The Health Gazette

While many overweight people find it difficult to shed extra pounds, those who are underweight face their own challenges trying to keep each pound and add more. The good news for those trying to gain weight is that adding pounds is easier than losing pounds.

Why is it so tough to gain or lose weight?

When I was under-30, I weighed in at 142 lbs at 5 feet 8 inches. I was pretty lean and could eat everything that wasn't nailed down, withour gaining an ounce! I wanted to gain weight in the worst way but there just was not any information available about how to do it. When I crossed the 30 mark, mysteriously I began to put on weight.

I found out that the culprit was my metabolic rate. Metabolic rate is simply how quickly the body burns calories. My metabolic rate had simply slowed down after I hit the big-three-o.

Your metabolism is responsible for regulating the rate at which your body consumes food or stores food as fat on your body. If you have ever wondered why some people are able to pig out and never gain a pound, or why some people put on several pounds simply by eating normally, the answer is the body's metabolic rate. The more efficiently your metabolism functions, the more efficiently it burns through calories. It follows then, the more you understand how to manipulate your metabolism, the easier it will be to gain weight.

Weight gain can come from eating more rich and tasty fat-laden foods; a decrease in activity level; a subtle change in the rate that your body burns calories. Studies show that even the most inactive people can gain significant health benefits if they accumulate 30 minutes or more of physical activity per day. Whether you are trying to lose weight or gain it, you should understand the important role of physical activity and include it in your lifestyle.

Genetics and other factors affect how your body uses the calories you consume. Still, the only way to gain weight is by taking in more calories than you burn.

In a study of holiday weight gain, people who reported being much more active maintained their weight or even lost weight during the holidays. Those who reported being less active gained the most during this period.

Gaining any more than 1 or 2 pounds a week is unhealthy and means you're putting on way to much fat. So look for a 1 or 2 pound gain at the end of the week. I know that does not sound like much but it works out to gaining 5-8 pounds a month!

So, you want that perfect bod? First, ask your doctor! Do it yourself weight manipulation can cause serious health problems. You knew that, right?

A good approach might be to venture into the bodybuilding community. There you will find many people, like yourself, also seeking ways to put on lean muscle mass (weight). You will also find many products marketed to help you gain weight. Be very cautious when looking at these products. Gaining weight may not be as in demand as losing weight but it is still big business and there are a lot of companies out there looking to take your money. While some of these products can help, others aren't necessary.

The best advice? Always, always, always, ask your doctor before trying to become the next Ms. or Mr. Universe!

There are so many people looking to lose weight quickly that they look to fad diets to get to that point. There are plenty of fad diets available for people to use.

A lot of them, especially the more popular ones, advise people that they can lose a lot of weight in a short period of time. So with that “supposed belief”, they rush out and try it. They feel like it’s the next best thing since sliced bread.

So you gear yourself to lose five pounds in a week. After a few days, if you haven’t lost one pound, you start to freak out. Then, by the end of the week, if we still haven’t reached that five pound threshold, then you’re sadly disappointed.

So, you look for the next big quick fix and try that one. This begins what seems to be a never ending cycle of trying different fad diets until you decide to give up or you’ve tried them all, with no success.

Fad diets focus on losing chunks of weight loss very rapidly. That can be very dangerous for your health. Losing five or even ten pounds in a week is really pushing it. It may sound good to do this, but in reality, it’s not.

You are depriving yourself of vitamins and nutrients that you need to keep your health intact. Believe it or not, these diets are based on creating deficiencies in your body.

Did you know that you could end up binging from these fad diets? That means that you stuff yourself with everything in sight. You deprived yourself of all of the things that you needed to keep your body energized and now you’re paying for it dearly.

Or you may decide to purge, which means you force yourself to throw up everything that you’ve eaten. Either way, it is a dangerous precedent for additional health problems.

However, you can alleviate those problems with the Slim Habit system. You will learn new habits about weight loss. In addition to that, you will learn how to implement those habits so that you will have long-term, permanent weight loss. You don’t want to stick with the fly-by-night schemes that caused your weight to fluctuate.

With this weight loss system, you can learn to eat what you’re supposed to have, and also implement a personal exercise plan for you to act upon. In order for this weight loss system to be successful for you, you must have a mindset that you will focus on the task at hand.

You must be willing and act upon any changes that you need to make. When you implement change, change will happen for you. That includes getting rid of those fad diets that caused you to gain the weight in the first place.

You are "fearfully and wonderfully made" declares a passage in the Bible and it is the key to conquering the battle over losing weight and keeping it off. No, this is not a Bible lesson, it's an explanation of how to boost your metabolism, that is, how to tune up your internal engine to lose weight and keep it off.

Overweight people very often blame metabolism for their troubles with losing the extra pounds and they are correct, because speeding up metabolism is known to help burn more calories. Nevertheless, in order to control your metabolic rate, you need to know exactly what metabolism really is.

A common puzzle you often see is the person who seems to eat everything and anything put in front of them and they remain thin. They eat all the high calorie, high fat, foods that they want and they have slim bodies and un-bounding energy. The solution to the puzzle is their metabolic rate. If you look at their lifestyle you like will find a person who has a very active social life and an optimistic attitude. They are always on the go and trying new things. How is this possible?

Simply put, metabolism is how your body responds physically and emotionally to demands made upon it. Metabolism is determined by physical and emotional energy moving through your body. Or, to put it another way, your body is more complex than the most expensive automobile in the world and it, like that expensive automobile, needs to be kept in tune, the right fuel used, and driven hard at times for best performance. You control your metabolism by speeding it up or slowing it down like you would stepping on the accelerator of your automobile.

If you wish to lose body fat continuously for many months until you reach your target weight, then work at boosting your metabolism rather than switching from one diet to the next. A controlled metabolic rate works better than any fad diet or herbal remedy because it automatically regulates your body weight based upon the demands of your everyday life. The key is finding the right combination of food and exercise that provides all the energy you need to look and feel fit everyday.

The problem with dieting alone is that many of the diet plans on the market actually cause the metabolism to slow down. A decreased metabolic rate is often the very reason that weight loss progress suddenly stops. Increasing exercise frequency may still have no effect at this stage. Plus, reducing food intake doesn't help because there is a net loss of protein in the overall muscle mass, and this net loss continues to lower your metabolic rate even further. This is when the body has adapted to the lower calorie intake. In effect, you are not putting the right fuel into your body to give you that balance of food and exercise. It appears complicated but it's really simple once you understand how your personal metabolism works.

Losing abdominal fat is probably the #1 complaint by all dieters. Before you decide to resort to drastic measures, consider these facts:

A high-intensity cardio workout that really increases your heart rate will make you lose the most calories and represent the most significant short-term metabolic booster; between 20 and 30 percent. However, it won't have a permanent effect on your metabolism because, after your workout, your metabolism will return to its previous level over several hours. While, you will continue burning extra calories during this slow down, this alone will not result in a fine tuned metabolism.

The diet pill industry has about the same success as the quit smoking industry - less than 50% of people succeed over a long term. This is simply because diet pills, like extreme exercise, are short-term solutions and can cause physical harm.

You would not drive that expensive automobile at full speed all the time, would you? Of course not because you know that such behavior will destroy the machine. The human body is no different.

So, what to do next? Go on the Internet and do research on metabolism. Talk to your doctor to see if they understand the relationship between metabolism and weight loss. If they do, have them provide a weight loss plan that fits your age, gender, and physical condition.

Can you no longer stand constant 'in the box' diets? We aren't all made the same. Some people will demand higher calorie intake. Meal Plans 101 ends the strict diet regime. It gives you the freedom to think of a special meal plan that is based on your body type and requirements.

Authors of Meal Plans 101, Jayson Hunter and Cris Mohr, can show in-depth knowledge in the subject of dieting. Together they developed Meal Plans 101 that will enable anybody to put an end to crazy diet plans and start with real fat loss.

Meal Plans 101 is the system used by the top weight loss specialists. It shows you how to choose from a huge number of meal possibilities. You are allowed to eat your favorite dishes and enjoy different kinds of food. The plan also helps you to track your weight loss. The tracking allows you to find out which meal plans will be best for you. Meal Plans 101 also shows you the most essential elements of long-term fat loss. Finally, you are able to stop wishing about a weight loss plan, customized to you. With Meal Plans 101 you don't have to be a movie star to get to know the ideal meal plan for you. Don't delay much longer to make a move towards a leaner body.

Just think of how much more effective sticking to a weight loss system would be if everything was laid out for you. Let Meal Plans 101 does all the counting and planning instead of you.

You may have noticed your belly growing fat but has it grown fat enough for you to be concerned about your health?

Getting a fat belly is particularly unhealthy when compared with gaining fat in other areas of your body. Extra belly fat increases your risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and certain types of cancer.

To tell if your belly is growing too fat and becoming a health risk you want to throw out the scale and pick up a measuring tape. The key to diagnosing whether your belly is growing too fat is to measure your waist-hip ratio (a measurement of the waist size divided by the hip size). To accurately determine your ratio, first measure around your waist at about the level of your belly button; don't hold your stomach in and don't pull the tape so tight that you indent the skin. Next you want to measure around the fullest area of your hips with your feet together. Divide your waist measurement by the measurement at your hips.

A waist-hip ratio above .85 for women and above .90 for men indicates a higher health risk.

Waist Measurement ÷ Hip Measurement = Waist-Hip Ratio

While it is not unusual to gain weight as you age due to a slower metabolism and less activity, a belly growing fat seems to have additional causes. Heredity may be one factor - you may simply have inherited a tendency to get a fat belly. Hormones are also important players for women. Hormones change after menopause and effect the way your body handles fat, depositing greater amounts in the belly.

Even though belly fat tends to be found deeper inside the body than fat that is found around the hips, thighs and butt it is all removed in the same way - through proper diet and exercise.