CONNECTIONS to HEALTH

Weight Loss Made Simple-ish We live a pretty healthy life but gradually we have noticed a slight build-up of excess weight. "Too much good living" I hear you say. No! Well maybe. But I prefer to blame our bedroom mirror. I think it distorts the reflection a bit. Here's a photo of Sue looking in the mirror. What do think? A bit distorted? I'll say. Sue's a redhead!   Anyway I finally noticed something was up when I was trying on a pair of jeans that fit perfectly and happened to look at the label.     I thought that there was nothing for it but too weigh myself. I got a real shock when I looked down. I'd completely forgotten that I'd painted my toe nails! I decided to do something about it and applied my giant intellect to my giant waist. Calorie Shifting Now someone has come up with a very clever use of the body's biochemistry to lose weight, safely and relatively quickly. It seems that if you vary the amount of calories you consume each day and the type of calories you consume then the body's biochemistry is tricked into raising your metabolic rate so that you burn more of your fat stores. The result is that you get more energy and lose weight. The biochemistry is a little tricky to follow unless you have some background knowledge but it appears that the body treats calories from protein differently to calories from carbohydrates or from vegetables or from fruits or from fats. The idea is that you eat four meals a day, every two and a half hours, but each of those meals contain calories from different sources. Each day the total number of calories is also altered so that some days you eat your normal amount, some days 70% of your normal amount and some days130% of your normal amount. You do this for 11 days then eat as normal for 3 days. This kick starts your metabolism. You do it for up to three complete cycles then eat as sensible well balanced diet after that. It is not uncommon for people to lose between 5 and 9 pounds each 11 day cycle. The above is a simplification of the process. The thing that put us off trying it out is the complexity of working out what to eat and when. Fat Loss 4 Idiots Then we heard about an on-line service that takes the complexity out for you. It is called Fat Loss 4 Idiots. Hmm. I'm not sure I like being called an Idiot or dealing with people who can't spell the word "for"! However, it does make it easy to follow. You simply tell the program what you favourite foods are, and then it gives you an 11 day diet based on what you normally eat. You can eat as much as you want to at each meal so long as you only eat the type of foods recommended. It costs $39, at the moment, normally $78, and you get a 45 page booklet explaining the diet and access to the on-line diet generator. We've decided to give it a go. We don't normally tell anyone about things we haven't tried out but we thought that there might be some of you wanting to get into beach shape and if we left it 'til next time it would be too late for you for this summer. Also we don't know how long the half price offer will last. Please Note Remember, no diet suits all people so read what they have to say and make up your own mind. We would also recomend that if you have a serious health challenge then run it by you health advisor first. Do a little internet research on calorie shifting. This company offers a 60 day 100% money back guarantee so that will give you plenty of time to try it out and if it doesn't work for you then you haven't lost anything. Fat Loss 4 Idiots   We'll let you know next time how we got on with it.

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