We all have a “fitspiration.” Someone that we look up to and serves as our motivation to reach our ideal body. And so we try all the diet trends and workout routines to achieve a fit and toned body. Some of us even turn to science and seek the help of health professionals such as nutritionists and cosmetic surgeons.

Health  

Who does not want to look as hot as Scarlett Johansson or Ryan Gosling?

We all have a “fitspiration”. Someone that we look up to and serves as our motivation to reach our ideal body. And so we try all the diet trends and workout routines to achieve a fit and toned body. Some of us even turn to science and seek the help of health professionals such as nutritionists and cosmetic surgeons.

Not all of these methods are effective though. There are some that will only leave you exhausted and frustrated without showing a promising result.

If you want to effectively lose weight, try these scientifically proven tips that work.

1. Protein at every meal

If you want to lose weight rapidly, have lots of protein at every meal. It’s one of the most important nutrients to get a healthy looking body.

How can protein help in weight loss?

Protein has a positive effect on some of the weight regulating hormones. When you consume a meal that has a higher level of protein, your satiety hormones (peptide YY, GLP – 1, and cholecystokinin) are increased while your hunger hormone is decreased. This means you feel full for a longer period of time and your hunger is majorly reduced. No more overeating or unnecessary snacking.

Protein also boosts your metabolism and makes you burn more calories.

To expedite your weight loss, eat more foods rich in protein such as turkey, chicken, pork, lean beef, sardines, salmon, trout, eggs, cheese, milk, yogurt, chickpeas, kidney beans and lentils.

2. Don’t skip meals or calories

Most of us are guilty of this practice: Skipping meals to lose weight.

While some may lost some pounds off when they forego eating a meal, it is not always effective. On the contrary, nutritionists discourage us to skip a meal. Skipping a meal would not always result to weight loss, but the opposite.

What will happen if you skip a meal?

Losing weight may occur, but there’s a catch. You will probably drop some weight in the short term, but there’s a higher risk of gaining them back. Plus, the weight that you will lose may not come from fat but from muscles which is not ideal.

You could also run low on nutrients and will likely make up a missed meal with some junk food. You’re hungry so you have a tendency to overeat in order to compensate the hunger. Since you’re running low in energy, you feel exhausted to exercise.

Instead of skipping a meal, eat each meal with a healthy serving of nutritious foods.

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3. Remove sugar from your diet

A teaspoon of sugar may not seem to hurt.

Well, each teaspoon contains 16 calories and this does not seem as much, but it can add up if you consume lots of sugary beverages or food. Sugar and weight gain are often linked. Added sugar increases the food’s calorie content and you will certainly gain weight if you consume more calories than you burn.

Removing sugar from your diet will help you consume fewer calories which results to weight loss. Since one teaspoon of sugar is equivalent to 16 calories, cutting out 10 tablespoons of sugar from foods and drinks will cut out 160 calories from your diet. Do that for the entire week and you cut out a total of 1,120 calories.

If you want to reduce your caloric intake, eliminate fruit-flavored drink, soda, cake, candy, ice cream, donuts, cookies and other desserts.

4. Drink lots of water

While drinking 8-10 glasses of water gives you a fresh and hydrated skin, it can also help you in losing some extra pounds.

Here’s why you should drink plenty of water every day:

• It helps in achieving a powerful workout - If you are dehydrated, your workout will suffer as you won’t have the energy and endurance. 
• It speeds up your metabolism - Every time you drink water, your body has to work and burn the calories to process them. 
• It eliminates hunger cues – Thirst is often misread as hunger. If you feel hunger pangs, grab a glass of water first instead of some cookies. Drink a glass of water before your meal to avoid over-eating. 

5. Exercise is a must

If you just rely on a diet plan, you won’t be able to achieve your ideal body. Couple your healthy eating habit with a regular exercise to lose weight fast and effectively. If you want to get optimum result of your workout, you can use workout tools such as the Nordic track ellipticals.

These loss tips are not just hearsay; these are backed up by science and facts. Do all of these tips and you’ll be surprised at how much weight you’ve lost in a short span of time.

By  Scott Murphy	Embed
Author Bio - Scott Murphy rowed crew at college in upstate New York and still has the same passion for the sport over 20 years later. He is a regular contributor to allrowers.com, a site offering reviews, workouts, industry news and education about the benefits of rowing and regular exercise.

 Weight Loss  

A drug approved to treat overactive bladder may boost brown fat's metabolic capabilities, making it a promising candidate for weight loss. Brown fat burns energy to generate heat, which can help maintain body weight and prevent obesity.

Researchers have discovered that a drug FDA-approved to treat overactive bladder may boost brown fat's metabolic powers, making it a promising candidate weight loss treatment. Unlike energy-storing white fat, brown fat burns energy to generate heat, which can help maintain body weight and prevent obesity in rodents.

Brown fat makes up about 5% of the fat in newborn infants, and is thought to be a critical mechanism for thermal regulation in babys.  In adults it is found in the upper chest and neck in small amounts typically.  Brown fat has recently been found to be part of the skeletal muscle system, and is stimulated by cold exposure.

"Brown adipose tissue, or brown fat, produces β3-adrenergic receptor at levels higher than nearly every other organ in the body. We showed that a one-time dose of the drug mirabegron stimulates human brown adipose tissue so that it consumes glucose and burns calories."

Previous studies have found that brown fat can be coaxed into action by activating the β3-adrenergic receptor, which is expressed on the surfaces of brown and white fat cells, as well as on cells of the urinary bladder and other tissues.  Following up this research, the investigators wondered whether mirabegron, a drug that targets the β3-adrenergic receptor and was recently approved to treat overactive bladder, might help keep people's weight in check.

In all 12 men enrolled in the study, 200 milligrams of mirabegron led to higher brown fat metabolic activity, and at its peak level in the blood it increased the men's resting metabolic rate by 203 calories per day. While the dose was higher than the 50 milligram dose approved for overactive bladder, the treatment was well tolerated. All of the study participants were young, healthy individuals who had not previously taken mirabegron.

The study was published recently in the journal Cell Metabolism.

"Brown adipose tissue, or brown fat, produces β3-adrenergic receptor at levels higher than nearly every other organ in the body. We showed that a one-time dose of the drug mirabegron stimulates human brown adipose tissue so that it consumes glucose and burns calories," said lead author Dr. Aaron Cypess, who conducted the work at Joslin Diabetes Center and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, affiliates of Harvard Medical School, and is now at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health.

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The findings suggest that drugs that activate the β3-adrenergic receptor may be a promising treatment for obesity. "Prior to our work, the only known way to activate human brown adipose tissue was through cold exposure. While inexpensive, this approach is generally not well tolerated over the long term, and there is significant variability in people's responses," said Dr. Cypess. "In addition, once the cold exposure is removed, the effect usually turns off rather quickly."

Cold showers are now touted as a way to stimulate brown fat, but further research may find ways to prolong the effects on brown fat.

Dr. Cypess noted that in addition to attempts to activate brown fat, strategies that produce more of it might also help treat people with metabolic conditions. Other research groups are also generating promising results through the use of drugs to convert white fat cells into brown fat and through discoveries of the pathways and hormones that control brown fat metabolism.


SOURCE  Cell Press via EurekAlert

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 Diet Pill  

Researchers have developed a fat-burning compound called fexaramine that leads to weight loss without typical side effects. Fexaramine tricks the body into reacting as if it has consumed calories.

Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have developed a new type of pill that tricks the body into thinking it has consumed calories, causing it to burn fat. The compound effectively stopped weight gain, lowered cholesterol, controlled blood sugar and minimized inflammation in mice, making it an excellent candidate for a rapid transition into human clinical trials.

Unlike most diet pills on the market, this new pill, called fexaramine, doesn’t dissolve into the blood like appetite suppressants or caffeine-based diet drugs, but remains in the intestines, causing fewer side effects.

"It sends out the same signals that normally happen when you eat a lot of food, so the body starts clearing out space to store it. But there are no calories and no change in appetite."

When the researchers gave obese mice a daily pill of fexaramine for five weeks, the mice stopped gaining weight, lost fat and had lower blood sugar and cholesterol levels than untreated mice. The mice also had higher body temperature–which signals metabolism ramping up–and some deposits of white fat in their bodies converted into a healthier, energy-burning beige form of fat. Even the collection of bacteria in the guts of mice shifted when they received the drug, although what those changes mean isn’t clear yet.

“This pill is like an imaginary meal,” says Ronald Evans, director of Salk’s Gene Expression Laboratory and senior author of the new paper, published January 5, 2014 in the journal Nature Medicine. “It sends out the same signals that normally happen when you eat a lot of food, so the body starts clearing out space to store it. But there are no calories and no change in appetite.”

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Evans’ laboratory has spent nearly 20 years studying the farensoid X receptor (FXR), a protein that plays a role in how the body releases bile acids from the liver, digests food and stores fats and sugars. The human body turns on FXR at the beginning of a meal, Evans and others have shown, to prepare for an influx of food. FXR not only triggers the release of bile acids for digestion, but also changes blood sugar levels and causes the body to burn some fats in preparation for the incoming meal.

Pharmaceutical companies aiming to treat obesity, diabetes, liver disease and other metabolic conditions have developed systemic drugs that activate FXR, turning on many pathways that FXR controls. But these drugs affect several organs and come with side effects. Evans wondered whether switching on FXR only in the intestines–rather than the intestines, liver, kidneys and adrenal glands all at once–might have a different outcome.

“When you eat, you have to quickly activate a series of responses all throughout the body,” says Evans. “And the reality is that the very first responder for all this is the intestine.”

“It turns out that when we administer this orally, it only acts in the gut,” explains Michael Downes, a senior staff scientist at Salk and co-corresponding author of the new work. Giving one such drug in a daily pill form that only reaches the intestines–without transporting into the bloodstream that would carry the drug throughout the body–not only curtails side effects but also made the compound better at stopping weight gain.

Evans thinks it has to do with the natural order in which the body’s molecular pathways normally responds to a meal.

“The body’s response to a meal is like a relay race, and if you tell all the runners to go at the same time, you’ll never pass the baton,” says Evans. “We’ve learned how to trigger the first runner so that the rest of the events happen in a natural order.”

Because fexaramine doesn’t reach the bloodstream, it is also likely safer in humans than other FXR-targeting drugs, the researchers think. They’re already working to set up human clinical trials to test the effectiveness of fexaramine to treat obesity and metabolic disease. Ideally the drug, administered under a doctor’s guidance, would work in conjunction with diet and lifestyle changes, similar to weight-loss surgeries or other obesity or diabetes drugs.



SOURCE  Salk Institute for Biological Studies

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