2.   Water and Fiber - Your Feel Full Friends

Perhaps the biggest challenge when trying to drop weight is controlling hunger. Eating according to your personal metabolic needs is a big part of appetite control, but proper hydration and fiber intake are also critical. One of the biggest mistakes dieters make is letting themselves get dehydrated. Our brains can actually confuse thirst for hunger, and send us running to the pantry when what we really need is a glass of water. Try to drink at least 1/2oz (a liter is about 34oz) of water (not soda, tea, or coffee, which will further dehydrate you) per day for every pound of body weight. This translates to about six 16oz bottles of water per day for a 180lbs male, four to five 16oz bottles of water per day for a 140lbs female. Drink more if you’ll be out in the heat or exerting yourself.

In addition to keeping you feeling full, staying hydrated will actually help you burn fat. The chemical reaction that your body uses to break down stored fats requires water. In addition, your liver and kidneys need water to get rid of the waste products left behind when fat gets burned. Dehydration will undermine your weight loss efforts at every level.

Eating enough fiber is almost as important to staying full as drinking enough water. Fiber is, by definition, food which your body can’t break down into useable calories. Sounds like a dream come true, right? A food that can fill you up with no calories at all!  The key to getting enough fiber is finding ways to work high fiber foods into your meals in a way you can enjoy (as opposed to crunching raw broccoli). Snack on celery sticks with almond butter, or dip cauliflower in humus or bean dip. At meal time, me don’t eat meat, fish, or grains without lightly steamed veggies as an accompaniment. Try cutting up raw milk cheese with red, yellow, or orange bell peppers and celery sticks for a tasty, healthy fiber filled snack. Switch from cold breakfast cereals to high fiber whole grain hot cereals - whole oats are a great choice. Add beans to salads, stews or stir frys. Beans are a wonderful source of filling fiber, and deliver ultra-low glycemic carbs and protein to boot. And have berries for dessert – amidst all of their other wonderful properties, they are high in soluble fiber. Not only will fiber keep you full, it will also contribute to a healthier digestive tract and better overall digestion. And a healthy digestion is the cornerstone of a healthy, active metabolism.

3.   Never, EVER Diet to Lose Weight

A diet, by deffinition, is a short-term nutrition plan designed to produce rapid results. There are more diets being marketed to consumers with promises of rapid weight loss than we could possibly list here. And many of these diets do deliver on their promises, leading to rapid weight loss within two to four weeks. But in almost all cases the weight comes back. Our bodies don't like sudden changes. When we lose weight quickly, our body reacts with alarm as though we were starving. Metabolism slows down and appetite increases. Anyone who loses three or more pounds per week for one to four weeks is likely to put that weight, and possibly more, back on over the weeks that follow as their body reacts by burning fewer and fewer calories and driving them to eat more and more food.

Further, every time you do a rapid weight loss diet and then gain the weight back, you actually make it harder to lose weight in the future. So called "yo-yo dieting" creates long term changes in metabolism, as the body prepairs for furture periods of starvation by permanantly lowering metabolism and storing fat., Finally, rapid weight loss places a serious burden on your liver and kidneys. When your liver and kidneys are overburdened, you can’t efficiently clear toxins from your body. Increased toxin levels then damage your organs, slow your metabolism, age your skin, and get in the way of future efforts to burn fat.

All in all, it’s best to banish the word “diet” from your vocabulary. Any weight loss plan that you can’t follow for a year without sacrificing your health or happiness should never be started in the first place. What we all need to find is a nutrition and general health strategy that we can stick to which helps us live the fullest, healthiest, most enjoyable life possible.  If you learn to eat right for your metabolism (again, your ReEvolution Fitness Action Plan can help you get a sense of your individual metabolic needs), adopt a reasonable exercise strategy, get enough sleep, and manage stress, consistent weight loss should follow.