4. Eat lean protein with every meal. Protein provides a powerful signal to brain providing a longer sense of fullness. The right source of protein is essential to controlling your hunger with fewer calories and necessary to maintain your lean muscle mass. Choices of protein should be flavored soy shakes with fruit; white meat of chicken and turkey, seafood such as shrimps, prawns scallops and lobster and ocean fish or vegetarians may prefer soy based meat substitutes.

5. Rev up your metabolism with activity. If you want to enjoy a lifetime of well being, exercise is a key ingredient. Thirty minutes activity each day that takes as much effort as a brisk walk is recommended for adults. Children should be active for an hour each day.

6. Get support to ensure you develop a healthful eating plan and reach your goal weight. A study, “Effects of Internet Behavioral Counseling on Weight Loss in Adults at Risk of Type 2 Diabetes” shows that participants who had support of weight loss coaching lost more weight than those who didn’t. The study concluded that support of a weight loss coach can significantly improve weight loss results.

Being overweight or obese has been identified next to smoking, as most preventable major risk to developing cancer. Even small weight losses have been shown to have beneficial health effects. So it’s never to late to start and you can never be too young or too old to be concerned about your health and do something about achieving a more healthy weight.

(c) Copyright by Kim Beardsmore

Gaining and losing weight works according to some a simple biological principle. When you consume more energy in form of food and drinks that your body uses each day you will gain weight. When you consume less energy in form of food and drinks that your body requires each day you will lose weight.

Despite what some advertisers would have use believe, weight loss does not occur as a result of any of following:

* Supplements that will melt fat while you sleep or while you wash

* Exercises that don’t take any effort and cause no sweat

* Unique food combinations that will allow you to eat what you want and still lose weight

In order to lose weight you will need to know approximately your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR). Your RMR is number of calories your body burns at rest in a 24 hour period. When your body gets about 500 less calories than it needs each day as a result of eating less or exercising more, you will lose one pound of weight per week. To illustrate how efficient human body is in motion, average female would need to go for a brisk walk for 1.5 to 2.0 hours in order to burn 500 calories.

When you consume 500 calories a day more than your body’s requirements, you will gain approximately one pound a week! To illustrate how easy it is to gain weight, one 7oz bag of corn chips has approximately 1000 calories. If you ate a bag of corn chips every day in addition to three square meals its possible you could gain 2 pounds in a week!