In this article I will go over the types of weight loss programs that are available to do as well as list some pros and cons of each. Hopefully, that information will help steer you in the right direction so you can determine which is the best option for you and your unique personality and needs.

Before you start any type of weight loss programs, though, make sure you talk to your doctor. For one thing your doctor can probably offer you some recommendations but if not, she can at least guide you in regards to any limitations you may have so your weight loss is done safely.

Now that that is out of the way, here are some ideas of some programs you may want to consider:

1. The pre- packaged food program. This is pretty straight forward; you sign up and you get fully prepared meals delivered right to your door. The companies claim that the meals will allow you to lose weight because they are nutritious and have the perfect combination of lean protein, fats and carbs as well as just the right amount of calories.

There are several such plans like this available, two of the most well known are Nutri-System and Seattle Sutton (which I have personally used and found very good).

When you are trying to decide between one or the other, make sure you carefully check out all the types of food plans, what is included (how many meals), the price including any shipping or handling costs, what their cancellation policy is in case you aren’t satisfied and the actual calories and nutritional benefits of the meals themselves.

2. Meeting type programs. These have been around for a long time and most people will immediately think of Weight Watchers. This is a type of diet plan where you not only get ideas of what types of foods to eat and in what quantities, you also get help from others who are trying to accomplish the same thing.

This approach allows you to interact with each other and keep each other focused and moving forward. Since you are all trying to lose weight, there are no feelings of embarrassment or awkwardness.

And, there is no public weight in! If you go to an actual meeting (though now you can get access to the materials online if you prefer) you will be weighed but it is 100% private and no one will see or know what your weight is.

How many times have you considered joining a gym, for example, only to feel out of place and get intimidated by all the hot bodies they have on the commercial? I know I have.

When you are trying to lose weight you don’t want to be reminded of what you aren’t (yet) you want to be surrounded by others who look about the same way you do, right?

There are many weight loss programs available today but before you sign on the dotted line you need to read the fine print. You need to know what it is, what it isn’t and what to do if you aren’t satisfied. Making an informed decision will allow your weight loss to be a dream come true instead of a nightmare.

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Looking for easy ways to lose weight? Want to do it with a minimum of hassle or sacrifice? Want to do it pretty quickly too? If so, keep reading. I may have just the weight loss plan for you.. .and if you do it the way you are supposed to, it is totally healthy too.

Now, it’s time for my disclaimer: I’m not a doctor or nutritionist so I can’t advise you medically. So you need to talk to your doctor before you start any weight loss or diet plan. He can tell you what you can do, what you can’t do and what you should do.

Make sure your weight loss is done safely, there really isn’t any other way.

Now, I will tell you about the “diet” plan I used and I lost almost a pound a day.. in was a healthy plan too. And, in case you are wondering the word diet is in quotes because that word can really conjure up the wrong ideas.

For the purpose of this article I use the word diet to mean what I eat and how much and how often. I don’t mean diet in the terms of starving myself or hardly eating anything at all and feeling hungry and deprived (which is a dumb method and doesn’t work for the long term anyway).

So, here is the easy ways to lose weight that I used and I lose 6 pounds in one week:

1. First, I ate more food during my day! Weird huh? But I didn’t just fill up on high calorie low nutritional value food. I ate food that fueled my body. Food that kept my metabolism burning hot.

That means that no matter what I was doing; watching t.v., sleeping, etc. I was burning more fat. My metabolic “furnace” was just going and going and going.

2. I ate between 5 and 6 times a day. Most of my meals and snacks consisted of the same types of food: some lean protein such as chicken, fish or seafood, some fresh vegetables such as spinach or a salad, and some small amount of carbs such as a little rice or small portion of pasta.

I would also have fruit during the day. Mostly I concentrated on what I was putting into my body. I tried to concentrate of foods that were going to provide my body with needed nutrients, not just useless calories.

3. During the first week I love 6 pounds and at that time I wasn’t doing anything different except eating these small, nutritious meals throughout the day. I hadn’t increased my exercise at all. I did make sure to drink more water too.

I’ve never been a big fan of all the weight loss pills, potions and gadgets. I think easy ways to lose weight are really just about giving your body what it needs, in the right quantities and at the right times. That is what my “diet” is all about.

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There are so many different diets to lose weight out there that trying to figure out the best one for you is absolutely mind-boggling. There’s the milk diet and the chocolate diet and the soup diet and other extreme diets that will help you lose weight, some very quickly, but, they just do not teach you how to eat better for the rest of your life.

One of the best diets to lose weight is not a diet at all. It is a lifestyle change. If you just make some simple changes with the types of food you eat, watch your portion sizes and get a little exercise everyday you will lose weight.

Here are some simple guidelines. If you drink a lot of pop, stop. Switch to water or green tea. If you switch to green tea get the flavored stuff, it just tastes better. Flavor your water with a little lemon or lime juice. Not only will this give the water some flavor, citrus is a natural diuretic and will help with any and all water weight you have.

If you eat out a lot, stop. Start cooking for yourself more. If you do not consider yourself a good cook then learn a few simple meals and practice. The more you do it the better you will get. Eat a lot of salads, too. They are easy to make, you can just go buy a bag of pre-washed salad greens and add what you want. Throw in 3 ounces of grilled chicken breast, canned tuna or salmon fillet and you have a great meal.

A secret…try a Greek, raspberry or balsamic vinaigrette. They are all very low in carbs just be sure to measure out the correct serving size. A little vinaigrette goes a long way. Or learn to make your own low-fat, low-carb salad dressing. It is totally up to you.

Eat five or six small meals a day. This may seem like a real big pain in the backside but if you plan things out and do it right it will make putting these meals together a snap. Just cook a bunch of chicken all at once and portion it out or buy the small cans of tuna. They are already three ounces, hey, look ma, no measuring!

Keep the already portioned chicken in the freezer and just thaw it out in the microwave when you need it. I would not recommend pre-cooking fish though, it takes no time to cook and is much better if you eat it right after it is cooked.

If you eat a lot of bad carbs, stop. Bad carbs come in the form of all the processed food you see on the shelves at the market. Breads, cereals, anything made from white, flour, white sugar, and even white rice are all considered to be bad carbs. all they do it raise your blood sugar and then add to the fat around your middle.

Like I said, making small changes in the way you eat and what you eat is one of the best diets to lose weight that I have found. Follow these tips and you will soon be losing weight, too.

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OK, you are getting older and you are starting to see the dial on your scale creep up. You know it is not your fault, after all, we all know that slowed metabolism as women get older is something that just happens. Or is it? Is this an inevitable and irreversible side effect of getting older?

Well, I’m not a doctor and I can’t really say for sure but according to what I have read we don’t necessarily have to expect to have slowed metabolism as women get older. As a matter of fact, from what I read, in some ways we are causing the problem ourselves!

You see one of the biggest culprits of a slowing metabolism is the loss of lean muscle mass. As we age we stop being as active as we were when we were younger.

As we become more sedentary the lean muscle mass in our bodies decreases thus slowing our metabolism.

This issue is made worse when we start to see the numbers on the bathroom scale getting higher and higher. Many of us will then mistakenly try to cut down on our food intake.

This only makes things worse because then our body thinks that it is starving so it shuts down as much as possible to conserve energy.

Once that happens we are really heading in a downward spiral. We will continue to gain weight because our metabolism is slowing down so we panic and eat less thus slowing our metabolism down even more.

The good news is that there are a few simple things you can do to combat this trend, it does not have to be an inevitable part of aging.

Here are two of the best things you can do to reverse this trend and keep that trim figure you’ve had up until now:

1. Eat better. That can mean different things to different people. For some of you that will mean to eat less food in general. Some of you may need to cut way back on the amount of bad for you fast food that you eat.

Others may just need to eat more “organic” types of food and steer clear of the overly processed foods. That may include those frozen “good for you” dinners.

As a rule of thumb, anything that is already prepared is not that nutritious. You are almost always better off making all your food from scratch with natural, fresh ingredients.

2. Weight train. If you are wasting hours every week on the cardio machines at your local gym and not doing any weight training, you are wasting your time.

You see endless cycles of cardio can actually burn off your lean muscle mass. Have you ever seen a long distance runner? They look almost emaciated, they sure don’t look healthy. That is because they have very little lean muscle mass.

To really increase your metabolism you should add as much lean muscle mass as possible. And for crying out loud ladies, don’t fret about “bulking up”. You can’t. You don’t have the right hormones to “accidentally” get big. Even if you really wanted to it would be a challenge for most women, you sure aren’t going to do it accidentally.

These are the best ways to combat slowed metabolism as women get older.

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