The concept is simple. CR proponents attempt to eat 20 – 40 % below their required caloric threshold but still maintain all of their required nutrients and vitamins. This may sound counter intuitive at first so let me explain. Many of the calories that people consume are what is referred to as empty calories. Empty calories can be sugar, potato chips or anything else that provides calories but no nutrients. CR dieters will virtually eliminate all empty calories from their diet.

Along with eliminating empty calories CRs will consume only nutritionally dense food. This means that they are not only selecting good healthy food, they are consuming the best healthy food. Think Kale instead of Ice berg lettuce. Foods may very well contain a similar number of calories but one may contain a disproportionate amount of minerals or other nutrients.

What happens to the body once a strict CR regime is adopted can be startling. Of course people undergo fast weight loss but often time because of the optimum food selection people actually start to consume more vitamins and minerals. So, not only do people loose weight but they will often have more energy, better brain function, increased endurance, a stronger sex drive, and many other startling benefits.

Despite these fabulous gains the true magic does not occur until people have been on the CR diet for many years. At this point their body’s weight will have normalized and most people will be long term converts. Their bodies will start to reconstruct on a cellular level in an environment that is highly abundant in vitamins and minerals. This is due to the lower weight and the higher nutrient intake. This reconstruction will also effect the DNA and cause damaged DNA to be replaced with healthy DNA. This means that offspring will be less likely to inherit negative genetic markers and the dieter will be less likely to develop genetic diseases or cancer.

The CR diet is one of the few that has actually been tested in the laboratory and had consistent results in longevity. The average age of dieters and the maximum age is all higher in the CR population. This hold true for animals tested as well as humans.

The health benefits of a CR diet are numerous and shocking but there is also a dark side. There can be too much of a good thing and people in the past in search of the fountain of youth have taken things too far. CR dieters walk a fine line between enough and malnutrition. Dieters will often not have much in the way of fat stores that can be beneficial during illness or other difficulties. This diet can and should evolve into a very careful study of what one eats. And it is essential that the CR make sure that they are getting enough nutrients. The CR must be aware of malnutrition symptoms and be prepared to take action to alleviate malnutrition. Symptoms of malnutrition can include muscle wasting, fatigue, depression, and anemia, along with other dangerous problems.

If you are in the market to loose a couple of pounds and you like your ice cream this may not be the diet for you but if you are serious about making a lifestyle change and you want to attempt to extend your life by 2 – 10 years the Calorie Restriction diet may be for you. You will without a doubt loose weight quickly, transform your body, and develop a new level of self control.

It certainly starts at home so if you are a parent of an over weight child it is time for you to take action. Your child’s life literally depends on your ability to take action. Children who are overweight as youngsters are more likely to develop heart disease and diabetes early in life.

Here are a couple of suggestions for how you can get your child started on the road to a healthy life and kick off fast weight loss.

It is essential that your child realize that there are consequences for eating unhealthy food. Kids often do not associate the food they consume to the size of their waist line. But it is imperative that they realize that the burger, ice cream, and coke they have for lunch can have a profound impact on their health. If they start out unhealthy it is much more difficult to reclaim any type of health later in life.

Your child needs to understand that there are things that they can do to live a healthy lifestyle and that being healthy is a lifestyle. It is about the choices that they make on a regular basis and a healthy lifestyle will lead to a much more fulfilling life with a higher quality of life.

Down to the dirty. If your child watches too much TV limit the television to certain days of the week or certain hours of the day. The television is great for killing a little bit of time here and there but for the most part it has been pretty destructive to our social skills, family time and waist line. Many kids watch up to 6 hours of TV per day, most of this time is spent in a sedentary state.

Get your kids outside. This may mean that you have to be proactive and lead by example. It may seem like it is going to be a lot of work to get up and go toss a football around but in the end you will have a lot of fun. Getting up and getting active is how kids burn calories and how they build a body that will last them for a lifetime.

Get rid of all of the junk food in the house and replace it with healthy snacks. This means fruit, veggies, and other snacks besides processed food, packaged food, and plain junk. Stay away from sugary snacks, cookies, etc. Proceed with the out of sight out of mind premise. If it isn’t around they aren’t going to eat it.

Avoid going out to eat. This means fast food, upscale food, food on the go, Sunday afternoon, all of the above. Make a habit of eating at home. Your kids will eat far fewer calories and you will save a fortune. Eating at home will also lead to more family time and a less hectic schedule. It is a win for everyone. But you must develop a routine and make this a habit. Once you are into the fast food routine it is hard to break.

Fix your kids a lunch for school. School lunches are notoriously unhealthy. School districts spend around $.40 on each lunch they produce. This means that it is rock bottom food, often compared to prison food and thought to be of inferior quality.

Pay attention to things like juice, recovery drinks, and other drinks that don’t look unhealthy but are really no better than soft drinks. Limit your kids to water or milk except during special event or occasions. many children get up to half of their daily calories from soda. This is a terrifying fact because it means that from half of their calories they are getting virtually no nutrition and being pumped full of sugar and caffeine. Can you say ADD?

Putting kids on exercise programs and diets isn’t going to work, they need to do what kids are suppost to do and that is be active. I realize that it can be a challenge to get inactive kids moving but as I said before their life literally depends on it. So, get those kids moving, implement some diet fixes and education and you will be amazed to see the fast weight loss that ensues.

So many people want to know the secret of how to loose weight fast, when it is staring them in the face. There is no magic pill or special exercise that will make the fat fall off, its about what you do when you are not at the gym.

Lets look at this a little further. If you send on hour 5 days a week in the gym that is 5 hours a week, not a significant amount at all. When you consider that there are 168 total hours in the week, that is a very small portion of your week. If you burn 2,500 calories per day plus an additional 500 during a workout you have increased your weekly caloric burn to 21,000 calories per week. Now if you consider that you take in 1,800 calories per day, 12,600 per week you have created a weekly deficit of 8,400 calories per week. Now consider that a pound is equal to 3,500 calories that is around a 2 and a half pounds per week. Not really all that significant, but very good for long term results.

To look a little further lets remember that a 3,500 calories is equal to a pound. To burn that many calories with cardio you would need to spend roughly 5 hours on a treadmill at a reasonable pace. Or, if you drink soda you could eliminate roughly 2 sodas per day for the same effect. You tell me which one is easier.

Keep in mind that it is easier to not eat those calories in the first place than it is to burn them off on the treadmill. So, like I said it is about what you do with the other 163 hours in your week. It is about how strong your will power is and about how hard you are on yourself.

Next time someone asks you how to loose weight fast you will know the secret, hard work and persistence.

Atkins works, the cabbage soup diet works, the lemonade diet works, they all work and they all work on the same principle of reducing your daily caloric intake. So does one diet work better than another? Of course it does, you would be crazy to think that the Hollywood cookie diet would work nearly as well as a balanced diet such as the South beach diet.

Like anything else the key is persistence and the truth of the matter is that some of these diets are much more sustainable than others. Here are a couple of things to look at when choosing a diet to determine whether or not it is sustainable.

Does it provide you with a wide range of nutrients? If it does it is winner. People on hardcore diets realize very quickly that they need to maximize their intake of nutritionally dense foods. This is one of the keys to reducing cravings.

Does the diet exclude an entire food group? If so, stay away, this is a fad and it will pass. As stated in the previous point if you are leaving out any important components of nutrition your overall health will suffer.

Does the diet sound good? If it doesn’t sound good you will have a hard time sticking to it. If you think it will work, it will, if you don’t think it will work it won’t. But being barred from your favorite foods is a recipe for disaster.

Is it flexible? If you are on a diet that is not flexible you are also setting yourself up for disaster. There will be holidays, there will be pumpkin pie, you will be invited to dinner, and you will find yourself in situations where it is hard not to eat or even blatantly rude. Having some built in flexibility will allow you to not worry about unforeseen situations.

Can you see yourself staying on this diet for the rest of your life? If not then you should tweak it or find something else that will stand the test of time. Long term life style changes is another of the keys to long term weight loss or even fast weight loss.

Choose your diet responsibly and when you do choose stick to that diet, and don’t forget to practice moderation and that includes moderation.

So for fast weight loss or just regular weight control you have to make long term changes that you can maintain over the course of your life. You don’t have to spend big bucks and you don’t have to eat all organic. The best health club in town will do little for you if you don’t make the long term changes that it takes to keep they weight off.

Reducing you calories long term is the only thing that has been shown to actually prolong life in test subjects. This is telling because it is a lifestyle change that leads to the long term success of this experiment. People making positive changes and sticking with it for years on end lead to the desired results, not overnight changes that only last for a few weeks.

Calorie reduction may not be for everyone, but you can learn something from the idea and may in the future it will be for you. What you must take into account as well is that a reduced calorie diet is a diet that is lower in calories than the average daily diet. Remember that the number of calories that modern people consume is much higher than it has been in the past and continues to rise. Keeping this in mind it is not hard to imagine a diet that was just a little smaller than what you eat now. I am sure that eating 3/4 of the food that you normally eat would not really be all that difficult or challenging to maintain.

Weight can be very frustrating simply because people easily slip back into their bad habits. Most people know what they need to do, know how to do it, but just don’t have the will power. The sad part is that many people do not even recognize that will power is the problem. Exercising will power is just like exercising other parts of the body, it will get stronger.

So, next time you look in the mirror and say yourself, “I need some fast weight loss.” Remember that little changes in your life style can lead to big changes in your weight down the road.

I can tell you right now that if you are overweight and you want to lose weight you must change your lifestyle. Exercise is important, diet is important, but lifestyle is most important in you quest to lose weight. And, even if you do manage to loose a few pounds, if you don’t change your lifestyle you will not keep the weight off.

Personally I have watched my weight fluctuate based on my lifestyle more than anything else. The distance that I was required to walk on a daily basis has played more of a roll than anything else in long term weight management. Sure I have gotten really lean for short periods of time using unsustainable weight loss practices, but that doesn’t last. When I have been in situations where I have been required to walk for more than a couple of miles per day I lost weight fast and it stayed off. In other words my body adapted to the work load. Other times when I have been sedentary I have gained weight, no surprises there.

So, really it is simple. If you want to lose weight you must define an active lifestyle and live it. Now, I don’t mean going to the gym everyday, that is extra, that is gravy, and that helps, but what I mean is this… You must do things like ride your bike to work, if this isn’t an option get a new job closer to home. Think I am being unrealistic, this is your health, your happiness, and you life, you decide on the quality you want. Walking to work is just as good, if you can’t get a new job move. Fire the yard crew and do it yourself. Get an active hobby, like golf, without the cart. Bottom line is you need to do things that keep you on your feet for hours at a time.

Starting small works but if you want to lose weight and you want to do it fast make big changes and you will see big results. For those of you that have struggled with your weight for a long time I can assure you that making these changes will make you feel years younger and lead to a quality of life that is unrecognizably better than what you are currently living.

Be active and be healthy. Change your life to lose weight and you will be thankful years down the road, you will also be amazed at the fast weight loss that you achieve after big changes.

Knowing that your body reacts to whatever you do it and that it will strive to maintain balance it is important to realize that if we do something for too long your body will normalize. This is why prolonged dieting does not work, after awhile your body will set itself to work off of the lower amount of calorie. It will do this by dropping weight, fat and muscle to a level that it can maintain with the fewer number of calories. So it is in your best interest to keep your body guessing as to how many calories you are going to consume. This means that eating that pizza on the weekend is fine on occasion. So, to make my point a little bit more clear, vary your diet, cycle your carbs, fat, and protein. Keep your body guessing. Realize that if you want drop a few pounds all you have to do is diet for a short period of time and then refeed.

Next solution, take a look at my intermitted fasting experience. I didn’t find that it worked too well for me, but it help many people with weight loss. It also helps clean you out and detoxify your body. The fasts do not cause most people to slip into any type of starvation mode because they are of a short duration. The most important factor here is that you must resist the urge to binge on the days when you are not fasting.

One of the most simple approaches to weight loss is to simply eat in a reactive state. Let me explain a little further. If you go out and gorge on Friday night, skip breakfast and maybe lunch on Saturday. If you hit the gym hard, eat a big meal. The key is that you are giving your body what it needs or you are withholding what it doesn’t, it is all based on what you have been doing in the past 24 hours. This is a great way to approach the holidays.

Juice fasting is a great way to manage weight as well, it can be great for weight loss or for just a detox, and it will make you feel great. You can juice fast as long as you want, just make sure you have lots of fresh fruit and veggies and a high quality juicer. These are not cheap, but they do last forever. Doing a juice fast will often give you more nutrients in a single meal than many get in an entire week.

Fast weight loss can be achieved with any of these methods, not to mention weight loss or weight management. They key is to implement them into your long term plan and not play the yo-yo weight loss game.

I cannot help but think that the previous days fast had something to do with feeling so good in the morning. I did eat a good healthy meal a couple hours before bed and it is said that your mood will be determined by how you feel when you go to bed. Did the food give me such an emotional boost that I woke feeling like a million bucks, I think that may have had something to do with it.

I was a little disappointed that my good mood did not seem to last for the whole day but that is ok, a little moody never really hurt anyone.

I completed the same workout that gave me such difficulty the other day and while it was still pretty tough it was not as difficult as or as taxing as before. Think I had an off day or something related to the heat or sleep. My weakness does not seem to be related the fasting. Today I was one day off the fast and I had no problems with the weight or intensity.

Still looking forward to doing an actual weight workout during fast day. Here at the end of the night my energy level seems to fallen off the cliff and I am having a hard time staying awake just to finish writing this.

Weight was back down to 202.8, still above where I started but lower than what it peaked at during this experiment.