Good Bacteria

Probiotic bacteria, the good bacteria found in yogurt, may help people lose weight by blocking calories from being absorbed.

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine who made the discovery say bacteria act like a furnace to our gastrointestinal tract, allowing us to consume and burn calories.

Adding more probiotic bacteria will only help burn an extra 1 or 2 calories per 100 calories that you consume, but over the course of time, this will obviously add up.

Based on these findings, researchers are hoping to come up with ideal "microbial profiles" so that people could burn calories more efficiently.

It may not be a lot of extra calories burned but add to the fact that probiotics improve mineral absorption, lower cholesterol and blood pressure and help prevent colon cancer, amongst many other benefits, then it's clear that you should add some yogurt into your daily diet.

When To Eat

When to eat is almost as important as what to eat, when you are looking to shed pounds.

Slight changes to diet plans can create extraordinary rapid fat loss results. Here are 4 tips to follow that will help get you to your weight loss goals faster.

1. Add Protein - Adding lean protein to each meal (and snack) of the day, will improve your metabolism because your body has to work harder to digest protein than it does carbs or fat.

2. Eat Snacks - Eating smaller portions off food every 2 to 3 hours throughout the day will also keep your metabolism working and thus burning more calories.

3. Time Your Carbs - While low carb diets have been proven to help in weight loss, you should still eat carbs first thing in the morning and immediately after exercise. This is when your body is depleted of glycogen levels and is sluggish. Carbs will replace the glycogen and get your body working at optimum level.

4. Avoid Processed Foods and Sugar - Eating processed food and food loaded with sugar releases insulin into the blood stream. This in turn triggers your body to turn extra calories into stored fat.

Step It Up!

Want to get a good workout but don't have time or money for the gym, find a set of stairs!

You can get some good strength-training and burn quite a few calories with nothing more than a stairs as your tool.

Try some of these moves put together by personal trainer Kevin Charles.

Warm Up: Walk up and down a set of stairs twice to get your heartbeat elevated.

Interval Stair Climb: Run up the stairs and walk slowly down. Repeat for a total of 8 reps. If you want to make this even more challenging, try running up the stairs using every other step. This is a great cardiovascular workout and it will also work your glutes and leg muscles.

Elevated Push Ups: Do regular push ups but rather than put your hands on the ground, put them on a second step. For an extra challenge, lift one leg off the ground and extend it back, alternating legs for each set. Do 3 sets of 10-12. This will work your chest and triceps.

Tricep Dips: Stand with your back to the steps. Lean back and place your hands on the second step and move your legs forward. Slowly bend your elbows so that your butt lowers to the floor. Once your butt is almost at ground level, straighten your arms so your body moves back to the starting position. Do 3 sets of 10-12 dips. This is great for your triceps and also stabilizes your core muscles.

Elevated Lunge: Stand facing the stairs. Lunge forward, placing your forward foot on the second step and bending so that your back knee is at a 90 degree angle. Do 10 reps on one leg and then repeat with the other leg. Do 3 sets of both legs. This is great for your legs and glute muscles.

Net Calories - How Many Calories Are You Really Burning?

Most of us look to calorie counters when we work out, whether it's on the cardio equipment or as part of our heart rate monitors, so when a machine says we've burned 300 calories, we assume that this is correct, given a few calories here and there to account for machine calibration, etc.

But that number is misleading because it counts the total calories burned during your exercise.

Net calorie burn is the number of calories you burn minus the resting metabolic calories your body would have burned, during the time of the workout, even if you had never gotten off the sofa.

So if you're running on the treadmill and the calorie counter reads 300 calories burned at the end of your workout, you've actually only burned 252 extra calories during that workout. The other 48 calories would have been burned even if you didn't show up to the gym.

This is not meant to frustrate people and keep them from working out. It's just to remind you that when you are putting together your weight loss or fitness plan that you should be realistic in the amount of calories you are burning during the day.

Most of us take our Basal Metabolic Rate (the calories our body alive on a typical day) that we have calculated online somewhere and we add all the calories we see on the calorie counters and we figured we've worked out enough to meet our goals when we should only be adding net calories to our BMR.

The only question now is why didn't anyone tell us this before?

Compound Exercises Result in Compound Results

Compound exercises work several muscle groups in one exercise so it's no wonder they'll give you more results than isolated or one-muscle exercises.

An example of a compound exercise is lunges with bicep curls, which would work your lower body as well as your biceps. A push up would also be considered a compound exercise because it works your chest as well as your shoulders and triceps and it utilises your abs and quadriceps as stabilizers.

Compound exercises tend to use your muscles in the same way you would use them in real life, which in turn will help your muscle performance in real life and involve a lot of moves that stabilize your core.

They also take advantage of body weight exercises such as push ups or squats.

Obviously the more demands on your body one exercise can make, the more results you will see, including more calorie burning as well as more muscle development.

So incorporating compound exercises into your workout will not only give you a more efficient workout because you can train more muscles in less time, but it will also get you sweating and burning calories at the same time.

For ideas on which compound exercises to add to your workout, go to www.exrx.net and look for exercises that work more than one muscle group.

Wanna Know How Much You Should Be Exercising?

275 minutes per week.

Yup, if you're looking to lose weight, it's that simple.

Scientists found that women who worked out 275 minutes a week lost almost 10 per cent of their body weight and kept it off for two years.

According to the findings published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, the researchers studied more than 200 overweight and obese women as they tried to lose weight over two years. All the women were told to eat a diet of between 1,200 to 1,500 calories per day and given different levels of physical activity to perform.

Although all the groups lost an average of between 8 and 10 per cent of their body weight after 6 months, most could not keep the weight off.

Almost 25% pf those who did maintain the weight loss over the two years worked out approximately 275 minutes a week, burning around 2,000 calories.

You can break up the 275 minutes into as many increments as you want, as long as they are at least 10 minutes in duration. And if you want to kick up the fat loss, add interval training to these workouts.

Get Cracking to Lose Weight!

Eggs may be your secret weight-loss weapon.

According to a new study, people who eat two eggs for breakfast lose a lot more weight and have more energy than those who choose bagel breakfasts with the same number of calories.

The two-month long study of 152 obese and overweight people was carried out at Louisiana State University and is published in this month’s International Journal of Obesity

It found the egg eaters lost 65% more weight and had a 6`1% greater reduction in their Body Mass Index than those who eat bagels. And despite fears that eggs would raise cholesterol levels, the study saw no change in cholesterol or triglyceride levels in either of the groups.

Study researchers speculated that protein-rich eggs filled up the participants more than a carb-loaded breakfast, leading them to eat fewer calories throughout the remainder of the day.

The Write Stuff

I've written in previous blogs about the pros and cons of keeping a food diary, but it looks like a new study has tipped the scale.

Yes, food diaries can be time consuming and a hassle to maintain, but researchers have concluded that those who keep daily food records generally lose twice as much weight as those who don't keep records.

A study to be published next month in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that the more food records people kept, the more weight they lost.

In addition to keeping food diaries and turning them in at weekly support group meetings, the 1,700 study participants were asked to follow a diet rich in fruits and vegetables and low-fat or non-fat dairy and to exercise at moderately intensity levels for at least 30 minutes per day.

After six months, participants lost and average of 13 pounds. More than two-thirds lost at least nine pounds, which is enough to reduce health risks.

So, if you can stand to keep a food journal, you will really be doing yourself and your health a huge favour. Now get writing.

Shop Till You Drop … some Pounds

Just what every woman has been waiting to hear: You can burn as many calories on a shopping trip as you can in a gym session.

According to a new study carried out by the Golden Square Shopping Centre in Warrington, Pennsylvania, the average female shopper walks 2.02 miles during a trip to the mall. If walking a mile burns off an average of 100 calories, each shopping trip burns 202 calories. That’s the same as 20 minutes of moderate intensity cardio.

This is not to say that shopping should replace your trips to the gym, but at the very least, you can now go to the mall without feeling guilty. Just tell the boyfriend that you’re going out to burn some calories!