I used to think that I should eat as little as possible and reduce my calories as much as possible in order to lose weight. It is true that you need to create a caloric deficit where the number of calories you take in is less than the number you use, causing your body to burn fat for energy. NutraVesta ProVen
But there is a danger of eating too few calories.

What's the danger? Well, when you restrict your calorie intake too drastically, your body's starvation response kicks in and your metabolism slows. This causes you to lose fat at a slower rate. Obviously, this is the opposite of what you want.

Less well-known, perhaps, is the hormonal response that occurs when you restrict your calories. There is a hormone called leptin that controls many metabolic processes in the body and is therefore involved in fat loss. The more leptin you have, the faster you lose fat. And when you reduce your calorie intake during a diet, your leptin levels drop, slowing your fat loss.

So what should you do? What's the best way to diet to lose weight?

Well, the key is to keep your leptin levels high. You can do this by not reducing your calories too much, and instead creating only a modest calorie deficit in your diet. The majority of your energy deficit should be created by exercise.

How modest should that calorie deficit be? Well there are no absolute guidelines, but aiming for 200-300 calories below what you need to maintain your weight is a decent rule of thumb. In addition, you should note that it is advisable that women not eat less than 1200 calories per day, and men not eat less than 1600 calories per day.

There's even more you need to know about how hormones affect weight loss. There are three other hormones that impact whether or not you lose weight and even where you store fat on your body: estrogen, insulin, and cortisol. They are key to losing fat, especially if you are trying to get rid of those last 5, 10, or 15 pounds. The good news is there are exercises you can do to target these fat-related hormones. They are very specific types of training that you need to do in a particular way to get the desired effect.

Luckily, there's a great program out there that incorporates all of this information, and has all of the guidance that you need. It explains a lot more about how hormones affect weight loss. It helps you to calculate how many calories you should aim to consume to maintain a modest deficit. In addition, it gives a clear, easy-to-follow schedule of exercises that target specific fat-related hormones. I haven't found anything else like this out there.

Weight loss for women is not the same as it is for men. It doesn't mean that just because you're a woman you can't reach your weight loss goals, you just have to be aware of a number of issues. Let's look at 5 bizarre truths about healthy weight loss for women.

1. A Woman's Hormones Are Different.

Women have a higher level of the hormone Leptin that controls our body's ability to burn fat. This sounds like good news, but women are much less responsive to Leptin's signal to burn fat than men. This means even though women have a lot more Leptin they just cannot use its fat burning potential in the same way as men. This is because a woman's body is hardwired to cling onto body fat as stored energy and warmth for child bearing and child nurturing.

2. Emotional Differences.

Women also face more difficult emotional issues that are intricately connected to their relationship with food. When it comes to being emotional eaters women are more likely than men to eat based on their emotional state. Depression, anger, sadness, and loneliness are all feelings that lead to emotional eating. This affliction can make healthy weight loss for women very challenging because emotional eating tends to come from a desire to feel better, and because it is typically sweet and fatty foods that do so, it leads to weight gain and poor self-esteem. It is important to identify the emotional issues and deal with them in healthy ways, even if it means reaching out for help.

3. Women Generally Do The Cooking And Shopping.

As much as women have become equals in the business world, another issue that effects healthy weight loss for women is that, more often than not, women are still the ones that do the cooking and food shopping for the household. By spending so much time around food, it can be easy to get off track, with tasting and choosing impulse foods at the store. One way you can start to combat this problem is by getting the family involved and taking that extra time to plan healthy meals, rather than going for the faster or easier alternatives.

4. Social Issues.

When women get together with their girlfriends, the social occasion is often centered around food and often those foods are not the type recommended on diet plans for women to lose weight. One of the best ways to lose fat is to never go to a party hungry, even if dinner is included. If you eat a light snack with lots of fiber and a little protein and fat half an hour before, you will not be so hungry and the food will not be quite so tempting.

5. Doing The Wrong Exercises.

It goes without saying that healthy weight loss for women needs to include exercise. But if you spend hours each week running, pedalling or stepping you're ruining your ability to burn fat and build a lean body. Excessive daily cardio basically makes your body hold on to fat and burn muscle instead. The best female weight loss workout needs to include resistance or strength training because muscle cells burn more calories than fat cells. But don't worry that you'll grow bulky muscles. Even if a woman exercised everyday with heavy weights she would not get that bulky bodybuilder shape. Men's bodies develop that way due to the testosterone hormone that has very low levels in women.