Colons that contain parasites are often impacted with mucous that prevents critical cell nutrients from being absorbed. As a result, you tend to eat more (delete ‘and more’) in order to get enough nutrition to get through the day which, in turn, leads to more weight gain.

But you can STOP the cycle . The use of proven colon cleansers can provide drastic changes for some people. They can contain natural ingredients that flush harmful food debris and toxins from the colon leaving it clean, disinfected, and functioning properly.

The Standard American Diet (or SAD) for most Americans consists of high fatty foods that are loaded with preservatives. Add to that pollution from red and white meats, water, air and other environmental factors can leave your insides feeling yucky and rundown.

An average American will eat 4-6 meals/day and have a typical bowel-movement (bm) once a day. This leaves anywhere from 5-8 meals of food sitting in your system at any given time. Have you ever considered this simple question: Are You Clean Inside?

Unfortunately for your cardiovascular health, if you don’t lose the belly fat, you will be in serious trouble someday. We don’t want that to happen, so losing weight is a priority. I have some good news for you. If your body tends to store fat in one area, when you start losing weight, that area will start to lose it first. So, you can lose the belly fat by simply dieting with your favorite diet plan. Remember, spot reduction is a myth and your fat will stay on your belly no matter how many sit-ups you do, especially if you don’t put that bag of chips down!

While you are dieting, there are some things you can do to minimize that fat stomach look. You can get a compression garment which will provide support for your back and stomach. Some people report that their midsection would stay smaller looking for a while even after removing the compression garment. Another thing you can do is exercises to strengthen your abdominal muscles which will pull your stomach in. Remember, weight training which builds abdominal muscle is to be avoided because building muscle under fat only makes you look fatter.

So to recap, here’s what we learned. Start a sensible diet to lose belly fat and get slimmer and healthier overall. Wear a compression garment to make you look slimmer and keep you motivated. Strengthen your abdominal muscles to pull that gut in and look slimmer. Over time, you will find that losing weight wasn’t as hard as you thought it would be. Your heart will thank you for the effort, trust me.

Do celebrity weight loss diets actually work? Depends on whom you are talking to. Can anyone agree that they don’t work for Kirsty Alley? She’s actually the spokesperson for a well known diet company. She makes the cover of celebrity mags every few weeks because everyone loves to tear up celebrities when they are down. Does dieting work for Heidi Klum? You bet! What does she know that we don’t? Well, she claims that taking photos of herself in the buff every week motivated her to lose the weight. I think her husband was motivated by those photos too! How about Jennifer Lopez? Well, she says she cuts back on the carbohydrates and doesn’t consume alcohol. Also, she’s a diehard cardio buff. How about Oprah? Ahh… never mind.

Celebrity diet advice ranges from the strange to the downright dangerous. Here are a few tidbits that come from all across the spectrum. A disclaimer here; don’t take any of these statements as diet advice, this is for entertainment only. OK, here goes. One model claims that she only eats fruit before noon. Another says that she eats every other day. Here’s a good one; one model’s claim to success is one meal a day and black coffee the rest of the time. How about sniffing grapefruit oil to suppress your appetite? Or the celebrity weight loss diet consisting of nothing more than fruit juices? Laxatives anyone? Yep, laxative tea is the rage for some teeny boppers, drinking over 10 cups a day. Way to go to get permanent health problems.

We could go on and on. There is just so much material to work with. Please don’t assume that celebrities know anything about proper weight loss. Most of them have personal trainers who work intensively with them before filming movies or before large events. Just because someone is thin on television does not mean you should follow or listen to their advice unless you are just entertaining yourselves like we do.

How much weight do you need to lose? If you need to lose 10 pounds, then some simple diet changes and a small increase in activity level may be sufficient. If you need to lose 100 pounds or more then you are in a different category entirely. Most of us fall in-between these extremes.

How soon do you need to lose the weight? If you need to lose 10 pounds in 6 months, you are in a great position. If you need to lose 100 pounds by next week, then nothing will work for you. A general rule of thumb is the maximum safe weight loss is 2-3 pounds per week. So if you need to lose 20 pounds, plan on taking 10 weeks to get there.

Are you in shape? Your fitness level will determine how much exercise you can safely incorporate into your diet routine. Obviously, marathon athletes will be able to work off pounds through rigorous training. Regardless of your fitness level, most of us are able to walk at least a few minutes a day. Walking is a fantastic low impact exercise which yields great dividends.

How busy is your schedule? Not everyone is able to cook special meals. Some diet plans require extensive preparations to cook the meals. If you are a working individual you may not have time to constantly cook. For you, a delivered meal plan may be the answer. Two of the most popular plans are the Medifast plan and the Nutrisystem plan. Neither of these is really expensive and most of us can afford it for the two or three months it normally takes to lose the weight.

Do you have any dietary constraints? There are many situations where a certain diet cannot be followed. The best way to lose weight for a vegan will not be the best way for everyone else. You must check to see if the diet you are planning on is compatible with your needs. Diabetics have more constraints on their diets. Vegans and vegetarians cannot consume meat. Religious needs may also play a part in the selection of foods. Make sure you ask the right questions before buying a meal plan or diet book.

Get a good night’s sleep. Sleeping well allows your body to recuperate from the day’s stresses. Studies show that not sleeping can contribute to your weight gain. So remember this tip and get your eight hours a day and you’ll be fine.

Drink enough water. Yes, drinking water helps you to lose weight. There are several reasons for this. First off, the body needs water to metabolize fat and remove it from the body. Second, keeping hydrated protects you from bloating. It seems counterintuitive, but drinking less water can actually bloat you because your body holds onto the water if you don’t drink enough. Last, but not least, many people mistake thirst for hunger. Drinking enough water helps you to eat less.

If you want to lose weight quickly, stop drinking sodas. Have you ever heard that drinking diet sodas makes you fat? Well, it is true. First off, when the body is tricked into thinking that you consumed sugar, it will look to replace those calories. It will trigger the hunger impulse and make you eat to replace the missing calories. People who drink diet sodas consume up to 30% more food at each sitting than those who don’t. There are also many who believe that artificial sweeteners contribute to many ailments including depression. Drink water, not soda, your body will love you for it.

Don’t eat past 6:00PM. Eating early will allow your body to burn off the calories before bedtime. If you eat late, right before you go to sleep, the body will store all those calories as fat. As a result, even if you are following your diet, you will make it less successful if you eat your last meal late in the evening.

Don’t skip breakfast! If you want to lose weight quickly, you must stoke that metabolic furnace. Your body needs food to start the day right. If you skip breakfast to save more calories for lunchtime, you will do yourself a disservice. Your metabolism will stall and as a result, you will lose less weight.

Hopefully these tips will accelerate your weight loss. Nobody wants to make their diet less successful, so keep these tips in mind when you diet.

Another class of weight loss products is diet pills. While we won’t go into all the available products out there since it is impossible, we can at least discuss a few of the most popular. The Alli diet pill is one we like to talk about. What does this pill do? It blocks your body’s absorption of fat. If you eat a high fat diet, this pill is for you. An interesting side effect of the pill is that it helps some people who have trouble with constipation. You may also have heard of Hoodia Gordonii. This plant is a small cactus like plant that was found by native peoples in the Kalahari Desert. When consumed, it banishes hunger for the rest of the day! You must be careful when buying this supplement as many are too low in dosage to achieve the effect that the plant itself has. There are many other weight loss aids and teas and other drugs. You should avoid the diet aids that have lots of caffeine in them. They can make you very jittery. There are also diet aids that can only be obtained by a physician’s prescription. We believe that this should be a last ditch approach.

What if you don’t want too prepare diet foods and you want someone else to do it for you? Well, there is a type of weight loss product suited to a busy lifestyle. Diet meal shipment plans abound. There are two leaders currently in this category. The first plan is the Nutrisystem plan. This meal plan has real food in it and the weight loss is gradual. We have tried the foods. Some are quite good and others are just OK. You really need a microwave for this to be convenient. You should go with the default plan the first month and then customize the plan to only include the most tasty foods you liked on the first month. The other plan is the Medifast plan. This plan is for those who are serious about losing weight faster. The downside is some of the food is really hard to eat. Yes, there are quite a few meals that taste like heated up cardboard in a cup. The good news is that you’ll definitely lose weight with this meal plan, but it takes much more commitment.

Many people think that anything that is low fat is weight loss food. Well, I have to tell you that you are not necessarily correct. While it is good to keep your fat intake in check when losing weight, there are many low-fat foods for you to avoid. One such food is bread. Refined carbohydrate is a diet killer. Anything you can do to avoid refined carbohydrate is a good thing. Sugar is also off limits. Most people who are overweight simply eat too much sugar. Remember what we said about tasteless food? Here is a tip. Lose the soda and replace it with lemon water. If you cannot live without your soda, then consider at least replacing some of the servings with lemon water. The lemon actually also has a side benefit in that it minimizes your body’s absorption of carbohydrates. Pretty nice for a nearly zero carbohydrate drink!

Bagels are not weight loss food! Yes, this is a pet peeve of ours. Bagels may have relatively low fat, but their glycemic index is incredibly high! What does that mean? It means that the moment you eat a bagel, your body converts it to sugar and your liver excretes insulin and quickly stores it as fat. Yikes, not the result you were looking for, was it?

Use red pepper! Studies have shown that spicy foods actually force the body to burn more calories and boost the metabolism for a time. Please don’t cover your pizza with red pepper flakes and think you are on a diet Anyway, spicing up your food may be really beneficial to your weight loss.

Dieter’s teas. Yes, they come in the form of weight loss pills so you don’t have to drink the tea itself. What can we say about this other than taking a tea pill won’t make you skinny any time soon. Asian cultures are not known for being slim just because they drink tea. It is the lifestyle that makes a difference. If you are a coffee drinker and you switch to unsweetened tea, you will see a difference, especially if you put sugar and cream in your coffee. We measured the amount of cream, sugar, milk and other ingredients people put in their coffee in our office. The calorie content varied from 50 calories to over 100! Some of us were drinking over 3 cups a day! Over a month, that could add up to over 9,000 calories, or almost 3 pounds of fat! In our case, switching to tea would really help.

Alli is a weight loss supplement which actually blocks the body’s ability to metabolize fat. Basically, it blocks the lipase enzyme from working. If you eat a diet loaded in fat, this will help you to lose weight with a minimal effort. The downside is some people are forced to run to the bathroom after taking it. Your mileage may vary. If you are already watching your fat intake, using this diet pill will not help you at all. In fact, if your fat intake is low to begin with, you will be doing yourself a disservice by taking Alli. Many people take it after eating a “bad meal”.

There are lots of other diet aids on the shelf of your local grocer. Most of these have a combination of stimulants to suppress appetite and increase metabolism. Most of them don’t work if you don’t change your eating habits. Those weight loss pills can make you jittery and some are not recommended if you have heart issues. Again, there is no silver bullet here. Use these products with caution. The best advice is still to become more active, get a good night’s sleep and don’t overeat at each meal.

The key to a fast weight loss is having a defined weight loss goal and timetable. You must have a goal to achieve in order to get your brain moving you in the right direction. Anyone who says that the need to lose weight in a nebulous fashion is never going to do so because they don’t have a specific goal and a specific time period to lose the weight.

Take a moment and set a goal for yourself. The general guideline for losing weight safely is approximately 2-3 pounds per week. If your wedding is 3 months away, that means you can safely lose 24-36 pounds without undue stress on your body. If you need to lose more weight than that quickly, consult your physician. After all, you don’t want to make yourself sick.

By setting a goal, we can achieve a fast weight loss. Make sure your goals are realistic and you will succeed in your endeavor. Remember, each pound of fat you want to lose has approximately 3500 calories. To lose 3 pounds a week, you must figure out how to shave off 10,500 calories from your weekly intake. Some simple changes can bring you closer to that goal. We will discuss many options here on our site to achieve your goals. Good luck and thanks for reading.

For purposes of discussion, let’s talk about approaches. Traditionally, we were taught that eating a very low fat diet would allow us to lose weight and keep our cholesterol in check. Now we know that this is not entirely true. Really low fat diets have a very high failure rate. This is because fat is necessary to the process that tells our bodies when to stop eating. Fat satisfies our food cravings. Obviously, if you remove the one thing that tells your body to stop eating you will have a harder time losing weight. Another side benefit is skin health. We need a certain amount of fat for healthy skin. Eliminating fat from your diet entirely is bad for your skin. It also can constipate you, something you don’t want.

As a counter to the low fat diet, weight loss plans that advocate low carbohydrate consumption appeared. The earliest of these was put forward by Dr. Atkins in his New Revolution diet book. He shattered the assumption that a low fat diet was the only way to lose weight. Millions lost lots of weight on his diet. The diet was bashed in the media because people said that they could not forgo eating carbohydrates for life. This is actually a distortion of his plan. The first two weeks are extremely low carbohydrate to shock the body. After that, the carbohydrate consumption is increased until you reach a level that allows you to maintain your ideal weight. For most people, that level is too low and they resume their pasta and pizza lunches within a few months.

There are many other weight loss plans out there that incorporate the principals we just discussed. We will delve further into them in future articles.