Laxatives And Weight Loss

You may assume that taking laxatives cause you to lose weight but think about it, all it is doing it helping you digest the food faster, and usually in a painful manner. Laxatives are designed to act as a sponge and soak up all the fluids in the body, creating moisture content for the stool.

Laxatives are perfect when used for their main function, but those who abuse them for weight loss purpose often become dependant on them to be able to create a normal stool. Downing laxatives on a daily basis will either to lose weight or to relieve constipation will only cause the condition to worsen.

Instead you should start by drinking enough water, around six-eight ounce glasses, consuming sufficient amounts of fiber, as well as small amounts of daily activity. You can try fiber cereals and start off with a double serving to get your system going.

There are many medications that will lose effectiveness when mixed with laxatives. Laxatives also cause gastric upset and a total dependency to be able to produce bowel. Using laxatives to lose weight are basically harmful with no real effects. You may lose a few pounds of waste and water weight but no significant amounts of fat will be lost due to consuming laxatives.

Believe it or not but laxative abuse has become a quite common form of supposed weight control. The majority of these abusers are suffering from severe eating disorders as well and dont really care about the health of their bodies, simply want to lose weight in any way they can.

If you see how a laxative works on your body you will realize that taking them to lose body fat is simply pointless. The actual purpose of taking a laxative is to stimulate the bowel to empty, which happens only after the calories have been fully absorbed by the small intestines.

So your body has already stored the carbohydrates and is simply getting rid of the excess that it couldnt use, and the laxative is helping you get rid of these excess toxins as easily as possible. A person who has taken a laxative to lose weight may accomplish that, but it will be only water weight and they will look the same.

Commonly periods of time when the body is depleted of its water will be followed by periods of water retention and bloating. This usually causes the user to take even more laxatives trying to get rid of the excess weight and the vicious cycle begins.

Taking laxatives for weight control is pointless and is incredibly harmful to your health, as well as causes the exact opposite effect you are going for.

Nutrition Plans For Weight Loss

One of the most successful nutrition plans for weight loss to be introduced in recent years is the Jillian Michaels weight-loss plan. The plan accounts for three major factors which influence weight loss success in the long term: self, sweat and science. The plan recognizes that the process of losing weight is both a physical and a mental one, and aims to provide a gimmick-free plan for lifelong health and fitness. The plan recognizes that all of the conflicting information about nutrition can leave many dieters feeling lost and frustrated, and breaks down exactly what you should eat to lose weight in a steady and sustainable way. The nutrition plan helps people to discover which foods are optimal for their body type and metabolic rate, the number of calories they should eat each day to ensure successful weight loss, recipes fully customized to body type that are delicious and easy to prepare, and tips and strategies for eating out without straying from your plan.

Today Show nutrition expert Joy Bauer has formulated one of the simplest nutrition plans for weight loss available. Her highly popular diet is now an easy step-by-step online diet program which is fully customized for you to get the best possible result. The plan emphasizes plenty of healthy carbohydrates such as whole grains, lean protein, fresh fruit and vegetables plus a range of delicious and satisfying treats that you can enjoy guilt-free. There are plenty of online tools to help you along the way, including a calorie calculator which will provide you with the nutritional information of thousands of foods to help you make diet-friendly choices; a meal planner and hundreds of healthy recipes to help you get started in the kitchen; and a food log for recording what you eat during the day, so that you can track your weight loss properly. The program offers a free diet profile participants take a quick and easy quiz and receive a personalized eating plan which is based on the principles of Joy’s Food Cures.

The South Beach diet has been enormously popular in recent years, thanks to the endorsement of the diet plan by a number of high-profile celebrities, with more than 5 million copies of the book sold in the US alone. This is considered to be one of the best diets that work. Originally formulated by Dr Agatson, one of America’s leading cardiologists, as a diet plan for his heart patients to improve cardiac health, it soon demonstrated its effectiveness as a weight loss plan. Like many recent nutrition plans for weight loss, the South Beach Diet is based on the principles of the GI diet. After an initial period of restricted carbohydrates, the diet slowly reintroduces foods which score low on the glycaemic index, helping to break the cycle of carb binges and emotional eating which many dieters falls into. During this first phase, simple carbs such as cereal, white bread, sweets, cake, alcohol, potatoes and bagels are banned. The diet instead emphasizes low-GI vegetables, lean meat and fish, nuts and olive oil. It is claimed that you can lose between 8 and 13 pounds within the first two weeks, and then a respectable 1-2 pounds every week after that.

Weight Loss With Gastric Band Surgery or Naturally

Weight loss happens in a similar way whether you risk the dangers of gastric band surgery or go it alone, losing weight naturally through adjusting to a healthier lifestyle, diet and exercise. After you have had gastric band surgery you still have to adjust the foods you eat and drastically reduce the portion sizes. So why not just do that, and lose weight naturally, instead of subjecting your body to the trauma of surgery?

A better question to ask yourself is what has stopped you from losing weight successfully? Or perhaps what changes when you undergo gastric band surgery? The answer of course boils down to the fact that once you have had this type of weight loss surgery you quite simply cannot eat more than small quantities of food; it becomes physically impossible.

And so even if you want to eat more, you cannot. In short, you do not have to have the will power to stick to a diet or pursue an exercise regime or to change your lifestyle when you have had this type of surgery. But the fact remains that your lifestyle does indeed change. You do alter the way in which you eat and the way in which you socialize. All this still has to happen, with or without the gastric band.

Weight loss surgery, like all surgery, does have risks and dangers attached. It is also expensive. If you are morbidly obese, however, you will be able to qualify for weight loss surgery through the NHS in the UK. A lot of overweight candidates perceive this as no cost/no risk. They turn a blind eye to the potentially unnecessary trauma to which they are subjecting their body. No cost definitely does not mean no risk in reference to going under the knife for weight loss surgery.

Some people are so keen to obtain this “quick fix” for weight loss at no cost that they will even go to great lengths to put on weight and become morbidly obese, thereby qualifying for free surgery. It is no wonder then that the figures released recently by the British Medical Journal reflect a tenfold increase in this type of weight loss surgery over the last ten years. It is also no wonder that the NHS is struggling as it attempts to deal with the extra weight of increasingly costly surgery.

The more people who undergo weight loss surgery, particularly celebrities, the more “normalized” it becomes in our minds. Instead of us thinking of weight loss surgery as a last resort, it becomes a more readily considered “every day” option. Unfortunately there are bound to be many side effects which we are as yet unaware of. Once these are properly highlighted, I wonder whether so many people will be as willing to go under the knife.

When you consider that you still have to eat less and you still have to change your lifestyle, why not search for other ways in which you can increase your commitment to losing weight naturally? Commitment or will-power really is the ingredient which is more frequently missing in the mind sets of people who want to lose weight. How often do you hear overweight people bemoaning the fact that they haven’t got the will power to say no, or that they just cannot change their lifestyle?

Are You Ready for Weight Loss Surgery

Weight loss surgery is something that more and more Americans are turning to. The US is currently the fattest nation in the world and something has to be done about it. That’s where weight loss procedures come in. But when it comes to these sorts of surgeries there are also a number of recovery options available, and it’s these that must be taken into account.

Main Types of Surgery

Lap Band
Duodenal Switch
Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass
Sleeve Gastrectomy

The Principles of Weight Loss Surgery

The principles of weight loss surgery are either reduction or bypassing. Reduction is the principle of reducing the size of the stomach. If the size of the stomach is reduced then that means it can hold less food and take in fewer calories. If it can do this then it will stop the person from eating as they will feel full much faster. That means they will be physically stopped from consuming more. Over time the stomach increases as surgery recovery commences, but not so much as to jeopardize the benefits that are gained from this.

Bypassing is another method that cuts down on consumption as it completely bypasses parts of the digestive system. This means that the energy and the calories are going directly into the digestive system and are not just sitting around doing nothing. It will cause the feeling of fullness to come much faster, and that’s why those who undergo a surgery involving a bypass will find that they will lose weight.

Surgery Recovery

When it comes to one’s recovery options much of them is just a case of waiting. Immediately after surgery there will almost certainly be some minor pain. This minor pain means will continue for a few days, however it will disappear after a while. Painkillers can be employed to help dull the throbbing.

Invasive procedures will generally involve a few days stay in a hospital with an extra few months to resume all normal activities. In many cases, a drip inserted directly into the body may need to be used to get those important nutrients into the body. The reason a drip is used is because the digestive system will most likely be too fragile to resume its normal function for the moment.

As for diet, this will vary depending on the procedure. It really depends on how invasive the procedure was and the type of procedure used. In the case of invasive surgeries the drip, as already mentioned, will be employed for the first few days. After this it will come down to liquid foods with a small amount of solids. Lap bands decrease the stomach size by so much that liquid food is the only way to actually eat as initially the pouch will be about the size of a walnut. Over time, as the body recovers, more and more solid foods will be implemented into the diet to help with recovery after weight loss surgery.

The 3-Step Weight Loss Plan

It is never easy to achieve weight loss within a short amount of period especially when you have spent years packing on the excess weight with an unhealthy diet. When you neglect your body and not do anything to keep fit, you are setting yourself up for layers and layers of accumulated fat. These then make you predisposed to developing various ailments and diseases to include hypertension, renal impairment, diabetes, and many others. There are no complicated steps to lose weight, but many simply choose to look for more complex solutions to their weight problems.

Take a look at these 3 steps that can get you on your way to successful weight loss. Do not expect any miracles. Believe that if you work hard at it, your efforts are going to pay off. As you get into the hang of being fit with these 3 steps, all other healthy practices that come with efforts to keep fit will also fall into place.

Step 1: Diet. Watching what you eat does not mean starving yourself. Watching what you eat means eating more of the foods that are good for you and less of the foods that are bad for you. In some of the fad diets, there is some wisdom to the food restrictions that they preach.

Regulating sugar intake to control the glycemic factor, for example, really does the body well. The trouble with these fad diets is that they take the restrictions too far to totally bar particular food groups out of the nutritional plan. What you want to do is to work on a reasonable diet plan that consists of a healthy balance of carbohydrates, protein, and fats that your body can efficiently metabolize.

Step 2: Exercise. If you sit around on the couch all day giving your fingers some exercise on the remote control, a thick pad of fat is likely to settle in your midsection. There is no age limit to exercising to keep fit. Even babies and seniors are taught to exercise properly. There is no reason why a strong and able adult cannot perform the right exercises on a regular basis. You do not even shave to enrol in a gym or sports club to get some exercise.

Find a sport that you enjoy playing, not on the gaming console but in real life. Running is an inexpensive form of exercise you can take up. You only have to invest in a good pair of running shoes to prevent injuries. Work on squeezing in at least a 30-minute run into your daily routine and see those excess pounds slowly vanishing.

Step 3: Supplement — the stress and fatigue that people go through today batter the body too much. These cause damage to your body enough to make your internal processes, including your digestive system, go haywire. You need to load up on your vitamins to make sure that your body has a complete arsenal of vitamins and nutrients necessary to fight cellular damage caused by stress and fatigue.

There are natural supplements that you can take to boost your bodys defences and bring its processes back to optimum working condition. When your bodys organs and systems are working properly, metabolizing food and flushing out toxins from the body results in successful weight loss.