By Lucinda Reynolds
Struggling to lose that extra weight. This article will reveal to you some very useful tips for losing weight. These tips can be implemented right away to get you started on your weight loss journey.

Obesity has become an epidemic in the world today. Our poor diets and poor exercise habits are really taking their toll on our bodies and waistlines. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Just by making a few changes in your life, you can lose weight and keep it off. Read on to discover a few very valuable weight loss tips. These tips may be the key to changing your life forever!

The very first weight loss tip that I am going to share with you is so simple that anyone can implement this one right away. Slow down. Instead of shoveling the food into your mouth and finishing your meal in just a few minutes, slow it down. Chew each bite thoroughly, savoring the taste of the food. Watch the clock and make it a point to have your meal last for at least 15 minutes. The longer it takes you to eat a meal, the more time your stomach will have to signal the brain that you are getting full. Try this at your next meal.

The next weight loss tip is to stop eating before you are full. I don’t mean to still feel hungry, just stop when you start to feel satisfied. We all have the tendency to want to clean our plates. No doubt, this comes from hearing our mothers tell us time and time again how horrible it was to waste food. But now I am telling you to not mind the voice of your mother or grandmother and don’t clean your plate. When you start getting that satisfied feeling, push away from your plate. Get up and walk away or take your plate into the kitchen. Do whatever it takes to keep you from being tempted to clean your plate.

By John Barban
www.eatstopeat.com

A commonly held belief about food is that you need to eat frequent meals to keep your metabolism going and to keep burning calories. I’m not exactly sure where this idea came from but it makes absolutely no sense to me.

In fact, to me it sounds like this nonsense about eating food to keep your metabolism going is a clever myth that only supports the food and nutritional supplement industry. The latest fad in nutrition is eating 6 small meals per day instead of 3. That is 3 more meals the food industry can sell you products for! It won’t be long until you will be told to eat 9 small meals per day.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve read the research and there is a small increase in metabolism that happens whenever you eat. However, the little effect food does have on your metabolism cannot overcome the weight gain you would experience from eating too many calories overall.

If you apply this idea to the calories you are eating, then eating a 100 calories might make you burn an extra 15 calories, but you still have an another 85 extra calories that you haven’t burned off.

So does this mean eating at an all you can eat buffet is the best way to ‘rev up’ your metabolism and burn lots of calories? Not likely! That just sounds ridiculous.

Let’s look at this in a real life scenario to see how far off this logic is.

By Pat Barone
www.patbarone.com
10 Reasons Diets Fail

For every 100 dieters, one will maintain their weight loss after 5 years, which is the marker determining permanent weight loss to the medical community. Research indicates diets actually add pounds in the long run.

Why are diets so destructive to our weight and health? Here are some of the reasons.

1. Severe food restriction causes real hunger.

It's a fact that most diets last less than 72 hours. Hunger is a basic human urge. Man continues to survive (and has for thousands of years) because of the ability to cope with famine and scarcity of food. Hunger has been the powerful motivator for that survival.

2. A diet is an artificial plan which is different from your lifestyle.

Your new diet book has pages and pages of special recipes but you don't like to cook. Your diet says you must prepare all your food, but your job requires you to entertain clients. Only you can set the boundaries around eating and make them work within your lifestyle.

3. A diet is a temporary solution to a permanent problem.

The diet industry makes billions (yes! over $42 billion a year) by convincing people to follow a diet for a few weeks or months to solve lifelong problems of emotional eating, eating for the wrong reasons or eating food that is nutrition-less. Once a diet ends, the weight comes back because the problems and behaviors are still there. Maybe you squeezed yourself into the bridesmaid's dress in time for the wedding, but you still have the rest of your life ahead of you.

A first step toward success is to accept that there is no free ride. If you lose weight on a strict diet, you will always pay for it later.