Have you ever seen an ad for the next latest and greatest weight loss program or diet pill, only to see in fine print that this person also ate a balanced diet and did regular exercise? The other common complaint all the time is "I workout hard everyday and I don't lose a pound." Does this sound like you? The key to achieving health weight loss and keeping it off for a lifetime is understanding your metabolism.

When you think about weight loss you want to think in terms of a diet fitness program. The problem many people do is they only focus on one aspect which leaves them always falling short of their goals.

What is metabolism any way?

Your metabolism doesn't have to be confusing. Let's break your metabolism down in to two aspects. First, is your body's ability to break down food that you eat and convert it into energy or store it. You can store fat in your fat cells though you do store carbohydrates in your muscle cells to be used as energy later. The second is the rate at which your body produces energy, or do you have a fast or slow metabolism? The other key part to your metabolism is what you are burning for energy.

Your metabolism wants small amounts of food at regular intervals throughout the day. Typically every 2-3 hours is a good time to eat. This isn't eating the average American meal 5 times a day, more cutting your meal in half and eating that amount throughout the day. When we go longer than 3 hours between meals are body starts to store the food we do eat as fat, and can burn away muscle tissue for energy instead of using your food. When you eat 5 small meals a day you train your body to use fat as your main fuel source. A proper metabolism burns 70% fat as its main source of energy all day long. Just think while you are working sitting at your chair you are burning fat.

It is through exercise that we raise our metabolism up. The amount of calories we burn is not as important as the rate at which we burn calories. If burning 3500 calories worked than all the walkers at the gym would be the thinnest people. You typically see runners much thinner than walkers and that is because running burns calories at a greater rate and raises up your metabolism. You burn more calories by raising up your metabolism the entire day than you can in any workout.

Cardio interval training is considered one of the best ways of raising up your metabolism. Interval training is short burst of high intensity follow by short durations of low intensity and then repeated. People after doing an interval workout burn more fat as a source of energy for the entire day after than any other form of cardio. You only want to do one interval workout per week as over doing it creates over training and a drop in results.

Combining exercise and eating 5 small meals and you will unlock your weight loss potential. This not only the fastest ways to lose weight these habits work for the rest of your life to have more energy and keep the fat off your body.

Copyright (c) 2007 Charles Carter