstream with 30 minutes to an hour of weight training. That means any activity right after immediately taps into bodyfat.

All it takes is 15 minutes doing your favorite cardio exercise to break open your fat stores!

5. Get organized.

Stop flying by the seat of your pants during your workouts and get organized. Find an exercise program and stick to it. Weather it’s strength training at your local gym or body weight exercises in the comfort of your home, it’s time to step up to the plate and get measurable results.

We’ve reviewed some of the best fat loss programs out there so quit guessing and go check them out here.

So the calendar has switched over and it’s 2010. You’re interested in losing weight and think you should buy the latest supplement or give a new weight loss infomercial a try.

But what if we told you the secret to losing weight is right around the corner at your local grocery store?

[I can't remember the last time I went down the "pop" aisle? You shouldn't be going down it either!]

This is where it all starts – The input to the output. The snap of the ball before the touchdown pass. How you go about something as routine as grocery shopping could be holding you back from the fat loss goals you deserve to achieve.

Here are three important strategies to keep in mind the next time you’re heading out to the grocery store to “pick-up” a few things.

Shop With a List

Failure to plan is a plan for failure – and in grocery shopping terms that plan starts with a list. If you have no list then don’t even bother shopping for food.

When you take the time to put a list together before you go, your chances of sticking to it improve immensely. No extras falling into your cart, no specials or gimmicks to fool you. It’s just you and the list!

Eat Before You Grocery Shop

Don’t go to the grocery store if you’re hungry. Making nutritional decisions is no fun when your stomach is barking at the moon at anything that doesn’t require more then a rip of a bag.

While feeling hunger, you are also more sensitive to the smells around you which combined with the drop in your blood glucose can make your cravings impossible to ignore.

Therefore, before you set foot inside of a grocery store grab a quick snack that incorporates vegetables, healthy fats or protein.

Inside the Grocery Store

Take a good hard look at the layout of a grocery store. The center aisles are bursting with frozen or processed food items. The perimeter is where the produce, dairy and meat (protein) live and that is where you should be spending the majority of your time.

If by chance you do enter a center aisle (cans of tuna or spices are acceptable reasons) then get what you need and proceed to the perimeter. Do not make eye contact with the Dorittos!

Be wary of the head and the foot of the aisles as well. You’ll find these stocked with sale-of-the-week items that almost always do more damage then good.

If you’re shopping with a list you should be in and out of grocery store in 30 minutes or less. Any more time and chances are you’re letting the wrong foods hitch a ride in your cart and all the way into your kitchen.

For ideas on putting together your grocery shopping list take a look at the Every Other Day Diet book by Jon Benson. With five different food plans to choose, there is no weight loss or muscle building goal forgotten.

Looking at the food court in a local shopping mall today I thought about these two questions:

How many people have calories on their mind?

Do any of them count calories?

I’m gonna go out on the proverbial limb here and say probably none of them.

Harsh? Maybe. But I too was once a frequent visitor of the common food courts eating fattening foods and feeling my clothes getting tighter by the fry. So chalk this up to experience.

After several failed attempts at losing weight, I finally took some responsibility and found an unlikely weapon against fat-> The PENCIL!

[I used to yawn or skip right over any talk about goal setting. But after giving it a go in my fat loss journey, I'm using it everywhere now!]

Keeping a Food Journal

In the beginning, I tried keeping a food journal but it never lasted more than a few days at a time. It was time consuming and an inconvenient exercise to calculate all of those calories ingested over the course of a day. In the end, calories were either forgotten or grossly under-estimated.

The Missing Ingredient

I had pretty much given up on keeping a food journal for fat loss until I read Tom Venuto’s Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle about proper goal setting.

There is a ton of material (good, bad, and down right awful) in pretty much every corner of your local book store but the reason I found Venuto’s more compelling was the emphasis of a 90-day goal.

He explains the importance of the three-month goal as being the perfect time frame for a short-term goal, especially fat loss. Whereas a long term goal doesn’t carry the same sense of urgency. A one-year goal? Forget it. It’s too far off and procrastination would kick in closer to the deadline.

So with my new short and long-term goals established and written clearly in my food journal (usually at the top of my ledger paper), I’ve never looked back at my former unfit self.

This one change may seem insignificant to most, but I really think it was the key to my success and now I try to incorporate it into almost every aspect of my life.

Modern Day Food Journaling

Today, you can find countless tools on the web to make food journaling much easier. Websites that track your caloric intake, suggest exercise movements for creating a caloric deficit, and charting your progress in “real-time” definitely provides an added level of motivation and excitement apart from your clothes feeling snug or checking yourself out in a mirror.

So if you dreaded the nightly calculator punching and recording your totals, this is absolutely for you. One particular online fat loss journal that seems to be getting a lot of press these days is FitDay. From everyone I’ve talked who uses it, they have nothing but good things to say, especially it being free (except the premium version which doesn’t seem to be very different). 

I admittedly haven’t tried FitDay or any of the other online tools yet. Call it pride or a resistance to change but doing it manually with pencil and paper is how I learned.

Do I Count Calories Today?

The short answer is no.

But without it, I’d severely lack the nutritional knowledge and bench marks to live the healthy life I do now.  For someone who had zero knowledge of nutrition, calorie counting served its purpose for me and now I am able to practice other strategies like portion control and responsible eating.

Though I have found much more enjoyment in exercise in recent years, diet is still the essential piece of the fat loss puzzle. As much as I really have tried to get around it, it’s impossible to out exercise a terrible diet.

Calorie counting allows you to take control of your life by providing you with the information you need to make more informed decisions about your health BUT without taking the time to write down your goals (short and long-term), your fat loss efforts may end up insignificant and disappointing.

The benefits of calorie counting are important to understand. More importantly, I believe proper goal setting is what will carry you through the ups and downs of your fat loss journey. Look up our review of Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle by Tom Venuto to appreciate this important step towards a better you.

Don’t be fooled by all the fat loss and muscle building experts out there proclaiming the death of calorie counting. Chances are they all started with some form of calorie counting and are obviously more experienced now and don’t need to follow the practice religiously.

Fellow fitness blogger Rafi Bar-Lev from The Fitness Adviser was kind enough to explain the basics of this time-tested method and outline the long term benefits.

Benefits of Counting Calories: Fat Loss and Beyond- Guest Post by Rafi Bar-Lev

Your coworker makes a comment to you about your weight.

Generally, you’d just brush it off, but this isn’t the first person to say something and you’re aware that it really is a problem. You decide that starting today, you’re going to go on a diet and start losing weight.

There’s only one problem. You don’t have the faintest idea where to start?

Which is why you’re here, right now, reading this post. You’re also in luck, because while there is a lot of information and excellent tips about fat loss (and the guys here at The Fat Loss Authority do an amazing job making those tips available), there is only one thing that you have to start doing when you start a fat loss diet– Count calories.

The Importance Of Counting Calories

First, let’s start with the basics of fat loss.

Your goal is to burn fat.

To burn fat, you need to have a deficit of calories in your diet so that your body is forced to burn the fat on your body for energy.

To create this deficit of calories, you need to take in less calories than you expend during the day.

Finally, to ensure that you’re taking in less calories than you expend, you need to count your calories during the day.

Let me give you an example of how critical counting your calories are:

Let’s say that you’re an overweight person used to eating pasta all the time. Then you decide to go on a diet, and you don’t change your diet and continue eating pasta, although less. You notice that you’re not losing weight and can’t figure out why. Finally, you give up trying to lose weight and blame your metabolism.

Now, had you counted your calories, instead of going on a generalized diet of eating less, you’d realize that pasta has a tremendous amount of calories. You’d then make the decision that to lose weight, you’d have to cut pasta completely out of your diet. Then you probably would have been successful in your diet, and instead of giving up, you would already be looking great and enjoying your decision to start losing weight.

Long Term Benefits of Counting Calories

Counting calories can be a little tedious in the beginning, since most of us really have no idea how many calories are in the foods we eat until we first start counting them.

That being said, taking the time to find the calories in all the foods we eat has long term benefits that go even go beyond the benefit of losing weight.

Here are a few of them:

1. Intuition Kicks In

Once you get used to counting calories, you’ll have an idea of how many calories are in different kinds of foods in general, including new foods. That means you won’t have to be counting calories constantly, and will intuitively know how many calories you’re eating per day.

2. Think Before You Eat

One of the reasons people put on weight is because they don’t think about the foods they’re eating. When you count calories, it forces you to think about every food you eat, and the next time you pick up that piece of cake, you might rethink your choice and put it back down. That also means that not only will you be eating less, you’ll be eating healthier foods.

3. Confidence and Comfort

With knowledge comes self confidence and comfort. When you know exactly what you’re eating and how it affects your weight, you’ll feel more comfortable around food without having to constantly worry about putting the weight back on.

There’s Always More To Learn…

While counting calories is a key part for immediately getting onto your fat loss diet, there’s always more to learn about staying healthy and how to put together the best diet. The important thing is to go into your diet at full force and enjoy the journey to a healthier life.

Still can’t seem to trim your waist line? You could be sabotaging your weight loss success. Here are 3 reasons you’re not losing the weight you deserve too!

1. Instant Gratification

We all want to lose 10 pounds in 10 minutes but there are not shortcuts on this journey. People need to let go of the temptation to want to find the latest ‘quick’ way to reach their goals. Remember the old story about The Tortoise and The Hare? Well the moral of the story is slow and steady wins the race and so it is with your fat loss goals. Make it a lifestyle and not a flavor of the month.

2. Going to Extremes

No carbs, no sugar, no protein! It’s all desperation that inevitably leads to nowhere or worse… frustration. Doing multiple drastic changes all at once like eliminating sodas, fast food joints, and joining a gym can be a huge psychological shock. Take it easy, one step at a time. Week one: make a goal, like ‘no late-night eating’. Week two: limit yourself to one coffee. Week three: join a gym. Incorporating slow lasting changes will build greater momentum towards your fat loss goals.

3. Blaming Yourself

You didn’t go to the gym for a week. You had a can of coke or some chocolate deserts at that last office lunch party. So what? These are minor bumps in the road. We sometimes get caught up in an extreme diet or lifestyle change, and then give up because we think we’re back to our old habits. It’s important to understand that change usually happens by taking two steps forward and occasionally one step back.

We all have good days and bad days so relax and have a sense of humour about your trails and tribulations towards a healthy lifestyle. Exercise not only your body but your patience as every step forward gets you closer to your fat loss goals.

Check out Vince DelMonte’s Your Six Pack Quest for further information on how to lose fat and uncover your six pack. The program comes with more bonuses than I can count (see full review), including the fat loss virtual training, ten- 84 day meal plans that accommodate for any body type, and over 15 hours of video footage of Vince in the gym showing you each and every exercise and workout personally.

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If you’ve caused metabolic damage as a result of following starvation diets or losing weight too rapidly in the past, it can be extremely difficult to achieve any further fat loss at all. The good news is, metabolic damage can be repaired. All it takes is the right combination of metabolism stimulating exercise and metabolism stimulating nutrition (NOT just a diet), all done consistently over time.

The big irony is that most of the diet programs that claim to help you get rid of excess weight, only end up making it harder for you in the long run because they use harsh metabolism-decreasing diets and not enough exercise (almost never any weight training).

It may take a little longer if you have really messed things up with severe starvation dieting in the past, especially if you’ve lost a lot of lean body mass, but it is never hopeless. Anyone can increase their metabolism.

Most people get an almost immediate boost in metabolic rate when they start the Burn The Fat program. However, the results are not going to be “overnight.” Give it a little time…

Within 3 weeks your metabolism will already be more efficient. Within 6-8 weeks, it’s burning hot. Give me 12 weeks of consistent diligent effort, sticking with all the metabolism boosting strategies I teach, and your metabolism really will become like a turbo charged engine, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that.

What’s most important for upping your metabolism is CONSISTENCY in applying the Burn The Fat nutrition and training principles every single day.

That includes:

• Meal frequency: eat 5-6 small meals per day
• Meal timing: eat approximately every 3 hours, with a substantial breakfast and a substantial post workout meal.
• Sufficient Caloric Intake: maintain a small calorie deficit and avoid starvation-level diets (suggested safe levels for fat loss: 2100-2500 calories per day for men, 1400-1800 calories per day for women; adjust as needed)
• Food choices: Select natural, unprocessed foods with high thermic effect (lean proteins like chicken, turkey, egg whites and fish are highly thermic, as are all green vegetables, salad vegetables and other fibrous carbs)
• Cardio training: Push up the intensity a bit if you really want to get a metabolic boost. Walking and low intensity cardio is fine, but higher intensity is more metabolism-stimulating
• Weight training: The basic exercises that include the largest muscle groups or even call into play the entire body as a unit (squats, front squats, split squats, deadlifts, stiff legged deadlifts, overhead presses, all kinds of rows and core-activation exercises) will have a much greater metabolism stimulating effect than isolation exercises (concentration curls, calf raises, etc)

The weight training is extremely important in cases of “metabolic damage” because this is the stimulus to keep the muscle you have and begin rebuilding new muscle tissue, which is the engine that drives your metabolism.

The men don’t usually have a problem with the weight training, but I still hear women say they don’t want to lift weights as part of their fat loss programs. Well, people who wont lift weights can expect a very, very long metabolism “repair process” if they achieve it at all.

Consistency is the key.

Nothing will undermine the “re-building” of your metabolism like inconsistency. If you stop and start, or skip meals and workouts often, you will not even get off the ground.

After your metabolism is back up where it should be, it takes continued “stoking” of the metabolic furnace to keep it there. Once you get your metabolic engine running, you’ve got to keep feeding it fuel or the fire will die down.

Picture an old fashioned wood burning stove…

Imagine you’re in a cabin up in the mountains in the winter. It’s cold in there and you want to keep the cabin warm. Can you achieve this by feeding the fire once or twice per day? Nope. Not enough fuel to burn, so not much heat is generated.

What if you just toss an entire pile of wood in the stove all at once? Will that work? Nope. Lots of fuel, but can’t all be used at once… it just smothers the fire and the excess just sits there.

How about if you throw some tissue paper or crumpled newspaper in the stove, will that work? Nope – too quickly burning.

You have to keep putting small amounts of wood (the right type of fuel) on the fire at regular intervals or the fire burns out.

It’s also difficult to get the fire lit again. In the case of metabolism, it’s like going through that initial few weeks of overcoming inertia all over again.

Your goal is to get your metabolism burning hot and keep it burning and this cannot be achieved by missing meals, missing workouts or with sporadic, infrequent training.

I have only seen a handful of cases where all these things were done properly and there was still a longer “repair” process.

For example, one case was former ballet dancer. At 5′ 5″, she was previously 110 lbs and had increased to about 145 or so. She didn’t want to reach her previous 110, but find a happy medium of about 125 lbs.

I figured with 20 lbs to cut, this would be a simple and predictable process, but she had a challenging time (and I didn’t know why at first).

I later found out that she had been anorexic and bulimic for many years. This had caused a lot of damage, and although she did reach her goal, it took about twice as long as we had anticipated.

The good news is, even in this extreme case, the same nutrition and training principles worked! It just took a little longer. And by the way her program included some serious training with free weights and she ate a lot more (clean) food than she had ever eaten before. No “starvation!”

That’s the power of burning the fat and feeding the muscles… Trying to starve the fat with crash diets is what causes the metabolic damage in the first place!

If you’re interested in the healthy, sensible way to take off the fat, while keeping all your muscle and actually increasing your metabolism in the process, then my Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle program can teach you how. No gimmicks or false promises. Just the truth – you have to work at it and you have to be patient.

About the Author:

Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder, certified strength and conditioning specialist (CSCS) and a certified personal trainer (CPT). Tom is the author of “Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle,” which teaches you how to get lean without drugs or supplements using methods of the world’s best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and increase your metabolism by visiting: www.burnthefat.com

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