Weight Loss Tips From Jon M. Stout

Weight Loss Tips
By Jon Stout

Today, doctors are calling obesity our number one health concern in the United States. Today, about 30% of the adult population in this country is considered obese. In addition, 16% of children between the ages of 6 and 19 are overweight. Though it has gained a tremendous amount of attention in the past few years, the problem is still on the rise.

One of this country’s national health objectives is to reduce the incidence of obesity to less than 15% of the adult population by the year 2010. And, while there is a lot of talk about the problem, many people don’t seem to truly understand the steps they need to take to get their weight under control.

Most of us understand that in order to lose weight you need to burn more calories than you consume. However, many people attempt to reach this goal by seriously restricting their calorie intake. This type of dieting generally fails for two reasons.

First of all, when you begin to significantly reduce the number of calories you consume, your body goes into starvation mode. When in starvation mode, your body works very hard to hold onto the fat that you have, decreasing the number of calories you’re burning. This means that your body is adjusting itself to the reduced number of calories you’re consuming.

Secondly, starvation diets are not realistic. We simply cannot live on such restrictive plans for any significant length of time. So, we begin to feel deprived, and before you know it, we’ve given up on dieting.

Doctors believe that just after a starvation diet, our bodies will quickly accumulate fat when we begin to eat again, as though trying to make up for the famine it just endured. So, often, just a few weeks after ending a diet, we find that we’re fatter than before. We feel defeated and as though losing weight is simply not possible.

However, losing weight is possible if you approach the situation correctly. There are two important pieces to the weight loss puzzle. The first is adjusting your diet.

Adjusting your diet doesn’t mean eating so little that you’re hungry nearly all the time. Adjusting your diet for permanent weight loss means replacing your high fat, high calorie foods with those that are healthier and contain fewer calories. By eating the right foods, you can easily eat enough to feel satisfied, but still lose weight. Avoiding hunger will help you stick to your diet long enough to see serious results.

Take a look at the way you’re eating. Get rid of the hydrogenated fats like butter and replace them with healthy ones like olive oil. Eat mostly chicken and fish – making red meats an occasional meal rather than a regular one. Eat lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, and make your breads and cereals only from whole grains. Avoid processed foods. If you can make these substitutions, you should lose weight automatically.

The second part of the weight loss equation is speeding up your metabolism. You can make a significant difference in the number of calories you burn each day, making weight loss and weight maintenance far easier.

The fastest and easiest way to speed up your metabolism is to exercise. Aim for 30 minutes of exercise most days of the week. Walking is a great exercise that anyone can do. In addition, try to make your life more active in general. Take the stairs instead of the elevator and walk wherever you can.

Be sure to get in some resistance training, as well. Muscle, even when resting, burns more calories than fat, so adding some additional muscle is extremely beneficial. You don’t need to aim to be a body builder; just 20 minutes of strength training 3 times a week is enough to build some additional muscle. Strength training will also help shape your body, making your weight loss results more noticeable.

It is also beneficial to use foods to your advantage when it comes to speeding up your metabolism. For example, eat those foods that require lots of energy to digest, like raw fruits and vegetables. Many raw vegetables actually require more calories to digest than they contain!
In addition, try adding some tea to your diet. Tea has been shown to speed up the metabolism and help oxidize fat. It may also have the ability to inhibit the absorption of dietary fat into the body.

One research study, conducted at Maastricht University in The Netherlands, looked at tea’s ability to increase thermogenesis, burning fat and speeding up the metabolism. Many studies have shown that caffeine helps speed weight loss, but tea seems to have more potential than other beverages with caffeine.

Tea’s catechins, a potent form of anti-oxidant, seem to work in conjunction with the caffeine in tea to burn fat and speed up metabolism. The study in the Netherlands came to this conclusion, along with concluding that other substances often used to speed metabolism, like caffeine with ephedra, simply are not safe enough to be recommended as a weight loss supplement.

For those prone to being overweight, keeping the scale in check is a lifelong project. But, armed with the right tools, including a sensible diet, regular exercise and helpers like tea, maintaining a normal weight for the long term is entirely possible.

Jon M. Stout is the Chairman of the Golden Moon Tea Company. Golden Moon Tea carefully selects the finest rare and orthodox teas, which are processed slowly and handcrafted with extreme care. At their website, you can learn more about their current tea offerings, including their exceptional green tea, white tea, black tea, oolong tea (also known as wu-long and wu long tea) and chai. Visit goldenmoontea.com for all details concerning the Golden Moon Tea Company's fine line of teas.

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Green Tea Weight-Loss Strategy

While researching weight-loss articles this afternoon, I came across an interesting article that shares insight into how green tea might be beneficial on a diet.

More Evidence That Tea Helps with Weight Loss

By Jon Stout

Every little bit of help is useful when you’re trying to lose weight or keep your weight stable as you get older. Diet and exercise are still the most important components of weight loss and maintenance, but studies are showing that tea, particularly green tea, may be able to provide some assistance in losing weight and keeping it off.

For centuries, Asians have used green tea for health. In addition to Asian cultures having a much lower incidence of serious diseases such as cancer and heart disease, they also are far less likely to be overweight.

Tea comes from the Camellia sinensis plant. While there are several different types of tea, all true tea comes from this plant. The differences occur from how the tea is processed. Green tea is not fermented during processing, but black tea, which is the most common outside Asia does go through a fermentation process.

Tea leaves naturally contain catechins, which belong to the flavan-3-ol class of flavonoids, which are anti-oxidants. EGCG is one of the catechins contained in tea, and is one of the most powerful anti-oxidants around.

Each day, as we convert food to energy, we create free radicals in our body. These free radicals can damage our cells and our DNA if we don’t combat them. It is believed that unchecked free radicals contribute to the development of many diseases, including cancer. In addition, they speed up the aging process and contribute to clogged arteries and other health problems.

Anti-oxidants are powerful at combating free radicals and are linked with preventing cancer, as well as with decreasing your risk of stroke and heart disease. and with lowering your cholesterol. For this reason, drinking green tea is a simple and effective way to slow down the aging process and prevent disease. But, in addition to being a way to protect your health, drinking tea seems to also be a way to help keep you slim.

There has been a fairly significant amount of research on tea and its ability to help control your waistline. Tea seems to work on two levels. The first is that it appears to speed up the metabolism, so you use more calories each day. However, it also seems to inhibit fat absorption, so that less of the fat in your diet becomes fat on your body.

Tea has two ingredients that seem to help it work its magic. The first is caffeine, which is known to help speed up the metabolism. However, tea seems to work better than other caffeinated beverages because of those powerful anti-oxidants we were talking about earlier. The anti-oxidants, also known as catechins, are the key to helping inhibit the absorption of fat and keep the metabolism moving for hours. One research study that evaluated the benefits of tea on weight loss was conducted by the Osaka University of Foreign Studies. This study was conducted on just under 200 healthy men and women between the ages of 20 and 65. The subjects were divided into three groups; the control group, low dose group and high dose group.
The study lasted for 12 weeks. During the study period, the control group was fed 3 bottles of placebo drink. The low dose group consumed 2 bottles of a drink containing tea catechins and one bottle of placebo drink and the high dose group consumed 3 bottles of the tea catechin drink.
At the end of the twelve week study, those subjects in the low dose and high dose group showed a significant decrease in body fat compared with the control group. Both body weight and BMI were reduced in these two groups. In addition, abdominal fat was significantly reduced.
This reduction in body fat around the abdominal area is significant. Fat around the midsection is the fat that is most dangerous to our health. Abdominal fat is the type that is most likely to be an indicator of heart disease. Reducing your waist size, and the fat around your midsection is the most important weight to lose in order to protect your health.

Another interesting result of this study was that the subjects who had slightly elevated cholesterol levels also experienced a reduction in LDL cholesterol. LDL cholesterol is the “bad cholesterol”. When too much of this type of cholesterol circulates in the blood, it oxidizes into plaque that clogs the arteries. This causes the arteries to narrow, increasing your risk of heart attack and stroke.

When you combine this information with other studies that have shown a positive relationship between the amount of tea consumed in a day and the amount of overall body fat, it certainly suggests that drinking tea can be an effective way to lose weight and keep it off.

We all know that it’s critical to eat well and get regular exercise in order to maintain our health and keep our weight in check. However, understanding how simple things like drinking tea can provide assistance can make this challenge a little easier and faster.

Jon M. Stout is the Chairman of the Golden Moon Tea Company. Golden Moon Tea carefully selects the finest rare and orthodox teas, which are processed slowly and handcrafted with extreme care. At their website, you can learn more about their current tea offerings, including their exceptional green tea, white tea, black tea, oolong tea (also known as wu-long and wu long tea) and chai.

Visit goldenmoontea.com for all details concerning the Golden Moon Tea Company's fine line of teas.
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