It’s true, many ingredients in products may reduce your appetite. But do you really need these special herbs or ingredients to do that?

In my opinion, nature provides everything. Here are some strategies:

1. Drink water. It’s simple, if you get some sort of craving for something, just drink some water. This will help to decrease your appetite by filling up your stomach, it’s natural, and you need water to function properly anyway.

2. Eat fiber. You can either eat foods with fiber in them, like vegetables, or you can just buy some of that powdered fiber at store (it actually doesn’t taste that bad), and take some with your meals. Fiber cannot be digested, so it will decrease actual capacity for your stomach to hold food. Plus fiber pushes food through your digestive tract faster than normal. This can cause roughly 15%-20% of food you eat to not be digested – resulting in a smaller amount of calories that your body actually digests. Fiber also provides too many other benefits to list here.

3. Eat foods that are low in calories, but high in satiety. These are foods that have a low amount of calories per amount of food that you eat. For instance, a stomach full of jello contains less calories than a stomach full of peanut butter.

Weight Loss Without Exercise

It’s possible to lose some fat without exercising. However, when you do this, you’re setting yourself up for failure in long run. Muscle is an integral part of permanent fat loss. When you cut calories without lifting weights or exercising, part of weight you lose will be muscle as well as fat. When you add weight lifting/exercise to your routine, you essentially signal your body to keep your muscle. For more information on this topic of “weight loss and weight lifting”, check out our free 7-day fat loss e-course. The second lesson involves effects of weight lifting on fat. So, in essence, you can lose weight without exercising – but it’s kind of a waste of time.

Increased Energy & Focus

Many fat burner’s contain ingredients like caffeine or vinpocetine, which they claim to help increase your energy and focus. In many cases, some (a rare few might I add) of these compounds can and have been proven to do this – but (this is from personal experience) mostly by a minimal amount. Probably best way to gain focus and energy is way nature intended – through exercise. Ever gotten that endorphin high after a great workout? You’ll be surprised at how “high” you get and at how clearly you can think.

Healthy Weight Loss & Water Loss

Due to some of ingredients in fat burners, they can make you lose weight – but not necessarily correct type of weight. Some ingredients such as caffeine can be classified as mild diuretics. This can be deceiving, as weight that you may have lost from “fat” burning supplement may not be fat at all, it may just be water.

So, all in all, fat burning supplements do provide some benefits – that is, if ingredients actually DO support their claims. However, many times, even though they do provide benefits, benefits are many times small compared to what can be accomplished through intelligent dieting and exercising. It is up to buyer whether price tags justify benefits that these supplements may provide.

The puppy strategy is very similar to baby strategy. If you are not playing with it, training it, feeding it, walking it or cleaning up after it you are too tired to overeat. And, before you know it your new puppy is done napping and ready for more activities. Like caring for a baby, your puppy requires a lot of attention and mental energy. This prevents many people from unnecessary snacking that prevents weight loss.

4) If you are not ready for a baby or a puppy then take a up a new hobby. A new hobby will get you out of house, stimulate your mind and prevent you from eating out of boredom. If your hobby is a fitness related activity, such as mountain biking or hiking, then you are really going to make some progress.

5) Drink more water. I know, you've heard this one before. But, can you truthfully say you are doing it? Not many people can. Ponder this. You consist of about 73% water. Your body gives off water all day and all night. You must continuously replenish your water levels in order for your body to function at its highest levels. Many fitness professionals talk about metabolism slowing down as a result of too little food intake. However, just as important, yet rarely mentioned is water intake and its effect on metabolism. Not getting enough water can cause water retention and a slowing of metabolism. Both of these can prevent weight loss and cause weight gain.

One little known strategy for boosting water intake is to drink 8 - 12 ounces as soon as you wake up. This helps wake up your metabolism. Another way to boost your water intake is to drink 10 - 12 ounces when you start to feel hungry. Instead of immediately reaching for food, drink water and see if that calms your hunger until you are ready for your next meal.

Each one of these strategies can help you lose weight. But, by utilizing all of them, you are creating a formula for success. A formula that can be foundation of your newlifestyle.

Copyright 2005 Joe E. Atlas, Inc. All Rights Reserved