Lose Belly Fat Fast

In fact, fiber is great for your over all health as well, not just weight loss. But before we discuss what makes it so awesome, what is fiber anyway? It is a component (for lack of better word) in many fruits and vegetables that is in layman’s  terms a filler. It fills up your stomach but our digestive system cannot actually absorb it. So while you feel full (and you are) you don’t actually get any calories from the fiber that makes you feel full.

Not surprisingly all the foods high in fiber are also low in calories. Which makes them an excellent addition to any diet. Who wouldn’t want a food that makes you feel full without a ton of calories attached? In addition to this, fiber also acts as a colon cleanse. Since our body cannot absorb it, it moves through the colon cleaning it of bacteria, toxins and any other waste. Fiber just gets better and better doesn’t it?

To maximize the above effects you should drink plenty of water after consuming foods rich in fiber. The water makes it swell, which will make you feel full faster and will improve its effectiveness at cleaning colon. It is recommended to get 40 grams of fiber a day, but if you didn’t eat a lot of fiber before, you should scale it up slowly and allow your body to get used to it.

So what foods are rich in fiber? As was mentioned above most fruits and vegetables have it, but the ones that contain the a large amount are: green peas, figs, raisin bran, spinach, apricots, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, apples, plums, pears, cherries, carrots, Brussels sprouts, nuts, tomatoes and lettuce.

Quite a list, so you should have no problems getting the 40 grams a day, and will have a large enough selection to not eat the same thing every day.

That title might sound a bit silly, after all there is only one way to use diet pills – as prescribed. That’s true, however if you read the second post in this 3-post series (Do Diet Pills Work) you might remember that I’ve concluded that while diet pills are effective for a short while and then stop working after some time. In fact in most cases you will get all the weight you’ve lost during the “beginning phase” back. Which of course brings the question “Is there even any point to using diet pills?” And that brings us to the title of this post.

Before answering that question though it’s probably better to answer “How to not use diet pills.” Most people use them the “wrong” way if you will. People seem to think about weight loss supplements as some sort of magic pill that will allow them to lose all that extra weight they’ve been collecting for many years. All without any changes in their lifestyle or eating habits. Oh and obviously they want it fast, as in NOW fast.

Obviously no pill could ever do that (read: How Do Diet Pills Work) as such using weight loss supplements for this purpose is a waste of time. Such unrealistic expectations are also the reason most people dislike diet pills and think that all of them are scams that don’t work. This amusing fact however doesn’t mean that diet pills are completely worthless. There is a way to use them to lose weight faster and/or easier than someone who isn’t using them.

The Right Way to Use Diet Pills to Lose Weight

As you likely know weight loss depends on two factors: calories consumed and calories burned. If you consume more than you burn the extra is stored as fat, if you burn more, than your body burns fat to cover the difference. It’s a bit more complex but that’s the basic idea. Diet pills effect the “consume” part of this equation by either using appaetite suppressants (makes you less hungry) or blocking some of the food you eat from being absorbed by the body. It works well until your body catches on to the fact it’s being tricked, and then it works worse and worse as your body adjusts. The right way to lose weight with diet pills is to use that initial period to make changes to your eating habits – by going on a diet.

You see, the problem isn’t just how much you eat, it’s also what you eat. Junk food is bad, but in large quantities it’s really bad. On the other hand healthy food isn’t that bad even if you eat a lot of it. I mean, so what if you ate 5 apples instead of 2? It’s probably not that big of a deal. Certainly less so than if you ate a bag of cookies after telling yourself “I’ll just eat a few.”

People start taking weight loss supplements while eating junk food (reason they are over weight to begin with) then when the initial effect wears off, and they stop using pills they are still eating the same junk food, as a result they get all the weight they’ve lost back. But if you switch to a good healthy diet during that initial period then not only are you very likely to keep the weight you lost off, but you will make a significant step towards permanent weight loss.

In addition to that, it’s much easier to switch and get used to a diet while using diet pills than it is without them. Remember that appetite suppressants are present in many products, this means you aren’t feeling as hungry which makes it much easier to go on a diet (which will likely future less calories and obviously less junk food.)  And then when the pills stop working, well, you are now eating healthy food so even if you eat more of it the results won’t be that bad.

So use diet pills as a tool to make it easier for you to switch to a diet and you will have great results!

This is a part 2 of a 3 part series about diet pills. I would highly recommend you read the first part as well: How Do Diet Pills Work? as it explains the mechanics utilized by weight loss pills, and the understanding of which, in general form, is important to understanding this part as well.

With the above out of the way, let’s get back to the topic at hand – Do diet pills work? It’s a very interesting topic and if you ask around you’ll get all sorts of conflicting answers. However the real answer to this question is both yes and no. Diet pills will help you lose weight, at first, but in the end if you don’t change your lifestyle you will end up weighting just as much as you did before taking supplements. Here is the general pattern people experience when taking weight loss supplements:

• First Day: You start using diet pills – almost right away you can notice a difference (less hungry, more energy etc)
• 1-2 Weeks: You’ve lost a bit of weight, you don’t feel hungry as you often did before – you love it and are really happy with the results.
• 3-5 Weeks: The weight loss seemed to stop, you haven’t lost anything in the last week, you seem to be eating more than the first week, and are wondering what’s going on and what should you do.
• 2 Months or more: You haven’t lost any weight in weeks, you eat almost as much as you did before taking pills, which makes you wonder if the pills even work at all. You are annoyed and upset about the situation, you are about to stop taking diet pills.
• Few Weeks after stopping using diet pills: You gained most of the weight you’ve lost by using diet pills back.

Depending on the stage they are on people will tell you that diet pills work very well or that they don’t work at all. In reality they work, but your body adapts, counters the mechanic the supplements use to achieve weight loss – you get no results and stop using supplements. Your appetite increases (no pills to hold your it back) which your body counters again but not before you gain some weight back, which in most cases will be equal to the amount you’ve lost at the beginning.

Well, that about sums ups this part. Weight loss supplements can work well if you need to lose a few pounds in a few weeks but don’t want to do anything to achieve it. However diet pills do not work as a long term solution to weight loss.
Be sure to check out the last part of this mini series of posts: How To Use Diet Pills To Lose Weight.

I was actually going to make a post about “do diet pills work?” But I realized that it’s probably better to first explain how diet pills work. A lot of people aren’t really aware of how they work, and the companies making those weight loss supplements aren’t exactly helping with their misleading advertisement. Now as everyone knows there are two aspects that determine weight loss – amount of calories you get from food and amount of calories you spend. Clearly a pill isn’t going to make you spend more energy (regardless of the “burn fat!” claims.) As such the aspect that is influence by diet pills is the amount of calories you get from food.

There are two different ways that diet pills lower your caloric intake. 1. Tricking your mind into thinking you aren’t as hungry – you eat less (appetite suppressants) 2. By blocking some of the food you eat from being absorbed by your body – you eat the same but some of it is blocked thus you get less calories. Both accomplish the same goal but both also run into a similar yet different problem.

Human body is very good at adopting!

Yes, it’s very very good at it, and trying to interfere with it’s natural functions rarely works long term. For appetite suppressants it means that while at first it works exactly like it’s supposed to, after a few weeks (usually) your mind realizes that it is being tricked into thinking you only want to it one sandwich when you really want to eat 2. So your mind counters this situation by increasing the hunger level until you are eating almost as much as you did before despite using diet pills.

So you curse at the worthless pills and stop taking them, sadly your mind has adjusted and without the pills to lower the hunger level you are now eating more than you did before taking supplements. Your mind will of course adjust again and lower the hunger level to it’s natural level, but by the time this happens you have already gained all the weight you lost back.

A similar thing happens with he diet pills that use “blocking” (that’s the scientific term, definitely) except not only does it block calories but also vitamins and minerals that you’d get from food. As such it’s likely even worse than diet pills that use appetite suppressants.

There you have it, that is how most of the diet pills out there work. You can now read part 2: Do Diet Pills Work? and part 3: How To Use Diet Pills To Lose Weight of this 3 part mini series devoted to diet pills and the way they work.

This is a part 2 post and you can read the first one here: Weight Training Good For Weight Loss?

Weight training can be very effective for weight loss for much the same reasons that interval training is – it allows you to get a good work out in a relatively short amount of time no matter how good (or bad) your fitness level is. It also builds muscles and is the exercise of choice if you want to get a tone body or trying to lose the last few pounds of stomach fat.

Now, because your goal is to lose weight (and get a toned body) in the shortest amount of time you want to do exercise that burn the most calories. That means you want to do compound movements rather than isolated. Compound movements involve more muscles which results in more calories burned. In addition compound movements are better for over all fitness, because they involve several muscles you build up all muscle groups simultaneously and don’t run into a situation where one muscles group is stronger than the other which can make you more susceptible to an injury.

Sounds good, but I never did weight training – what exactly are compound movements?
Compound movements are exercise that involve several muscle groups, for example a dead lift is a compound movement, much like a squat, on the other hand a bicep curl is an isolated movement that only involves biceps. So, avoid doing exercise for isolated muscles and do compound exercise like dead lifts or sauqts for the best results.

Keep in mind though that weight training requires technique in order to stay injury free. So start with very, very low weights and learn the technique before increasing weight. I would recommend going to a gym and seeing if they have a pro there that can help you learn the correct way to do those exercise. Do make sure that said pro actually know what he or she is doing and actually have experience in weight training.

Also, I would highly advise you to do those exercise with free weights and avoid machines. Most machines have several flaws in their design which makes using them for complex compound exercise a bad idea, as you will likely injure yourself at some point.