As previously mentioned, weight control, which holds the key to your longevity, has everything to do with numbers, but these numbers are not only misleading but also unreliable because each individual's physical makeup is uniquely different. Beside, you wouldn't want to spend the rest of your life counting calories.

So what is the secret to weight loss and weight management?

There are only two major conditions for effective and permanent weight loss: you must be healthy, and you must eat less.

That may sound too simple to be true. But if you are healthy, most probably you do not have a weight problem. On the other hand, if you are unhealthy, and you would want to lose weight, it is like washing dirty dishes a sink of dirty water ? it simply won't work. So, first and foremost, you must have a healthy body before you can manage your weight, or even shed a few extra pounds of unwanted weight.

How do you keep a healthy body?

You must detoxify it. A body loaded with toxins from the environment, from the chemicals in your foods and water, from your pharmaceutical drugs is never healthy.

To detoxify your body, go on a fast ? a one-day fast, to begin with.

You could lose as much as one to two pounds per day during a fast. To lose one pound of body weight, you need to burn up 3,000 calories more than you consume ? which is virtually impossible unless you exercise vigorously. The body is made up of mostly water. Sodium in food retains water. As soon as you fast, huge amount of water is eliminated or flushed out from your system (this is how and why fasting cleanses), despite the large quantity of water you consume. In weight control, calories do count. In fasting, there is nothing ? no calorie, no protein, no carbohydrate. Absolutely nothing! The rate of losing weight is directly proportionate to the degree of your overweight.

However, the ultimate goal of fasting is not weight loss: it is internal cleansing for optimum health. In fact, you will put back some, if not all, of the pounds you have lost during a fast once you resume eating. Fasting helps you control, but not lose, your weight.

In addition to fasting, you may use foods to detoxify your body. Some of the most common foods are: Alfalfa sprouts, beets, burdock, and Green barley.

You may also use herbs to detoxify your body.

Your body is a self-cleaning mechanism via your liver, kidneys, urine, feces, breath, and sweat. Keeping your systems of elimination in a healthy condition can help improve and protect your health. Herbs can provide you with safe, natural, time-tested methods to improve the natural functions of your body to support its natural cleansing process. Diuretics increase kidney function, and thus the elimination of urine and excess fluids

The most common herbs for detoxification are: black walnut, cascara sagrada, cayenne, dandelion, Echinacea, Indian rhubarb root, licorice root, milk thistle, psyllium husk, red clover, slipper elm inner bark, and yarrow.

Water is an invaluable nutrient to every living thing on earth. Every cell of your body requires water to carry nutrients and energy to it, as well as to transport toxins and wastes from it.

Hydrotherapy involves alternating application of hot and cold water aimed at increasing your blood flow to different tissues of your body. Take a very hot shower immediately followed by a very cold one, and repeat the process two or three times. After the hydrotherapy, snuggle into your bed, staying warm for half an hour or so. You will feel completely refreshed and rejuvenated.

Exercise not only stimulates blood circulation and the movement of lymphatic fluids, but also promotes the reduction of fat reserves, thereby instrumental in facilitating the removal of toxins from your body.

Low-impact aerobic exercise, such as jumping rope or a bouncer, significantly improves your body's circulation, which benefits detoxification

Skin brushing is an effective time-honored method to increase blood and lymphatic circulation to remove dead skin cells, and rid your body of toxins, especially through its pores.

Brush your entire body daily with a natural-bristle dry-skin brush. Be persistent, and the initial discomfort will dissipate after a while when your body has become accustomed to the abrasive effect of brushing.

The use of foot patches is an easy and unobtrusive way to assist your body in the removal of a myriad of pollutants that invade your body on a daily basis, as well as the health-repressive toxic accumulations that prevent your body from achieving the true wellness you really should be experiencing.

Accordingly, when applied to the soles of your feet overnight, these foot patches not only warm up to open pores of the skin but also stimulate the reflex zones on your soles to draw out and absorb accumulated wastes under osmotic pressure from the blood and lymph systems in your body.

When lying horizontally, your body fluids collect in your head and feet. There is an acupuncture point on each of the sole of your feet, known as "gushing water spring," through which excess toxins and moisture from your body will be excreted into the foot patches. By applying foot patches on your feet while sleeping, you may be able to extract toxins from your body through the process of osmosis in the form of moisture onto your soles.

Foot patches are obtainable on the Internet.

If your body is rid of toxins, it will respond appropriately to any weight-loss program. If you eat a little more, you put on a few extra pounds; if you eat less, you lose a few pounds. But your weight will never balloon or get out of control. Therefore, if you weight fluctuates drastically, your problem is your health, more specifically, your body is simply too toxic.

In conclusion, if you are healthy, you do not have a weight problem, and weight management is always within your control.

Copyright (c) 2007 Stephen Lau