This is the continuation of part one for your weight loss goals which you can find here if you missed it.

Ok, how about calories from protein? Glad you asked.

Again, speaking of the oh so crucial insulin levels, protein helps to keep it in check. Balanced levels of this hormone help keep your energy levels, and your appetite, balanced and healthy.

Protein also helps to stimulate your metabolism to burn more fat, as do the proper kinds of fats talked about above. It’s also necessary to build muscle, which in turn will burn more fat.

And finally, carbs. I’m not a carb hater, what I am though is a big proponent of controlling your carbohydrate intake. It has been proven beyond a shadow of any doubt that excessive carbohydrate intake, especially simple carbs, are the leading cause of obesity today.

They cause extreme swings in blood insulin levels causing energy crashes which jack your appetite back up again even shortly after you ate the first time creating a vicious cycle.

When insulin is high, what this is doing is signaling for all of those calories your eating to be transported into storage into fat cells for later use. The trouble comes when there is no ‘later use’ as its always just more of the same, high carbs no exercise so they all just get dumped into fat cells and the fat get fatter.

So, after reading that, are you still of the mind that ‘a calorie is a calorie is a calorie’? I should hope not.

Take two people of the same metabolism and weight, everything the same, and feed one x amount of calories consisting of all carbohydrates and take the second person and feed them the same number of calories but have them come from a balance of healthy fats, protein, and perhaps some complex carbohydrates.

The first person can actually get fatter while the other person maintains or loses weight.

Food for thought for your weight loss goals.

In this article I would like to give some very basic weight loss information for those of you brand new to the game.

First of all welcome, I applaud you for taking your health and wellness into your own hands and taking action by finding and reading this website.

This is the start of a whole new healthier you congratulations!

Second of all, real results can be achieved, and achieved rather quickly once you know what you’re doing and applying yourself to the task at hand.

That said, you didn’t gain the extra weight, however much it may be, overnight, and it won’t be lost overnight either. But steady, encouraging, tangible results can be made there is no doubt about that.

One of the biggest myths that I would like to dispel right here and now is that ‘ a calorie is a calorie is a calorie’. This is total and utter CRAP!

In the past we went through the low fat phase in the diet industry, and what happened? People got fatter! It’s because although fat have more calories per gram ( 9 vs 4) than carbs or protein, they do not cause the problems that will be discussed in the carbs section below.

Specifically, fat does not cause a crazy rise in blood sugar/insulin levels which is what is largely responsible for excess fat gain in people.

The right kinds of dietary fats, such as omega 3 fatty acids from fish (or fish oil supplements) and such things as olive and flax oils are actually required by the body to burn adipose tissue. In other words you need to eat some of these fats in order to burn body fat!

Somewhat ironic I know but absolute FACT!

Plus, you need them for healthy skin, a strong healthy cardiovascular system, a healthy active brain, and heck just about everything in the body needs healthy kinds of fat in sufficient amounts (more than you might think) to work properly. After all, every single one of your billions of cells inside your body are contained in a fatty membrane, and where do you suppose they get their raw materials from to construct and repair themselves? You got it, the right kinds of dietary fats.

And as a final kicker to why it’s a good thing, fat takes less total amounts by volume to create what’s called satiety aka fullness. You feel satisfied by eating less.

We’ll talk about protein, carbs, how they tie into your weight loss goals and more in the part two so stay tuned!