by Raylen Sterling
Author of Master Cleanse Secrets

If you are not prepared for what you'll experience when you do the Master Cleanse there's a good chance you'll fail. Typically lasting just 10 days, it's easy to see why people just "jump right in" to the Master Cleanse thinking it will be easy. It's not.

During your time on the Master Cleanse you are likely to experience hunger, aches, and irritability. Most people give up because of hunger. Putting solid food aside for a couple days and only drinking liquids is harder then most people think. Even though the cravings for whole foods can be difficult they do subside after a few days on the Master Cleanse.

So rule number 1 for finishing the Master Cleanse is getting past the third day. Instead of focusing on completing the entire 10 days from the onset of the cleanse just focus on getting past day 3. Breaking the Master Cleanse down into smaller milestones will be a big help. More on 3 Rules For Finishing The Master Cleanse

By Jennifer Nicole Lee
Creator of Fitness Model Program

Is it that time of the year, again? Summer is over, the fall is here, and winter is just around the corner. What does this mean for the fitness lover in all of us? We are all in the midst of the yearly battle where we fight fat all throughout the holidays. We are constantly bombarded with empty sugar-filled "gifts" from our holiday work party, or our family and friends get-togethers.

What is the health conscious and fitness fanatic to do with all the external pressures to fall into the holiday rut of eating out of control and munching on whatever is placed in front of us? Sadly enough, we will always be bombarded by our own parents, friends and family with their never-ending requests to eat, eat, and eat some more! But you will survive, not gain any fat, and maybe even lose some weight with my "Dieters Holiday Survival Guide". I'm going to get you geared up with the tips and tools that you will need to fat and win the war on holiday weight gain. More on The Dieter's Holiday Survival Guide - How Not to Gain Weight During the Season

by FatLoss4Idiots

 If you walk down the aisle of any grocery store you’ll see dozens “low fat” and “fat free” food items nearly everywhere you look.

The whole world has gone “low fat” crazy — and most people think that if they just begin eating low fat foods then their bodies will have less fat too.

Sounds logical right?

Wrong.

You see, the problem with this type of thinking is that there is no “direct” relationship between fat calories eaten and fat tissue on a person’s body.

The truth is that your body can convert ANY type of calorie to fat tissue, not just fat calories.

For example, if you eat 2 lbs. of sugar every day then you’ll probably gain some fat tissue after a while – but yet sugar has ZERO FAT CALORIES in it. So eating 2 lbs. of sugar every day is a “fat free” diet, but yet you’d still gain fat.

Likewise, if you eat a huge bowl of white rice at every single meal then you’d soon gain fat tissue on your body – but yet this is a fat free food too. More on Low Fat & Fat Free Foods Will Get You NOWHERE…

Do you know why people these days are so crazy about weight loss? The reason is that everywhere you go, you are judged by your looks and shape, rather than talents. You maybe an MBA but with a fat belly there is very little chance of your getting a decent job. It maybe wrong but that is the fact: fit people get better and more lucrative jobs than their fatter counterparts. That is not all. Obese people hardly get much respect either from their colleagues or society in general; everywhere they go they are taunted and ridiculed.

Health issues are also another concern why people get extremely anxious about their weight. We all know that obesity is related to a variety of diseases. Diabetes, Kidney failures, Cardiovascular diseases, excessive cholesterol are all caused by obesity. With such compelling reasons, we ought to consider trimming down our weight.

Once you know the basics, weight loss is not difficult. If you are adamant about losing weight than you have to adopt a few changes. Foremost of all, your diet menus; what you consume for your three main meals; do you always snack on chips, burgers and take soft drinks? If the answer is yes, then that the main reason why you are gaining weight. Snacks food like those listed above are high in calories. Consuming those results in the extra calories converting to fast in your body.

Eat nutritious and healthy foods, which are not high in calories to help remove unwanted fats from your body. Green Vegetables and raw fruits are great choices to consider.

Foods that are high in calories although gives your body a lot of energy, they are not very nutritious. The excess energy is converted and in turn is stored as fats in your body. Furthermore, most people are lazy to exercise. With this, it is a combination, which makes people gain weight extremely fast.

Controlling your food intake will not help you to shed weight quickly. You will need to supplement this with exercise at least one to two hours daily. If exercising is not your forte, than consider doing short walk half and hour daily either before breakfast or after your dinner. Supplement this with a gym workout; weight loss will even be faster!

3500 Calories To Lose A Pound - Is This Formula All Wrong?
By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
www.BurnTheFat.com

Most fitness conscious people have heard that there are 3,500 calories in a pound of fat, so if you create a deficit of 3500 calories in a week, you lose a pound of weight. If you create a deficit of 7000 calories in a week, you lose two pounds, and so on. Right? Well, not so fast…

Dr. Kevin Hall, an investigator at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda has done some interesting research about the mechanisms regulating human body weight. He recently published a new paper in the International Journal of Obesity that throws a wrench in works of the “3500 calories to lose a pound” idea.

Some of the equations in his paper made my head hurt, but despite the complex math he used to come to his conclusions, his article clearly prompts the question, "3500 calories to lose a pound of WHAT?" His paper also contained a lot of simple and practical tips you can use to properly balance your caloric intake with output, fine tune your calorie deficit and help you retain more muscle when you diet.

Below, I’ve distilled some of the information into a simple bullet-point summary that any non-scientist can understand. Then I wrap up with my interpretation of how you can apply this data in your own fat loss program:

Calculating the calories required to lose a pound and fine-tuning your caloric deficit

    * 3500 calories to lose a pound has always been the rule of thumb. However, this 3500 calories figure goes back to research which assumed that all the weight lost would be adipose tissue (which would be ideal, of course).
    * But as we all know (unfortunately), lean body mass is lost along with body fat, which would indicate that the 3500 calorie figure could be an oversimplification.
    * The amount of lean body mass lost is based on initial body fat level and size of the calorie deficit
    * Lean people tend to lose more lean body mass and retain more fat.
    * Fat people tend to lose more body fat and retain more lean tissue (revealing why obese people can tolerate aggressive low calorie diets better than already lean people)
    * Very aggressive low calorie diets tend to erode lean body mass to a greater degree than more conservative diets.
    * whether the weight loss is lean or fat gives you the real answer of what is the required energy deficit per unit of weight loss
    * The metabolizable energy in fat is different than the metabolizable energy in muscle tissue. A pound of muscle is not 3500 calories. A pound of muscle yields about 600 calories.
    * If you lose lean body mass, then you lose more weight than if you lose fat.
    * If you create a 3500 calorie deficit in one week and you lose 100% body fat, you will lose one pound.
    * But if you create a 3500 calorie weekly deficit and as a result of that deficit, lose 100% muscle, you would lose almost 6 pounds of body weight! (of course, if you manage to lose 100% muscle, you will be forced to wear the Dieter’s Dunce cap)
    * If you have a high initial body fat percentage, then you are going to lose more fat relative to lean, so you may need a larger deficit to lose the same amount of weight as compared to a lean person
    * Creating a calorie deficit once at the beginning of a diet and maintaining that same caloric intake for the duration of the diet and after major weight loss fails to account for how your body decreases energy expenditure with reduced body weight
    * Weight loss typically slows down over time for a prescribed constant diet (the “plateau”). This is either due to the decreased metabolism mentioned above, or a relaxing of the diet compliance, or both (most people just can’t hack aggressive calorie reductions for long)
    * Progressive resistance training and or high protein diets can modify the proportion of weight lost from body fat versus lean tissue (which is why weight training and sufficient protein while on calorie restricted diets are absolute musts!)

So, based on this info, should you throw out the old calorie formulas?

Well, not necessarily. You can still use the standard calorie formulas to figure out how much you should eat, and you can use a 500-1000 calorie per day deficit (below maintenance) as a generic guideline to figure where to set your calories to lose one or two pounds per week respectively (at least that works “on paper” anyway).

Even better however, you could use this info to fine tune your caloric deficit using a percentage method and also base your deficit on your starting body fat level, to get a much more personalized and effective approach:

15-20% below maintenance calories = conservative deficit
20-25% below maintenance calories = moderate deficit
25-30% below maintenance calories = aggressive deficit
31-40% below maintenance calories = very aggressive deficit (risky)
50%+ below maintenance calories = semi starvation/starvation (potentially dangerous and unhealthy)

(Note: According to exercise physiologists Katch & Mcardle, the average female between the ages of 23 and 50 has a maintenance level of about 2000-2100 calories per day and the average male about 2700-2900 calories per day)

Usually, we would suggest starting with a conservative deficit of around 15-20% below maintenance. Based on this research, however, we see that there can be a big difference between lean and overweight people in how many calories they can or should cut.

If you have very high body fat to begin with, the typical rule of thumb on calorie deficits may underestimate the deficit required to lose a pound. It may also be too conservative, and you can probably use a more aggressive deficit safely without as much worry about muscle loss or metabolic slowdown.

If you are extremely lean, like a bodybuilder trying to get ready for competition, you would want to be very cautious about using aggressive calorie deficits. You’d be better off keeping the deficit conservative and starting your diet/cutting phase earlier to allow for a slow, but safe rate of fat loss, with maximum retention of muscle tissue.

The bottom line is that it’s not quite so simple as 3,500 calories being the deficit to lose a pound. Like lots of other things in nutrition that vary from person to person, the ideal amount of calories to cut “depends”…

Note: The Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle program not only has an entire chapter dedicated to helping you calculate your exact calorie needs, it was designed very specifically to keep a fairly conservative approach to caloric deficits and to maximize the amount of lean tissue you retain and minimize the amount of metabolic adaptation that occurs when you’re dieting. The approach may be more conservative, and the fat loss may be slower, but it has a better long term track record… You can either lose weight fast, sacrifice muscle and gain the fat back like 95% of people do, or lose fat slow and keep it off forever like the 5% of the people who know the secrets. The choice is yours. For more information, visit: http://www.burnthefat.com

References:

Forbes GB. Body fat content influences the body composition response to nutrition and exercise. Ann NY Acad Sci. 904: 359-365. 2000

Hall, KD., What is the required energy deficit per unit of weight loss? Int J Obesity. 2007 Epub ahead of print.

McArdle WD. Exercise physiology: Energy, Nutrition, and Human performance. 4td ed. Williams & Wilkins. 1996.

Wishnofsky M. Caloric equivalents of gained or lost weight. Am J Clin Nutr. 6: 542-546.

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

If you are interested in weight loss, then you should have known that there are weight loss diets that will help you in cutting down the fat and hence reduce weight. With the increasing fast food joints and tempting tasty foods, you should not give up your weight loss resolution. This does not mean that you have to resort to the older boring diets.

The weight loss industry is gaining importance and hence various diet recipes are now formulated for those who are engaged in losing weight. Diet shakes are excellent source of all essential nutrients and they lack calories. You can make your weight loss diet more interesting by adding chilled weight loss shakes that will satisfy your taste buds. You don't have to spend more time for preparing the shakes.

In just a few minutes, you will have delicious diet shakes in your hands. The important appliance you need for preparing shakes is a good blender. Preparing diet shakes at home offers various benefits. One could add whatever ingredients one wished for. If you don't like any particular fruit, then you can omit that and include some other fruit of your choice. You can also make shakes according to your calorie requirements.

When you are preparing diet shakes at home, you are saving money and hygienic shakes are guaranteed. If you want milk based diet shakes but need to limit the calories you can use soy milk which is also very high in protein. Switching around from vegetable shakes to fruit shakes gives you a variety and also helps to give your body the essential vitamins and minerals it needs daily. You can also add supplements to your diet shakes if you wish to make sure you get all the vitamins your body needs.

It is important to not add sugar to your diet shakes as that will add calories. The fruits and vegetables should give you all the taste that you need and if you need extra sweetness or taste, add a little juice. Always wash your vegetables and fruits well before blending your diet shakes; there are many pesticides and chemicals you want to make sure you eliminate before using the vegetables or fruit.

If you wish, you can add ice to give your shake more consistency and crunch. However you choose to make your diet shakes, always remember that no diet plan is effective without being consistent and having a daily exercise plan.

There are many physicians who are quite skeptical about fad diets and have strong opinions concerning the well being of the person who decides to use this type of plan to lose weight. Diets such as The Atkins or cabbage soup diets will give you fast weight loss results, but they are also quite unhealthy and can and have caused people to have real physical illnesses. Also, the problem with these types of fad diets is that once you get off the plan, you gain all that weight back again. Fad diets are designed for you to eat a great deal of food in one meal and then skip the rest of the meals. This is by far the least healthy way to try to lose weight.

It is much better for you to drop the weight slowly, eating three balanced meals a day consisting of the right types of food that work with your body. Including a regular exercise routine combined with a healthy diet is the safest way to lose weight. In fact, an overweight person who is physically active can be much healthier than a person who is thin but does not exercise. There is a misconception about carbohydrates; they don't make you gain weight.

Carbs are the fuel for your body and is essential for energy. Many fad diets will eliminate carbohydrates from your diet, which can lead to dangerous consequences. A person needs to measure their BMI (Body Mass Index) to find out if indeed they really do need to lose weight or if they just think they do. Fad diets feed on what society thinks is "the perfect body" and thus many people think they need to shed some pounds when actually all they need to do is exercise and tone up.

Granted, it is imperative to lose some weight if your doctor deems you overweight or even obese, as carrying that extra weight can lead to heart problems as well as diabetes and hypertension. In the case of being overweight or obese you should certainly consult your doctor and let him or her put you on the appropriate diet that is suited for you and don't just take it upon yourself to try a fad diet that is not guaranteed to work or have lasting results. Any food can be eaten even if you are on a diet.

Reducing weight is all about having balanced food and calculating your calories intake properly. A human body is not designed to be on a fat-free schedule for days. All you need to be aware of is the amount of calorie intake in a meal. The fad diets encourage restriction on certain food items which is not wise to do. Eat a balanced meal and break a meal into three or four parts to increase the number of meals.

The proper way to lose weight is always about exercises and proper calories intake planning. It is not about substituting one kind of food for another. Don't let the diet dictate the kind of food you eat but rather you decide. Eat what you like only just be aware of your calories intake and the way your body function. For example a spicy acidic takes longer to digest. In short, there no shortcut to weight loss. The answer to losing weight doesn't lies with fad diet.

1. Activity Fitness Calculator
Enter how long you worked out and your weight, and this calculator will tell you how many calories you've burned.

2. BMI Calculator
Body mass index (BMI) is a measure of body fat based on height and weight that applies to both adult men and women.

3. Body Fat Calculator
An alternative method to calcuate body fat based on a formula developed by the U.S. Navy

4. Calorie Counter
This calorie calculator will calculate the calories burned by someone of a particular weight running for a specified distance.

5. CalorieKing
Has comprehensive nutritional info

6. ExRx
Animations of hundreds of exercises (by muscle group)

7. Keep a Food Diary
Here is a page you can print out and use as your daily food diary to track your food intake, and if you wish, your emotional eating habits and alternative behaviors.

8. Weight Loss Goal Estimator
This calculator provides a basic assessment of the time taken to lose weight. A calorie deficit can be obtain either by consuming less food, and/or by including exercise.