Weight Loss

Nutrition and weight-loss researchers say that some supplements can give you an advantage in the battle to be slim (helping you lose about 2 to 3 pounds a month).

Protein can reduce hunger (thereby decreasing the calories you consume), help you preserve muscle as you lose weight, and help your body build more muscle, particularly if you include strength training in your fitness routine. Muscle burns more calories than fat and also helps you look trimmer, Kreider says, so strength training three times a week is a good addition to any weight-loss program.

These work best if you also exercise, eat less, and deal with any emotional reasons for your extra weight, our experts say. You can combine them, but seek a health care practitioner's advice before taking green tea and ephedra supplements together, as they are both high in caffeine.

As any nutritionist will tell you, the ideal way to meet all your body's nutritional needs is through a healthy, carefully balanced diet of whole foods. But in the real world, few of us eat this way. Worse, even those paragons of nutrition may not get enough of the specific nutrients needed to protect against heart disease.

This can be particularly important for full- and even part-time vegetarians, because some of these heart-smart nutrients--such as Coenzyme, the amino acid L-carnitine and alpha lipoic acid--are found in high levels only in animal products.

GREEN TEA HOW IT SPURS WEIGHT LOSS:

Green tea (Camellia sinensis) increases your metabolism (the rate at which you burn calories) and stimulates your body's ability to burn fat, according to a handful of human studies. Research shows that the benefits come from an interaction between caffeine and epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), a plant chemical in green tea that triggers your production of the metabolism-boosting, appetite-suppressing hormone noradrenaline. The men ate a normal diet and did not exercise. Only those who took the green tea supplement experienced a significant increase in calorie-burning ability.

1. Prev:Fun Fun Fun The Best Exercises For Quick Weight Loss
2. Next:Is Bariatric Bypass Surgery For You