Dieting & Metabolism

Weight loss and maintenance comes down to a simple maths of calories in and calories out. To lose weight, your calories in should be less than your calories out. Focusing on the mathematics of weight loss can help prevent you from getting tricked by unhealthy diet fads.

Get a scales that measures your metabolic rate and metabolic age. When I started off my metabolic reading was 1500 k/cals – that basically means that I needed 1500 cals a day for you body to function. Anything over that will be stored, generally as fat – so it’s a basic numbers game. If you want to lose weight you need to take in less calories than your metabolic rate. This is fine for a period of time but unless you increase your metabolism in the meantime, then, you will need stay on a ‘ diet ‘ forever to maintain or keep losing weight. So the ideal solution is to work on increasing your metabolism while your losing the target weight. Once you have reached your target weight you will want to get back to eating healthy and maintain the weight loss. This is key to not falling into the whole yo-yo dieting experience

How to boost your metabolism ?

1) Never skip your breakfast, this is the biggest cause of slow metabolism.

2) Do not skip your regular meal and starve yourself, this can slow down your metabolism quickly. Instead you should eat smaller meals of 300 to 400 calories through the day, this will help in increasing your metabolism because your metabolism must adapt to a regular schedule of small but steady calorie input when you eat smaller meals. For example, your metabolism will try to burn only 1000 calories per day If you eat only 1000 calories per day.

3) Eat plenty of vegetables and fresh fruits, they help to boost metabolism

4) Cut back on sugar, it slows down your metabolism.

5) Drink 8 glasses of water each day.

6) Have a good sleep at night. A well rested body will boost your metabolism

It’s extremely common for people on diets to eat too little. You will lose weight to start, but your body is smarter than you. Way smarter. It will start thinking, “this crazy kid is simply not eating enough to survive, I’m going to drop his/her metabolism, so he/she doesn’t burn as much during the day and can survive off this ridiculously small amount he/she is eating”. Bottom line, starvation won’t work as a diet, your body will make sure you don’t burn too much and die. Cut down your calories a little, and exercise more.

Eat more Protein

This has lots more benefits than just metabolism. Protein is a muscle builder, you need it to grow. Lean protein is even better for that, more good stuff for fewer calories. Your body takes a bit more work to burn this stuff too, which is called the thermogenic effect. So, if you don’t get enough protein in, start eating.

Eat more Fiber

Same principle as above. Fiber is harder for your body to process, and you will get a small increase in metabolism through this effect. It’s also wonderful for your digestive system and keeps you regular.

Weight Train

Weight training is the ultimate exercise for firing up your metabolism. The more intense your exercise and the more muscles you get involved, the better metabolism increase you will get. Weight training is intense, you are pushing heavy weights around, and you will get a good post workout increase in metabolism and burn for much longer. Get on it.

Build Muscles

The more muscle mass you have the higher your metabolism will be. Simple.

Work Your Legs

Leg Weights are important for overall muscle balance, and do need to be done for many reasons other than speeding up your metabolism. However, it’s just another added benefit. Legs are often neglected; it’s the biceps that are overworked. Your legs have a big muscle mass, if you work this mass, you will burn more energy, and thus, increase your metabolism post workout. If you don’t care about how muscly your legs are, at least chuck a few leg exercises in there to get your body working harder during your weights session.

Do more Higher Intensity Cardio

Getting on the treadmill for 30 mins at a slow pace is OK. But there are better options. Doing some intense work will burn more calories, and leave you with a better post work out metabolism boost than a long slow cardio session. A 10 minute bike interval session would be much more beneficial than a slow 30 minutes session. It’s the post workout boost that is the key, as with weight training, the more intense you work, the longer and stronger your increase will be and the more you will burn whilst you aren’t even active.

Avoid Alcohol

Alcohol is bad for your metabolism. It acts against it and will slow it down. Avoid drinking it too regularly.

Increase Incidental Physical Activity

This is an important one. Being active will automatically give you a short term
boost to your metabolism. Adding some extra things into the day that you hardly realize can add up. For example, make your bed in the morning, park your car a little further away than normal, take the stairs occasionally, get up from your desk frequently if possible. Just by simply being more active during the day, which is called incidental activity, you will get an increase in your metabolism.

Formula 2 - Multivitamin complex

Formula 2 Multivitamin provides over 20 vitamins and minerals to contribute to good nutrition and overall health.

Key Benefits

Helps you achieve 100% of your daily vitamin and mineral requirement when used in conjunction with Formula 1.

Formula 2 is high in:
• Calcium and vitamin D for normal bone structure

• Zinc to support a healthy immune system

• B vitamins to support energy metabolism

• Antioxidant vitamins C and E for protection of cells against free radical damage.

WHY DO YOU NEED IT?

Your body needs the right balance of vitamins and minerals to function properly.Research suggests the best way to ensure that we achieve this, is to eat a balanced and varied diet including at least 5 portions of fruit and vegetables every day. For those who might not be achieving optimum nutrition, a multivitamin supplement can help.

USAGE

One tablet three times daily with meals. This product can be used in conjunction with Herbalife Formula 1 Nutritional Shake Mix and Herbalife’s Fibre and Herb

Weight-Management Formula 1

Formulated with an excellent balance of macro and micro nutrients, Formula 1 has been scientifically proven to be an effective way to control and manage weight when combined with a healthy active lifestyle.

Key Benefits
• Calorie restricted: contains less than 220 calories per shake to make it easy to manage daily calorie intake.

• Contains a balanced combination of soy protein and plant based carbohydrates that can help you feel fuller for longer and sustain your energy levels as part of a weight management or healthy nutrition programme.

• Contains soy: The inclusion of at least 25 grams of soy protein a day as part of a diet low in saturated fat can help you maintain healthy blood cholesterol levels.

• Contains soy protein which can help build and maintain lean muscle mass as part of a fitness programme.

• Contains high levels of essential vitamins and minerals to help you reach your Recommended Daily Allowance.

• Available in 6 flavours: smooth fruity options, plain vanilla, sweet chocolate or crunchy cookies & cream. The choice is yours!

• Optimise the taste by adding in your favourite fruits.


WHY DO YOU NEED IT?

When trying to lose or manage your weight, it’s important to maintain a nutritionally balanced diet. A healthy meal like Herbalife Formula 1 keeps your calorie intake down to avoid putting on extra weight, while also providing essential vitamins and minerals, long lasting carbohydrate and protein for sustained energy and satiety.

Thirst & Hunger - The key differences and the importance of it

A major reason that so many of us are overweight is that instead of satisfying our thirst with water, we tend to drink fruit juices and fizzy drinks instead, imagining that as they contain water, that they are the same as water, but just that little bit more exciting.

Many healthy diet books urge people to drink sugar-free fruit juices: But if you drink these instead of plain water, you could be adding to your weight problems.

The reason that we tend to eat rather than drink in response to brain signals is that the sensations of thirst and hunger are often generated simultaneously. As, with time, we fail to recognise thirst needs, we assume both indicators mean that food is needed by the body: So we eat food when the body should, ideally, only be receiving water.

It is also the case that all fizzy drinks, including diet drinks, manufactured as weight-loss aids, actually cause overweight rather than helping to prevent it. Coffee and other caffeine-containing drinks also contribute to overweight. They do this because caffeine has both addictive and diuretic properties. The reason why people often become addicted to coffee and diet fizzy drinks is because the water does not stay in the body long enough to satisfy, thirst and also has a direct action on the brain, giving a sensation of pleasure.When people drink many cans of diet cola, for instance, they continue to feel thirsty, but because they think they have drunk a lot, interpret this as a hunger signal instead. This means they begin to eat more food than their body needs, and weight piles on.

The dehydration caused by caffeine-laden drinks causes a gradual gain in weight from overeating, in itself caused by confusion of hunger and thirst signals being transmitted from the brain.

There is also the factor that many children nowadays never drink plain water, as children used to, but fizzy sugar-laden drinks instead.

Caffeine causes addiction, and all caffeinated drinks cause weight gain as they indirectly stimulate more food intake because the brain is forced to use up its energy reserves - reserves which could easily be maintained by drinking water.

Excess energy is stored in the form of fat, which we don’t need and which the body doesn’t want. Consumption of sugar, whether this is in the form of actual sugar or artificial calorie-free sweeteners such as aspartame, stimulates the tongue, and the brain programmes the liver to accept the sugar from outside and shut down its own manufacture of natural sugar from proteins consumed. Instead of metabolising this sugar, the liver begins to store it and the result is increased appetite for sweet things.

Sweeteners, even if they do not contain calories, stimulate the taste buds and urge us to eat ever more. Animal experiments have now shown that animals will have a similar urge to overeat if given sweet things. It has also been shown in American experiments that sweeteners, such as aspartame, will enhance appetite and increase food intake. This urge to eat more food after taking artificial sweeteners can last up to 90 minutes. It seems that the brain retains the urge to eat long after the body has been satisfied.

It has been said that diets don’t work. In fact, they do work, but most people can’t stick to them. Self-deprivation of food is masochistic and can only be kept up for a short time unless there is a powerful motivation not to eat, such as if you are a model, or a jockey, for instance. It is well known that most people who lose large amounts of weight on slimming programmes put it all back on again, and more, eventually. For most of us though, taking in food has become an unthinking activity.

If every time you felt hungry, you drank a glass of water, and waited to see whether the pangs were of hunger or thirst, you would probably discover that you did’nt need to go on diets.

I do not know of any diet programme which tells you to drink lots of water, rather, they concentrate on elaborate and expensive mini-meals. But drinking water could be a cheap and effective permanent solution

It is always better to try and treat hunger by drinking more water than by eating more food. Next time you are tempted to overeat, drink instead By putting something in your stomach which makes you feel full, as a glass of water will, you will then start to lose weight safely and without recourse to masochistic diets.