Today’s sedentary lifestyle is to blame for piling on unwanted pounds. That’s an inarguable fact. How to lose the unwanted weight, however, is open for debate.

The conversion of energy from stored fat is one of the main functions of the liver. That is the reason it is so critical that your liver is always operating at its best. Aiding the kidneys in doing their job if they’re dehydrated is another function of the liver. How do you keep your liver focused on converting fat to energy? Drink more water! A critical need in maintaining a healthy body is water consumption. What it all comes down to is you must drink less dehydrating beverages and more water.

Your body burns calories just to exist. Our bodies require energy twenty-four hours a day, regardless of what we do. Who doesn’t know that? What may not be such common knowledge is that your resting metabolic rate is determined by your amount of body muscle. Just the slightest increase in muscle mass will raise your resting metabolic rate, which means you will constantly burn more calories throughout the day.

An increased metabolism doesn’t require two or three hours a day at the gym lifting weights. You probably don’t have that kind of time to invest - I sure don’t.

To build muscle mass and lose unwanted weight, don’t overdo it - limit yourself by starting with just squats and push-ups. Do five of each exercise daily. Those can both be done from the home and it won’t cost you a dime. Does wanting to do more than just push-ups and squats mean you’ll need to buy a set of weights? Quite simply, a pair of rocks will do the trick - even if they only weigh three or four pounds each.

The fastest way to gain more muscle is to keep your body rebuilding and repairing muscle. Does that mean working everything: back, chest, shoulders, biceps, triceps, forearms, quads, glutes, calves, hamstrings, and abdominals? It sure does. To accomplish this, do you need to kill yourself every day at the gym? Not if you’re creative. It bears repeating: push-ups and squats. Those two maneuvers will exercise every muscle in your body (if you have the time to focus on individual muscles, then all the better).

The last factor in weight loss and weight gain is also very important: your diet. If three times a day you drink a regular sugar soda with a double cheeseburger and large fries, you’ll find it hard to lose extra pounds in spite of what exercises you do.

While everyone has a different idea of which is the best diet (all fruits, no meat, all carbs, no fat, etc.), different types of food cause different kinds of reactions in everyone. The metabolizing of food is different in every body. What energizes one person may not affect the next.

So how do you know what kind of diet works best for you? To start, analyze how many calories you eat every day. Make sure it is the proper amount for your current body weight. Now make a note of how you feel emotionally and physically thirty minutes after every meal. Are you sluggish?  Having problems keeping your eyes open? Or are you bouncing off the walls with unlimited energy? The answer is probably not new to you because your body is not shy about telling you how it feels after you consume a meal.

A few light exercises, sufficient water consumption, and a diet that makes you feel invigorated are the cornerstones for losing weight. Integrate all three of the above, and you will be living healthier and losing weight in the process!

 

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