If you’ve been a long-time reader of this blog you’ll know the challenges I’ve mentioned in the past when it comes to choosing safe and effective diet pills. It’s a real snake-oil industry in which some people make vast sums of money and protecting yourself from dubious claims and overpriced products can be a real challenge to even the best of us.

However there are some sites around which aim to help you make more informed decisions should you decide to go down the route of using diet pills to try and speed up your weight loss. Remember that you should always start with a foundation of suitable exercise and diet and then only if you want that extra boost opt to use diet pills.

Once example of such a site that may be of interest to you is www.weightlosspills.net which according to Google currently has over 60 pages of reviews and information on diet pills.

It’s a nice clear site that makes it easy to compare prices, ingredients and so on for different pill brands so hopefully making your decision-making process that little bit easier.

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If you’re wondering how to lose weight naturally then there are a number of things you need to be aware of.

Firstly, how do you define “naturally”? Most people, I think, would mean to lose weight without pills and potions, and at a “safe” rate that is in tune with your metabolism rather than massive, sudden weight loss which can be a real shock to the system.

In this way I suppose the best definition for losing weight naturally is to work *with* your body rather than against it - with suitable diet and exercise - so your body can help you lose weight safely rather than fighting against your body’s systems.

So that concludes the “what”. Now time for the “how”.

Actually the principle is very simple - the execution takes a little more effort.

To lose weight naturally you just need to start consuming fewer calories than you burn up each day. In this way the deficit will have to come from elsewhere - in your case from fat reserves in the body.

Of the three major food groups - carbohydrates, fats and proteins - nutritionists have shown that fat contains roughly twice the number of calories per gram than carbohydrates or protein.

Carbohydrates are therefore the energy source of choice - and the “slower burning” the better. Different sources take different times to be broken down into a useable form by the body. The longer this takes, the longer your appetite will be satisfied and the fewer excess calories your body will have to store as fat.

Protein is also important as it supports growth and repair of the body (such as if you decide to tone up - your new muscle will be built primarily from protein).

Even without vigorous exercise protein is essential to your diet as it affects things such as cell regeneration, and your immune system. It has also been shown to have appetite suppressing effects so a decent amount of protein will help you eat less without feeling hungry.

As will two other sneaky tricks -

1) Consume one or two glasses of water with every meal. The water is essential to a healthy body and also fills up your stomach making you feel satisfied even though water has no calories in it.

2) Eat slowly. It can take 10-20 minutes from you having eaten enough to your stomach saying “stop eating!”. By eating slowly you’ll get the feedback sooner than other people and so are less likely to overeat. Or put another way - will feel satisfied on less food - naturally.

So combining lean protein, slow-burning carbohydrates plus plenty of water in such a way as to provide low-fat recipes that create an energy deficit is the best answer as to “how to lose weight naturally”.

Now you know the basic information please check out some of the other articles at this site which will delve far deeper into weight loss, calorie counting, meal planning etc. based on my own experiences to date.

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Having started this blog in April 2006, I just thought I’d take a look in Google to see how many articles they have recorded for this site.

Take a look at the results…

 

That’s right - this blog now has 2,730 articles on it according to Google. Wow! That’s some serious writing going on there! And there’s a new challenge coming up with something I’ve never done before so that is likely to keep on going up pretty quickly over the next few weeks…

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For those of who who have been following this blog for some time, you’ll know I arranged a small group of people keen to lose weight in the hope that I could help and support them in their quest.

I’m afraid to say that despite all my efforts of setting up a new website, adding a blog that everyone could post on, a forum for discussing problems, plenty of information, videos on how to use the site and so on, only one person was motivated enough to get involved and post anything at the site.

Personally I find that result shocking.

I also wonder why I bothered to put so much time and effort into the project.

I may reopen the site in the future if there is demand, though this time I will be charging a fee because I put quite a bit of my own time and effort into the last version, offered it free to limited number of people who personally applied to take part, and then they couldn’t even bring themselves to take part.

Are you that kind of person? Or do you commit and take action?

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OK, here in the UK it’s now 11pm at night so I’ll be quick but I just wanted to show you the new logo for the Peak Physique challenge which starts on Tuesday 20th of May. I couldn’t be any happier with the work the designer has done.

Please note that when I get up tomorrow morning applications will be closed and I will be responding to everyone who has applied - so if you haven’t got around to applying yet and you fancy some personal, one-on-one weight loss help, get your application in now.

Just see the video in my last post on the details and/or how to apply, or head straight over to www.YouHaveFeedback.com and tell me why you want to get involved!

Here’s the logo:

What do you think?!

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