How do carbohydrates work FOR us?

Carbs are stored in our muscles and used for energy. They provide great minerals, vitamins, and fiber that our bodies need to function properly without fatigue. The human body could not function correctly without complex carbohydrates like rice, pasta, beans, wheat and vegetables to act as our fuel. They are generally low in fat and high in fiber, so they release energy at a slow steady rate, and leave no fat behind.

How do carbohydrates work AGAINST us?

When you eat simple carbohydrates like honey, refined sugar, milk, candy, fruit juice, fruit and molasses you are gaining fuel for your body. But these carbs break down quickly, and this is why we get a quick burst from sugar. Since these usually have larger amounts of fat, and they spike blood glucose levels, they leave this fat behind when they are burned off, and contribute little or no fiber and vitamins to your body.

How do carbohydrates work for dieting?

When you eat foods high in carbs, you get a rise in blood sugar. This blood sugar causes the body to produce insulin which carries nutrients and vitamins to your cells. Your cells then use this sugar for energy. Simple carbs have high amounts of sugar, complex carbs have every little. So you can see that simply by replacing simple carbs with complex carbs in your diet, you will carry less sugar/fat to your cells. Less fat in, less to burn off.

How do carbohydrates work to build muscle?

Carbs provide the main fuel for muscular exertion. Proteins and fats can also be used by your muscles, but they must be converted to carbs first. That is why a proper diet should have more complex carbs than fats and proteins. Glycogen in your muscles and glucose in your bloodstream can both be used for energy production. Since the glycogen is already located in your muscles, it is quickly burned to use as fuel. When your body needs to use glucose instead, part of your energy is burned up actually absorbing the glucose into the muscles before it can be burned. And where does this magical glycogen come from? That’s right, carbohydrates.

There is no doubt that carbs are very important in you diet. But portion size, type of carbohydrate, and exercise are all very important if you are going to be a slimmer, healthier you.

Did you know that 70% of Americans are overweight and 25% are obese? Do not risk your health any longer. If you are ready to take your understanding of carbohydrates and their role in your health to a whole new level, CLICK HERE.

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Metabolism and Weight Loss – What You Need to Know
Yuri Elkaim, BPHE, CK, RHN
www.myFitterU.com

Your metabolism is important in the weight loss equation because it represents 60-75% of your total caloric expenditure each and every day. Metabolism is proportional to your fat-free mass (ie. muscle), and after age 20 it decreases by about 2-3% per decade. In general, women tend to have a lower metabolism due to lower fat-free mass.

Your resting metabolism is the rate of energy expenditure that your body goes through at rest. It is the number of calories your body needs to survive if all you did was lie in bed.

For each 1% increase in body fatness, your metabolism decreases about 0.01 calories/minute. Thus, simply by having more fat on your body decreases your basal metabolic rate. Conversely, doing things that will burn fat and promote muscle development will increase your metabolism.

While this change may seem like no big deal, it is! This small difference can become much more meaningful if you progressively pack on weight. For example, a 5% increase in body fat at the same body weight results in a difference of 0.05 calories/minute, which is equal to 72 calories/day.

Since 3500 calories equals 1 lb of fat, in our example, it would take 48 days to add on one extra pound of fat (everything being equal). That might not seem like much but over the course of 1 year that would be an extra 7 lbs of fat just because of an initial 5% body fat difference. But it would actually be more than 7 lbs since your body fat would increase as you continued to pack on the weight.

METABOLISM IS ALSO INFLUENCED BY…

Fat-free mass is not the only factor influencing your metabolism. Since the early 1900s researchers have shown that prolonged dieting is associated with a significant decrease in metabolic rate (as much as 20% in some cases). For example, the famous Minnesota Starvation Experiment where caloric intake was restricted by 25% over the course of 24-weeks revealed that, per kg of bodyweight, metabolic rate is reduced on a semi-starved diet. The researchers also showed that T3 (one of the thyroid hormones) and sympathetic nervous system activity decreased as well.

The latter two findings are rather significant considering that thyroid is the master gland regulating your body’s metabolism. A decrease in its function makes it more difficult to lose weight. I have seen this in practice having worked with hundreds of men and women who suffer from an underactive thyroid who at the same time, have had a very tough time losing weight.

The sympathetic nervous system plays a pivotal role in the body’s ability to mobilize and burn fat. Since it stimulates the release of adrenaline from the adrenal glands, a hormone that breaks down fat, any interruption to its functioning will also impair fat burning.

What these “starvation” studies reveal is that during prolonged periods of low caloric intake, the energy production of the tissues decreases in an attempt to adapt to the lower caloric intake and reduce the rate of weight loss. It’s simply a survival mechanism. Obviously, this is an appropriate adaptation in periods of starvation, but it is counterproductive if your goal is to lose weight fast and for good.

IS YOUR METABOLISM DOOMED?

Your metabolism is also responsive to periods of over-feeding. In one dieting experiment, when the subjects were allowed a day of “free eating”, their metabolism was elevated on the following day. Further, in long-term (14-20 days) overfeeding to cause obesity, increases in metabolic rate have been recorded.

This would seem counter-intuitive. After all, if your metabolic rate increases wouldn’t it help you lose weight? In most cases, yes, but not if eating to a point of creating a dramatic positive energy balance.

In essence, during the dynamic phase of weight gain (going from a lower to higher weight), more calories are required per kg of body to maintain the weight gain than maintain normal body weight. This is obvious and it’s also one of the reasons why you may feel hungrier when you are more active.

DOES EXERCISE IMPROVE METABOLISM?

Studies have shown that trained individuals have a higher metabolic rate than untrained individuals – but only when they did high intensity workouts and consumed sufficient calories to maintain energy balance. This suggests that the higher metabolic rate in trained individuals is not due to chronic adaptations associated with training, but more to do with the acute energy flux associated with the most recent workouts and dietary choices.

There is no doubt that your metabolic rate is elevated following exercise. The questions relate to how much and how long it is elevated, and to what extent it contributes to total daily energy expenditure.

It may be said, in the long run, daily exercise is needed to maintain an elevated metabolism. However, it should be remembered that what you do today will potentially have a greater “short term” impact on your metabolism than your combined workout efforts over the past few years. Just another reason why working out at least every other day is imperative for maintaining an elevated metabolism and helping you lose weight and stay lean!

References:

Benedict, F. et al. (1919). Human Vitality and Efficiency Under Prolonged Restricted Diet. Washington, DC. The Carnegie Institute of Washington.

Keys, A. et al. (1950). The Biology of Human Starvation. Volume 1. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press.

About the Author

Yuri Elkaim is a world-renowned fitness, nutrition, and weight loss expert. He is the creator Fitter U and Treadmill Trainer, author of Eating for Energy, and the Head Strength and Conditioning Coach for men’s soccer program at the University of Toronto. His trademarked 12-week Fitter U iPod workout program has been helping thousands of people around the world get in shape and lose weight fast without the cost and inconvenience of hiring a trainer. Go to www.myFitterU.com now to get your FREE Fitter U workout and “How to Get Fit and Lose Weight Fast” report!

One of the main keys to successful weight loss is to eat a little less calories each day than your body normally required. This approach may seem slow to start, but the results will be of long duration, it is easy to make small changes in habit.

One of the biggest problems with most diet plans available is the large amount of change required. Some of the most popular plans out there require drastic changes in how you eat every day.

This will not only create confusion, but can be quite tiring to counting every calorie, or denying yourself the foods you love. Usually soon drops her diet plan and your weight loss stops and begins to reverse in weight gain.

One way to start a new weight loss plan is to start using the “replacement diet“. This diet has many of the foods you eat now and replace them with foods that are comparable, but healthier for you.

This allows you to start losing weight without many of the struggles to change the lifestyle brand new. Some of these key substitutions include:

Soda Drinks – The drink of soda contains on average about 150 calories. The switch to a calorie free soda can add up to a difference of about 1050 calories per week if you can consume per day. These numbers are higher for large bottles.

Bread - Try to replace the traditional regular bread, which contains about 70 to 75 calories a slice with carb tortillas or wraps below. These types of bread, usually have only 50 calories each.

This can be a difference of about 100 calories for a snack and fiber content of these breads are higher that you will feel fuller for longer.

Vegetables – all vegetables do not contain low calories. Carrots, corn and green beans in particular, tend to have more calories from natural sugar content than other green vegetables. The shift to fewer calories green vegetables such as cauliflower and broccoli, can lower the calories a bit more.

Eggs – Try to get out of the yolk of an egg in the shell. The yolk contains by far the most calories of whole eggs. Furthermore, the egg contains only 15 calories per egg. Try putting two egg whites in a low-carb wrap and yourself a perfect snack, which contains only 75 calories.

If you spend much time on it, you can find many places in your diet that may be slightly modified to reduce the total count of calories without sacrificing taste too.

When approaching your diet from this point of view you can still eat all the foods you like, but in a slightly different way that makes weight loss a little easier. The more manageable to your diet, the better able they are to stay for the long term.

The solution for permanent weight loss is to consume the right types of foods during each meal while actually increasing the amount of meals you eat each day to speed up your metabolism. We recommend using the new fail-proof diet from The Weight Loss Grail.
This is a brand new type of diet never seen before that will never leave you feeling hungry or ask you to give up any of your favorite foods.

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You may think of this hormone as a drug to have incredible power to make you look slim, sexy and attractive, or flabby and overweight, because it really has power. But you will need to know how to control it.

There are many different physicians are able to prescribe drugs to you by weight loss, and another, far less potent than weight loss clinics can give you or you can buy directly through the Internet or counter health food stores.

But the good news is that you do not need to spend money on these pills for at this moment in his own body has much more powerful than any of these weight loss drugs are also known to have some unpleasant side effects effects and are “hormones”. If you can learn to properly control them, are much more powerful than you can imagine.

Basically, if you want to force your body to burn fat as quickly as possible, you must ensure that your body releases the least amount of insulin after every meal.

Insulin is commonly known as the “Conservation of the fat hormone” because it merely stated, the more insulin that reaches the bloodstream after a meal, the more fat stored in your body as a result of that same meal. In general, the larger the meal or the larger the amount of simple sugars consumed, the greater the amount of insulin will be released.

This is one reason why it is considered a good idea by experts in nutrition and weight loss eating smaller but more frequent meals so insulin levels did not rise throughout the day. If you can get your hands on whole grain or flour all versions of breads and pasta, are a much healthier choice.

Alternatively, it also means that if you can maintain low insulin levels after eating, you will end up burning more fat tissue. Sweet and starchy foods such as candies, chocolates, potatoes, white bread, pasta and rice are among the worst culprits when it comes to rapidly increase the amount of sugar in the blood causing a large amount of insulin to be released.

It has been shown that insulin levels begin to decline after about 10 minutes of aerobic exercises, and will continue to decline by another 70 minutes of exercise. Also been shown that regular exercise also increased insulin sensitivity of cells so it takes less general.

The solution for permanent weight loss is to consume the right types of foods with each meal to limit the amount of fat storing hormones released in the body. We recommend using the new fail-proof diet from The Weight Loss Grail.

This is a brand new type of diet never seen before that will never leave you feeling hungry or ask you to give up any of your favorite foods.

You can begin this fantastic new diet right here:

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The reason is simple.

They know that doing so within minutes of ab exercises every day, never going to make much difference to the amount of body fat or size of your stomach. These machines work well and can give you the rock-hard abs, but you will not be able to see if they are covered by layers of ugly fat.

These machines are made to strengthen and tone your abdominal muscles. After using for a couple of weeks without seeing any results, which generally end up gathering dust in the garage somewhere until the next larger machine AB is released and what he thinks of himself, “This could be the one “.

Some of these exercise devices are so questionable that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) launched the “Project absurd” against those responsible for the AB Energizer, and Fast Abtronic ABS in 2002.

According to FTC Chairman Timothy Muris, “These electronic abs doing nothing to turn a pot belly into a flat belly bulging six pack.” The government then sued three different manufacturers of these machines for false advertising.

If you are already thin and have visible abdominal muscles slightly, these exercise devices are great to make them look more defined. Therefore, more attractive models in the waistband of shorts and sexy.

They got their sexy figures using the hype machine. They have followed a healthy balanced diet, along with many hours in the gym.

It probably never even laid their eyes on the machine that was being promoted until the day of the photo or shoot commercials and are scheduled your training and diet to be in top physical condition to complete one day.

The other type of athlete ab is known as an electronic muscle stimulator (EMS), which provides an electrical charge to the muscles of his contract.

John Porcari, a professor of physical education and sport sciences at the University of Wisconsin, EMS test a device similar to the market in a study commissioned by the American Council on Exercise. After eight weeks of using the single device, the participants had no significant increases in muscle size or strength.

The bottom line is this:

A few minutes of ab exercises daily not to burn the fat from your belly. We must remember that doing ab exercises alone, will not accomplish much when it comes to reducing weight. Moreover, a study conducted and published by the American Council on Exercise also confirmed this.

The study indicated that these machines do not perform better than the standard practice of contraction, which means that most of these machines AB are a total waste of money.

If you are overweight and want to have a good definition and sexy stomach, you need to add other exercises to your regimen as weight training and maybe some cardio exercise as well as cycling, rowing and aerobics.

You will also have to take note of what you eat and your diet is probably the most important part of any successful program of weight loss.

To begin losing weight fast (and to get a slimmer waistline) we recommend using the new fail-proof diet from The Weight Loss Grail. This is a brand new type of diet never seen before that will give you those visible, sexy abs that you have always dreamed of.

You can begin this fantastic new diet right here:

The Weight Loss Grail: Lose 28 lbs. Every 28 days!

But what if the opposite was true? What if I was going to say that exercise can cause you to lose less Wight?

In general, most people tend to exercise early in the morning with empty stomach. This is probably because they have heard or read that this is the best time to exercise or the only time of day where you can squeeze in a workout.

Whatever the reason may be, if you exercise on an empty stomach and very early, in fact, can wreak havoc on your stomach. While exercise does not burn calories, but also makes you feel hungrier later. Along with the “high” that the body feels after a prolonged period of exercise, this can often lead to overeating.

Although you can not finish eating 4 pieces of toast with 6 eggs and 2 large glasses of orange juice after every workout, the calculation of the amount of calories burned during training is often much greater than the actual amount.

Add this to the fact that many people also underestimate the amount of calories consumed at meals, combine to losing weight more slowly.

Losing weight too fast is something you should not aspire to achieve. A slower approach to weight loss is most likely to see lasting results and the plan can be maintained for a long period of time, as it is tolerable and not too strict.

A key to successful weight loss is never conduct a training just before a main meal. Try it just before or some other activity before having to leave.

For example, if you just finished a 30-minute workout on your treadmill, you must go and shower, and then maybe go for a walk in the park, or maybe he could go to a cafe and enjoy a free sugar, coffee with low fat milk.

Something to consider is fiber. The fiber helps fill the stomach without adding too many calories. So what you could do is eat a high fiber snack, just before a workout. Slim-Fast bars make such large and All Bran.

One of the biggest falls of weight loss are water sports and protein shakes. These usually contain large amounts of sugar. All the calories burned are only added directly back to your body with these sugary drinks. Be sure to check labels and choose low-calorie versions.

So remember that exercise can cause you to have a big appetite and take precautions to see their snacks after practice and learn to snack wisely.
The solution for permanent weight loss is to preserve your lean muscle mass while increasing your metabolic rate by building it while controlling you appetite through proper nutrition. We recommend using the new fail-proof diet from The Weight Loss Grail.
This is a brand new type of diet never seen before that will never leave you feeling hungry or ask you to give up any of your favorite foods.

You can begin this fantastic new diet right here:

The Weight Loss Grail: Lose 28 lbs. Every 28 days!

We will look into the potential problems with these diets below as they are effects you need to consider before you decide to jump on the low carb bandwagon.

1. Low carb diets will reduce the body of it’s glycogen stores (a type of body fuel).

When these glycogen stores are depleted they cause you to dehydrate. This will give you the impression that you are losing body fat, but you are truly losing is the bodies important water that will need to be replaced finally. This is what makes the scales drop so quickly at the beginning with these types of diets.

When your glycogen levels are truly low, there is a lesser total of fuel existing for your body to perform it’s functions, which can leave you feeling tired, exhausted and miserable for the time of the diet. When you feel a reduced quantity of active you are a lesser total of likely to want to train or be active which limits the quantity of calories you burn.

The problem with lowered glycogen levels also can guide to a defeat of muscle tissue. Your muscles need glycogen for products and movement. You will of course want to use your muscles a reduced amount of because you will feel that you just don’t have the energy to do anything.

This lack of muscle use will slowly cause the muscles to break down and lose their tone. Your body will also actually start to use protein from muscle tissue as fuel when there is little glucose available. This process is known as “Catabolism” and it is when the body breaks down protein in the body rather than creating it.

2. The majority of people will re-gain all of the lost weight on low carb diets.

A high percentage of people will re-gain all their weight lost despite of the kind of diet they chose, but that proportion is even higher for people on low carb diets.

This is due to mostly three effects. You have lost lean muscle tissue that causes a slower metabolism generally. Muscles burn calories for fuel and so the additional muscle you have, the more calories you will burn during the day. If you go back to how you ate in the past you started dieting, you will in fact put on weight much quicker than you did before.

Then, as you begin to consume carbs again, your body will bit by bit start to re-gain it’s lost fluids. Even though it’s not fat tissue, it can bring the scales back to where they started in the past the diet leaving you frustrated.

Last of all, these types of diets are actually complicated to maintain for the long-term. It would take an extreme quantity of will-power to allow yourself to feel so miserable for more than a few weeks let alone several months.

The solution for permanent weight loss is to not only consume enough carbs with each meal but to also consume the right kinds of carbs to preserve your lean muscle tissue and speed up your metabolism. We recommend using the new fail-proof diet from The Weight Loss Grail.

This is a brand new type of diet never seen before that will never leave you feeling hungry or ask you to give up any of your favorite foods.

You can begin this fantastic new diet right here:

The Weight Loss Grail: Lose 28 lbs. Every 28 days!

People are thinking that if they dropped a lot of calories, the body will be forced to take body fat and use it to produce energy. Then all you do is eat almost any food for weeks and ready! you will have a new slim body. Wrong.

It would be nice if that is how weight loss really worked, but it is not. First, cutting calories too much can actually be very dangerous and unhealthy. One reason is that you can deprive your body of essential nutrients it needs to function properly which can lead to chronic deficiencies and problems associated with them.

Other problems that can occur are imbalances in the minerals that control the balance of certain fluids in the body that allow the muscles and nerves to function properly. Furthermore, osteoporosis is another danger, especially for women. Dairy products like milk, cheese and eggs are generally cut from diets low in calories that can lead to severe calcium deficiency leading to bone loss.

What also happens is that if you reduce too many calories for a few days, your metabolism will slow down significantly which means that your body will adjust so that it can function with fewer calories. You will end up burning calories and much less during the day and the weight loss that makes it even more difficult.

Not only will your metabolism slow down, but you will have less energy, feel tired and depressed and your body will also begin to break down muscle and bone tissue to feed itself instead of burning their sources of fat, because muscle tissue burns calories, so the less muscle you have fewer calories than you need.

Your body does not know it just wants to lose weight, believes there is a food shortage or famine and will do everything possible to ensure that they survive as long as possible.

When you start eating normally, the body will burn calories at a slower pace than before starting the diet because they have less muscle mass and your body will not be rich yet sure how long food will be available.

The failure rate of such diets are very high, up to 95% as stated by some researchers. Reduced-calorie diets also create what is known as the “Yo-Yo” effect of diet.

To compensate for the lack of food in the diet when you start eating normally again, the appetite grows by eating more than usual that eventually you will put back all the weight lost while dieting. Many people also experience a real increase in weight of several months after a diet because of this yo-yo.

The solution for permanent weight loss is not only consume enough calories every day, but to consume the right kind of calories to preserve lean muscle mass. We recommend using the new fail-proof diet from The Weight Loss Grail.

This is a brand new type of diet never seen before that will never leave you feeling hungry or ask you to give up any of your favorite foods.

You can begin this fantastic new diet right here:

The Weight Loss Grail: Lose 28 lbs. Every 28 days!

So do low-fat foods equal greater weight loss? The answer you will find, is not so simple as you are about to find out.

Contrary to popular belief, substituting an equal amount of fat calories for carb calories does not always lead to a loss of weight. Most of the time, the food manufacturers don’t tell you, that although their product may contain little to no fat, they do contain a high amount of sugars (carbs).

Although a gram of fat really includes more calories than a gram of carbohydrates, if you eat enough carbs then you are still going to put on weight or have trouble losing it.

It has been shown that a person’s perception of what they think is a regular portion of food, can sometimes be skewed when they are given low-fat alternatives. People tend to feel less guilty when they eat theses foods and so they are more likely to overindulge and overeat.

Fat has been made the bad guy when it comes to weight loss and yet, there has been now for a while strong evidence to suggest that the dangers of dietary fat may have been greatly exaggerated.

The evidence suggests the opposite, that such diets are unhealthy. They can raise the risk of heart disease, diabetes and cancer as well as certain psychological disorders such as depression and schizophrenia.

A recent major study found out , that low fat diets didn’t protect women against breast cancer, strokes, colon cancer or heart attacks which contradicts what was once promoted as the cornerstone of a healthy lifestyle.

According to Jacques Rossouw, from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute that provided the funds for the study said, “Based on our findings, we cannot recommend that most women should follow a low-fat diet.”

Believe it or not, some fats are healthy and essential for normal health. They are essential for things like protecting the nerves and internal organs from damage, brain, lung function, eye and important immune system functions

Some essential fatty acids are also essential for the production of certain hormones in the body. Some nutritionists recommend that people who have eaten low fat diets for many weeks or longer without any weight loss get tested for EFA deficiencies and they should start eating certain foods to correct them if present.

The solution for permanent weight loss is to not only consume enough fat calories but to consume the right kinds of fat. We recommend using the new fail-proof diet from The Weight Loss Grail.

This is a brand new type of diet never seen before that will never leave you feeling hungry or ask you to give up any of your favorite foods.

You can begin this fantastic new diet right here:

The Weight Loss Grail: Lose 28 lbs. Every 28 days!