Obese mothers tend to have children who also become obese. Now research suggests that surgery to lose weight may help break that unhealthy cycle in by affecting how their children’s genes behave. In a first-of-a-kind study, Canadian researchers tested children born to obese women. It also included their brothers and sisters who were conceived after the mother had obesity surgery. Youngsters born after the mother had surgery to lose weight were slimmer than their siblings.

They also had fewer risk factors for diabetes or heart disease later in life. Numerous genes linked to obesity-related health problems worked differently in the younger siblings than in their older brothers and sisters. Clearly, diet and exercise play a huge role in how fit the younger siblings will continue to be. But, the findings suggest the children born after the surgery to lose weight might have an advantage.

According to Dr. Marie-Claude Vohl of Laval University in Quebec City and in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the idea is that factors inside the womb seem to affect the dimmer switches that develop on a fetus’ genes. These chemical changes make genes speed up or slow down or switch on and off. It makes biological sense that the earliest nutritional environment could affect a developing metabolism.

It’s the latest evidence that the womb can alter how our genes work. The research has implications far beyond the drastic step of gastric bypass surgery before having a baby. Increasingly, scientists are hunting other ways to tackle obesity before or during pregnancy in hopes of a lasting benefit for both mother and baby. More than half of pregnant women are overweight or obese.

Gaining too much weight during pregnancy increases the child’s risk of eventually developing obesity and diabetes. Women with normal weight at the start of pregnancy are supposed to gain 25 to 35 pounds. Those who already are obese should gain no more than 11 to 20 pounds, or none at all. Consider that overweight mothers have higher levels of sugar and fat in the bloodstream, which in turn makes it to the womb. Specialists urge women planning a pregnancy to talk with their doctors about their weight ahead of time. Besides having potential long-term consequences, extra pounds can lead to a variety of immediate complications such as an increased risk of premature birth.

There are natural herbal extracts and supplements that can provide significant health benefits to lose weight, and not just to increase libido and sexual energy. Most of these male enhancement herbal supplements have multiple medical benefits and can contribute to the body’s overall health such as increasing metabolism and helping to lose weight. Some of these more effective and well-known herbal supplements are:

Damiana – powerful herbal extract that can stimulate blood circulation and strengthen the hormonal system to aid in better health and to lose weight.

Saw Palmetto – one of the most popular male enhancement herbs, it contains the powerful compound beta sisterol that is important for promoting both prostate health and metabolism.

Ginseng – a very popular stimulant, it can significantly increase sex drive and improve metabolism for the body to burn off excess fats.

Goat Weed – used for centuries to stimulate stamina and metabolism.

Licorice Root – naturally balances hormone levels and promotes additional energy.

Aside from taking these health supplement herbal boosters, doctors also advice the following for good overall health as well:

Take herbal supplements to boost the body’s metabolism

Knowing the metabolism of your body is the most effective way to improve overall health. If the metabolic rate is fast, then the body will require more energy. It follows that that you lose weight even more.

Take proper rest

According to a 16 year study conducted in the USA, sleep actually helps the body absorb herbal supplements. As the body is given its proper due of rest, the metabolic rate will go faster.

Energize the body

Exercise is still the best way anyone can energize their body to stay healthy and increase metabolic rates. It is still considered to be the healthiest way to lose weight. However, it should be done regularly but, not excessively. Start off by doing some light exercises to keep the body safe and healthy. You can then increase the program as your body adjusts to the regimen.

Acai berry is one of the newer dietary products on the market. However, it’s not just a diet product, but also a health supplement. Natural acai berries have been used as a supplement for years in the Amazon. As a supplement pill, pure acai berry makes use of the extracts from acai berries, allowing it to be distributed around the world. The extract can also be made into fruit juice as a diet product.

Pure acai berry works by speeding up a person’s metabolism. By speeding up the digestion system it helps cleanse the body of toxins. By moving food through the body faster, the body has less time to convert foods into fat. This, plus the removal of stored toxins, results in faster methods to lose weight.

Aside from these, benefits also include increasing mental awareness, building up the immune system, and improving digestion, and the digestion track.

Features of Pure Acai Berry

Pure acai berry supplements must contain at least 1,000mg as required to see its impact and effect. Pure acai berry juice must have at least 1,500mg per serving to also be effective.

When researchers compared the ingredients of acai berries with ordinary pills, it was found that an acai fruit contains far more nutrients when compared to ordinary pills to lose weight. Acai supplements contain omega3 and omega9 fatty acids, rich dietary fibers, body building proteins, essential nutrients, vitamins, and rare antioxidants.

Pure Acai Berry Effects

An acai berry diet is effective as it speeds up the person’s metabolism and also cleanses toxins and unhealthy materials from the body that results in the speeding up the digestion system. This fruit works fast to lose weight as the fast movement of food inside the body provide less time to convert foods into fat, resulting in lose weight factors.

Pure acai berry is also known to contain traces of iron, fiber, calcium, vitamin E and are high in antioxidants that help individuals to regulate cholesterol, reduce cardiovascular disease, act as an antioxidant, and has immediate features to lose weight.

Things you should never do:

• Travel with a cooler filled with grilled chicken and water
• Eat in front of a mirror
• Insist you have thyroid disorder when you can’t lose weight
• Join a gym on the 1^st of January

You know your limits and don’t plan on adopting any nutty lose weight strategies. Before approaching any goal, you have to know who you are and what you’re really willing to do. Acknowledging your limits is just as important as clearly defining your objectives. You don’t need a doctor or expert to reveal your limits, and there’s a chance they’ll expose a few weaknesses.

Overstating how well you take care of yourself serves you far worse when you don’t have the ‘body of evidence’ to prove it, but we still do it all the time.

We don’t want to admit that we love watching TV, sink money into gym memberships we never use, or that the real reason we make our kids chocolate chip cookies is to satisfy our own cookie cravings. We continue to lie to ourselves and then find it shocking when we don’t lose weight.

To prove this, start a food journal and keep to it every day for at least a month. If we all wanted to track what, when, and why we eat, the first pattern that arises is your lying. In fact, in that one month, we dare you to list down what you clearly and deliberately omitted.

Realizing the need to break these bad habits, a realistic plan is crucial. There is little that happens in life that isn’t part of a plan. It doesn’t necessarily mean making really drastic changes to lose weight, but it does show what you’re facing ahead of time.

So these are the things you should do starting today:

• Instead of staring into a cavernous fridge, you should know exactly what to reach for before you open the door.
• When making your kids breaded chicken, prepare grilled chicken for your husband and yourself.
• When your friends ask what they can bring over for dinner, just tell them to bring the flowers or a bottle of wine.

The Slim Chance Awards Against Fraudulent Fads to Lose Weight

The Slim Chance Awards are presented annually by the Healthy Weight Network and the National Council Against Health Fraud in order to expose the widespread fraud in health industry to lose weight. It also exposes the risks and exploitation caused by the ill-information to lose weight.

Since the establishment of the Slim Chance Awards in 1989, the awards have also been called the “Fat Chance Awards” since anyone taking the fads or products named by the awards have a “fat chance” to lose weight and a slim chance any of these fads or products will not lighten your weight, but instead your wallet.

For 2012, the Slim Chance Awards for the different categories were:

WORST CLAIM: Raspberry Ketone

In the category of Worst Claim, the Slim Chance Award goes to Dr. Mehmet Oz and the Raspberry Ketone on The Dr. Oz Show as “the number one miracle in a bottle to burn your fat.” Dr. Oz claimed the product regulates hormones so fat in cells is broken down more effectively to enable fat burning. However, the only relevant research cited was conducted on lab rats and mammalian cell cultures rather than clinical research on people. By the end of the show’s program segment on raspberry ketone, Dr. Oz shifted into disclaimer mode arguing for the need for good diet and exercise. His disclaimers have not stopped numerous Internet marketers from using his name and image to promote sales of raspberry ketone products to lose weight.

WORST PRODUCT: The QuickTrim Formula

QuickTrim formulas deceptively claimed to detoxify and clean the body and burn calories using various chemical cocktails offered in caplets, drinks, drink mixes, and even skin gel. Potentially hazardous ingredients in QuickTrim products include stimulant laxatives and unspecified amounts of caffeine. A $5 million class action lawsuit was filed against Windmill Health Products, including the Kardashian sisters – Kim, Khloe, and Kourtney – who offered testimonials and appeared in promotional materials for QuickTrim.

MOST OUTRAGEOUS: Fake Acai Berry Scammers

Dishonored in the Slim Chance category of Most Outrageous are acai berry and “colon cleanser” advertising scammers who falsely claimed that products such as Acai Pure, Acai Max, Pure Berry Max, Slimberry, Acai Ultraberry Slim, and Acai Advanced Cleanse would cause rapid and substantial weight loss. Outrageous advertising included:

• Fake news websites using names and logos of major broadcast and cable networks offering deceptive reports with titles such as “Acai Berry Diet Exposed: Miracle Diet or Scam?” and “Trick of a Tiny Belly: Reporter Loses her ‘Belly’ using an Easy Tip.”
• Supposedly free trial offers for acai berry products that deceptively enroll people into long-term contracts with monthly credit card billings for products consumers didn’t request.

When we all decide to lose weight there is always a reason behind it. Normally it is this reason, or reasons, that serve as our motivation to either shed off weight or to maintain the weight we have long sought for and gained. These reasons may range from health concerns, wanting to look good, to attempting to save a marriage through weight loss. Last April 2013, My Fitness Pal magazine and website went around and asked people the top reasons why they wanted to lose weight. Here are some of the responses:

Ashley Cardenas, California

It’s different when you lose weight because you pay more attention to yourself.

If I’m healthy after weight loss, I can take better care of my two kids.

I want to feel secure walking around naked.

I don’t ever want to wonder if a nice outfit will fit me.

I wanted to lose weight because I want to hear my friends say, “You look hot” or other such comments.

To lose the accumulated baby fat that came after my two kids.

Lonnie L. Bonner, New Jersey

I want to look good after my divorce (show my ex what she lost).

Take the time to make myself healthy.

I want people to take notice of my weight loss when I walk into a room.

All my outfits had to fit well by summer.

Charlie Wolman, Oklahoma City

Lose weight due to health reasons because of my diabetes condition.

I want to get rid of my personal insecurities because of my being overweight.

My family has history of blood clots and heart attacks.

Jennifer Sweebum, New York City

I want to wear fashionable clothes.

I want to keep up with my children when taking care of them.

I want my husband to be proud of my appearance and see my muscles.

I don’t want to die in the zombie apocalypse because I couldn’t run fast enough because I was overweight (just being funny, but it makes sense).

Andrew Catatomi, Seattle, WA

As a driver of long-haul trucks, it’s not good to be overweight.

To lose weight should be about you, no matter how selfish the reasons.

Weight loss should be all about rewards.

Carter Good was overweight for most of his life. This weighed on him even more when he started to gain more weight in his sophomore high school year. By his 17^th birthday, Carter was 295 pounds. He needed to lose weight and change his lifestyle if he wanted to live healthy. His motivation first came when he climbed the main stairs in his school to get to class. When he reached the third floor, he was panting, exhausted, and breaking into a dripping sweat. From then on, he knew he had to do something to lose weight.

Everything starts with parents when Carter told them he had to lose weight, and they were very supportive. His parents helped him work out a nutritional diet plan and exercise workout routine. As his work progressed to lose weight his mother made adjustments to the plan and routines to avoid boredom and weight plateauing. Together with his meals, Carter took supplements to keep his body lean and filling filled after meals. These supplements included fish oil, multivitamins, biotin, and vitamin C. Since dieting is 80 percent of the equation to lose weight, planning meals was very important. Here are some samples of prepared meals:

• Meal 1: Egg and oatmeal
• Meal 2: All fruit diet
• Meal 3: Brown rice, fish, vegetables, red kidney beans
• Pre-workout meal: Almonds 1 serving
• Post-workout meal: Cornflakes, rice cakes, unsweetened almond milk
• Meal 4: Chicken, brown rice, vegetables, high-fiber tortilla, red kidney beans
• Meal 5: Non-fat yogurt, 1oz. sliced almonds

For the exercise regimen to lose weight, the normal workout week would be as follows:

• Day 1: Chest/Cardio – dumbbell and incline bench press and fly, cable fly, dips, and moderated intensity cardio.
• Day 2: Back/Abs – Pullups, Reverse grip bent-over, one-arm dumbbell row, lying T-bar row, wide grip pull-downs, weighted and reverse crunches.
• Day 3: Shoulders/Traps/Cardio – dumbbell shoulder press and shrug, seated side lateral raise, reverse fly, upright barbell row, cardio.
• Day 4: Legs/Abs – barbell squat, leg press, standing calf raises, dumbbell lunges, oblique crunches.
• Day 5: Arms/Cardio – lying and seated triceps press, triceps pushdown, drag and hammer curls, moderate intensity cardio.
• Day 6 and 7: Rest days.

After a year, Carter weighed 189 lbs and had a leaner body with only 10.3% body fat from his original 35% body fat.

In one of the most rigorous studies of its kind, obesity surgery to lose weight was seen to work much better at reducing and even reversing diabetes than medication and lifestyle changes. However, the researchers and others warn that possible serious complications need to be considered. The yearlong study indicates that the most common weight loss surgery, gastric bypass, can effectively treat diabetes in patients with mild to moderate obesity.

This is particular with those who are 50 to 70 pounds overweight. This is according to researchers from the Journal of the American Medical Association. Other studies have shown the operation can reverse diabetes in severely obese patients after the patient is able to lose weight and maintain it. Within a year of the operation about a third of the 60 adults who got bypass surgery in the new study developed serious problems.

That rate is similar to what’s been seen in previous studies. For the most serious complications like infections, intestinal blockages, and bleeding, the rate was 6 percent, slightly higher than in earlier research. The most dangerous complication occurred in one patient when stomach contents leaked from the surgery site, leading to an overwhelming infection and brain injury.

A journal editorial says such devastating complications are rare, but that “the frequency and severity of complications … is problematic” in the study. Actually, the best way to treat patients with both obesity and diabetes “remains unknown.” To determine if obesity surgery to lose weight is an appropriate way to treat diabetes in patients at least 100 pounds overweight, a research review in the journal said more long-term evidence on risks and benefits is needed.

About 160,000 people nationwide undergo various types of obesity surgery each year. Bypass surgery involves stapling the stomach to create a small pouch and attaching it to a lower part of the intestines. The American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery says obesity surgery to lose weight is safe and that the death rate is less than 1% lower than for gallbladder and hip replacement surgery.

Water therapy is growing in popularity in Pakistan and India to lose weight. Many have discovered that increasing water intake from 5 glasses a day to up to 10 liters is an ultimate formula to lose weight. The water therapy is proven to lose an average of 30kg in a year when paired with a good diet and exercise program.

Approved by Pakistani and Indian medical science, the increased water intake flushes out toxins from the body, preventing water retention, and helps in kidney and liver functions that aids to eliminate waste and break down fat. The increased water intake also results in a feeling a fullness, leading to less food consumption.

According to many people including doctors, a normal regimen for working people can be something like this: drink 10 liters a day, walk for half an hour per day, and make some changes in the diet by avoiding deep fried food and high sugar food. Meat and vegetable curries with chapatti and rice is okay.

Doctors say that the success to lose weight is more about the water. Because of this, there are no health issues to be afraid of. The water therapy even brings down cholesterol levels. Dr. Wafa Ayesh, Director of Clinical Nutrition at the Dubai Health Authority (DHA) endorsed increased water intake, balanced diet, and exercise that should go hand in hand.

She said that to calculate ideal fluid intake, researchers suggest the formula: body weight in kilograms multiplied by 35. So, if your weight is 92kg, multiply this by 35. The sum is 3,220. The first two digits should be read as 3.2 liters. Therefore, you should be drinking a minimum of 4.2 liters, according to Dr. Wafa.

She further explained that water is the healthiest choice for hydration as it is calorie free and doesn’t contain any sugar. Drinking water creates a feeling of fullness, preventing the person from consuming other food, potentially with high calories.

From the viewpoint of water as an aid to lose weight, it also helps prevent dehydration. This can lead to fatigue and increase fat storage due to the buildup of toxins in the kidney and liver. When dehydrated the body begins to store fat instead of metabolizing it.

Probiotics may be growing in popularity to lose weight. Almost every week there is news of another benefit tied to these tiny bacteria, which naturally congregate by the millions in your gut and intestines. Probiotics can aid digestion and ward off illness, recent research has shown. In fact, one probiotic strain has been linked to lose weight, according to a new study published in the British Journal of Nutrition.

Here’s the original science: A team of Japanese researchers split 210 overweight people into three groups. While everyone consumed a daily 7-ounce serving of fermented milk, two of the groups drank milk spiked with varying amounts of a probiotic called Lactobacillus gasseri SBT2055, which past research has tied to fat loss. After 12 weeks, people taking the probiotic formulas dropped roughly 8 to 9 percent of their visceral fat.

This type of fat is the unhealthy type that builds up around your heart and organs. Both probiotic groups also lost 1 to 3 percent of their belly fat. Intestines manage the digestion and absorption of the foods you eat. It’s possible the probiotic featured in the study lowers intestinal inflammation and aids digestion, both of which could prevent the buildup of body fat.

One of the problems is that the probiotic strain highlighted in the research isn’t commercially available in the US. The other is that, so far, independent research is either inconclusive or contradictory. A study published in the International Journal of Obesity found that while some strains of probiotics can aid to lose weight, while others contribute to obesity.  The research now is premature, and requires more analysis.

The right kind of probiotics can truly offer benefits to lose weight, and research has supported the digestive-health claims of products like yogurt with probiotics. But the jury’s still out on probiotics when it comes to lose weight. There’s definitely a role for probiotics in dieting, but all the mechanisms involved are still being scrutinized. So for now, don’t count on a probiotic to replace your treadmill or diet plan.