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Weight Loss vs. Fat Loss
By: Vernita Sherman
In order to lose weight, your body must burn more calories than it takes in, but keep in mind that your body needs calories for energy and when you exercise; your body needs even more calories. Before I talk about energy, the first thing you must understand is that losing weight and losing fat is not the same thing. Just because you lose weight, does not mean you lose fat, and just because you lose fat, does not mean you lose weight. When people talk about losing weight, what the really want to do is lose the excess fat on their body and obtain an attractive figure. When you eat, the body uses most of the calories for energy. If you eat more calories than the body uses, it will get stored as fat. If you do not consume enough calories per day you will lose weight, but you will also lose energy. When you do not consume enough energy (calories) for your body, itwill start using up your energy stores to make up for the energy deficiency. Unfortunately, the energy stores used is not your stored fat, but instead it’s protein and carbohydrates (carbs) that will supply most of the energy (stored fat makes up a verysmall percentage). Your body will take the protein and carbohydrates from your muscle cells; causing your muscle mass to reduce (say good by to that toned attractive look) which forces your metabolism to decrease (a low metabolism = slow or no fat burning). When this happens your body requires less energy to maintain its new lower body weight (remember the bodyweight is lower because you loss muscle), which is why your body conserves energy by slowing down the metabolism. In otherwords, the body has adapted to the new lower energy (calorie) intake which means that you will no longer continue to lose weight. Keep in mind that the weight you had lost in the first place was mostly water weight and you will eventually gain it back in the form of fat, not muscle (in order to get your muscle mass back to the way it was before, you have to work on rebuilding it). When carbohydrates and protein that are already in your body are used as the energy source, your body will lose water weight because both carbohydrates and protein hold waterin the cells. In essence, you are dehydrating yourself to lose weight. So yes the scale will go down, but approximately 75% (if not more) of it is water instead of fat. And just so you know, exercising while consuming a small calorie intake just makes the situation worse. This is because when you exercise, you start burning off more energy and the more you workout, themore energy your body needs. I already told you above where the energy comes from, and if you do not give your body the energy it needs, it will just feed on your muscles even quickernow that you are exercising. So eat more food! In addition to this, when you cut down too much on your calorie intake, your body will start storing calories because it doesn’t know when you will eat again. The calories that are stored will bestored as fat. So in other words, when your body is storing energy, it’s basically storing more fat. To summarize my point: Not eating enough calories results in muscle loss, dehydration, slower fat burning, and your body will always adapt to a lower calorie intake. Bottom Line: if you can’t maintain that lower calorie intake for the rest of your life, you will gain your weight back when you get tired of starving yourself! To lose weight properly (burning fat) you must increase your metabolism (weight training) and your need for oxygen (aerobics)while eating enough calories each day (nutritious diet) to give you energy and maintain the protein in your muscles becauseprotein helps build muscles, which indirectly burns fat. This brings up another good point: When you build muscle your weight will increase because your muscles are made up of mostly water, but your body fat percentage will decrease because building muscles increase your metabolism (in other words, muscles way more than fat, but take up less space than fat). So keep in mind that losing body fat can’t be measured by a scale; use a measuring tape and also look at yourself in the mirror, and then you will see the true results. One of the best ways to know if you are losing more body fat than water is by using a body fat analyzer. Make sure that you focus on fat loss not weight loss. Your goalshould be to lose weight by burning fat, not losing water from your muscles. Remember this when you choose your weight loss program. This article was written by Vernita Sherman of QVM Weight Loss. QVM Weight Loss is a completeonline resource for all of your weight loss needs.Vernita focuses on teaching you the truth about how to permanently lose weight the healthy way at http://www.qvm-weight-loss.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/
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How to Benefit from the Mind-Body Connection
(excerpt)
You are about to gain insight into the
mind-body connection. The number of
people who truly understand these principles on our
planet are relatively few.
There is an undeniable connection between our minds and
bodies, you can learn
to use this fact to your benefit.
Dr. Bernie Siegel, author of "Love, Medicine and
Miracles" was once a
distraught cancer surgeon until he
began to understand the greater principles
of the mind-
body connection. He felt dragged down by the artificial
barriers
that existed between patient and doctor, and the
helplessness he often felt as
a result of his inability
to effectively serve those patients. Eventually, those
barriers
were disintegrated by Dr. Siegel's recognition
and growing understanding of the
mind-body connection and
how it could serve his patients and himself.
Dr. Siegel, or Bernie as he began to have his patients
refer to him, had some
startling realizations as a cancer surgeon. He found that
there were actually
quite a few people in the world that successfully beat
the statistics on cancer
survival. He began to recognize that a patient's ability
to defeat something as
serious as cancer had to do with the patient's mind and
attitude about their
disease.
If you would like to see the rest of
this article, please go here:
http://www.tobeinformed.com/repository/mind-body.html
copyright 2004 - David Snape
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