Natural Weight Loss is the Only Path to Permanent Fitness:

We as educated people need to start getting angry at all the junk aimed at us everyday. The average American sees thousands of ads each and every day for everything from diet pills to prescription drugs.

Most promise a quick cure for whatever ails us. The weight loss industry alone is estimated to be over $35 Billion dollars annually, so marketing and ads play a vital role in keeping us interested and buying.

Now we have come up with RLS, (restless leg syndrome). This will probably be a new "chronic condition" treated by an existing prescription drug, allowing it to continue generating profits longer

We need to start using our heads and understand what weight loss is and what it means. Losing weight alone is not the most important thing. We citizens of western countries are too fat. Losing fat and losing weight are two distinctly different things.

Also distinctly different is how we lose the weight / fat.

A pound of fat equals about 3500 calories. To burn 3500 calories you would need to reduce your daily caloric intake by 500 calories per day for one week, while remaining constant at your current activity level, or you could consume the same number of calories daily and exercise more to burn 500 calories per day. To burn 500 calories through exercise you would need to ride a stationary bike, as an example, for about 1 & ‡ hours per day at a rate of about 25 MPH average. Or you could do a combination of decreasing by 250 and burning 250.

The claims that you can "lose 30 pounds in 30 days" are weight not fat. To lose 30 pounds of fat in 30 days you would need to burn 105,000 calories in excess of what you eat, which I'm sure we all agree isn't likely.

Claims aimed at fast weight loss are telling you, you'll lose weight not fat. Fat is harmful to the body not weight per se.

Rapid weight loss through severely restricted caloric intake causes the body to react as if it were sick. It is conditioned to say "Oh Oh"; I'm in trouble I'd better conserve energy. I may not get more food for awhile.

Fat is stored energy. What the body then conserves is fat. It does exactly what you don't need or want it to do, it slows your metabolism, burns lean muscle mass for energy and conserves the fat.

The rapid weight loss that happens the first 30 days is water. Muscle contains about 3 times as much water as fat. So if you lose a pound of muscle you're losing 3 pounds of water with it.

That's why diets alone slow down, there's only so much water to get rid of.

You can't blame the ad agencies, or the diet program companies, people are being sold what they want to buy. They want a quick fix to a problem without sacrifice or change.

The truth is once you learn what the body needs and how it works there is no great need for sacrifice. You can eat nearly anything you want, just less of it, and exercise more.

We are just so conditioned to instant gratification, that we're always awaiting the next miracle drug to make us all look like Hollywood celebrities. The $35 billion is just giving us what we demand.

Obesity has grown by over 20% in the last decade, in spite of the fact we are spending $35 Billion a year on weight management products. Does that suggest to anyone maybe they aren't working?

Well it did to me so I did two years of research on the subject and was shocked at what I learned. It might do all of us some good to do the same research.



To learn more visit our website "Living to be Younger." I have more articles and Ebooks to help you in your research.

Click here to learn more about Natural Weight Loss

About the author:

Martin Harshberger is a sucessful business consultant, and fitness advocate. He has done extensive research and testing of nutrition, diet and exercise programs. His interest was initiated by a personal health issue, and he was sucessful in losing over 50 pounds, lowering his stress and blood pressure, as well as increasing muscle mass all at age 57. This was after he failed at the so called expert programs.