The balance between the effects of your body’s fat burning hormones and fat storing hormones is the determining factor in whether or not you lose weight.  While the individual fat buring hormones are greater in number than the fat storing hormones, the fat burners are weaker.  As a matter of fact, the entire effects of all of the fat burning hormones combined can be completely negated by a high level of insulin, the most powerful of the fat storing hormones.

Because of this, it is important to understand how the hormones that control body fat interact with each other and the factors that control the relative effects of these hormones. With this understanding, it will become much easier to spot the mistakes you may be making in your weight loss program and to correct those mistakes to obtain the most efficient fat burning.

For the purposes of this article, I’m going to concentrate on maximizing the effects of the fat burning hormones. The primary ones are adrenaline, thyroid hormone, growth hormone, glucagon, testosterone, and insulin-like growth factor. While a detailed explanation of how each of these hormones works is beyond the scope of this article, there are some basic factors that will promote the fat burning effects of these hormones.

To stimulate the release of the fat burning hormones and to maximize the action of them, there are three major factors to consider. These are diet, exercise, and sleep.

With regards specifically to your fat burning hormones, the diet aspects may not be what you are expecting.  When it comes to the hormones that stimulate fat buring, the most important thing is keeping the liver as healthy as possible.  The liver processes and activates many hormones, including the ones that promote fat burning.  An overworked liver becomes less effective in processing hormones and the effects of the fat burning hormones may decline as a result.   Of course, drinking too much alcohol or consuming too many medications will hurt the liver, but many people are unaware of the damaging effects to the liver of a diet that is too high in fat and/or animal protein.

Perhaps you or someone you know has tried the Atkins diet and did well at first, but then hit a point where the weight loss stopped. This is actually to be expected because the Atkins diet is very hard on the liver over the long-term. While the low-carb aspect of it is good, the excessive fat and animal protein, particularly combined with the lack of healthy nutrients from vegetables and fruits, will make the liver tired and sluggish, and the result is decreased effectiveness of the fat burning hormones.

There are other diet considerations when it comes to minimizing the effects of the fat storing hormones, but for maximizing the effects of how lose weight through fat burning hormones, the main dietary concern is to maintain healthy liver function.

The next factor in maximizing the work of the fat burning hormones is exercise. There is much debate over what type of exercise needs to be done to promote weight loss. Although the most popular view is that low intensity, high duration exercise, such as exercising for an hour or more at one’s “target heart rate” is the most effective type of exercise for fat burning, this is simply not true. Now before someone emails me research that proves this type of exercise burns the most fat, we need to make a distinction between the fat burned at the time of exercise and the overall fat burning effect of exercise.

Low intensity, long duration exercise does burn more fat than high intensity, short duration exercise or interval training during the exercise session. But because of the hormonal effects of high intensity exercise, the overall fat burning effects of high intensity exercise are considerably greater than for low intensity exercise, even when the low intensity workouts are much longer. High intensity exercise significantly enhances the function of certain fat buring hormones and raises the body’s metabolic rate for 12 to 24 hours, so increased fat burning continues for up to a day after the workout is completed. With low intensity exercise, the fat burning effects mostly stop at the completion of the workout. So, a single high intensity workout can produce many times the fat burning effects of a low intensity workout.

Closely tied to the effects of high intensity exercise on fat burning is the effect of sleep. One of the reasons that high intensity exercise stimulates metabolism is that it stimulates the release of growth hormone, which we mentioned earlier is a fat burner. This brings me back to the importance of the liver. The liver converts growth hormone to insulin like growth factor, which stimulates fat burning to keep your blood sugar levels steady when you go for long periods without eating. For most people, the usual time when they go the longest without eating is when they are sleeping. When you do not get adequate sleep, you don’t produce as much insulin-like growth factor, and therefore you don’t burn as much fat.

For the majority of people, about 7 hours of sleep per night is enought to provide maximum effects from the fat burning hormones.  Because of the effects of light on the pituitary gland (which produces growth hormone), nighttime sleep results in better production of growth hormone, and therefore results in better fat burning effects.  Night shift workers are advised to make their sleeping area as dark as possible for their daytime sleeping.

To sum things up, in order to maximize the effects of your fat burning hormones, the best action steps are to eat a healthy diet that supports the function of the liver, to do high intensity exercise, and to get adequate sleep.  Failure to do so will decrease the effectiveness of your fat buring hormones and frustrate your efforts to lose weight.

To get a free copy of Dr. Best’s Ebook that explains how hormones effect weight loss, visit his website and download The Total Solution For The Weight Loss Impaired. 

Exercise is crucial to take years off your age and to improve your health.Remember that motion is life, and life is about motion We are creatures designed to move.Moving stimulates weight loss by increasing your metabolism ten fold.

Muscle is the most metabolically active tissue in your body.Our bodies were not designed to just sit around and watch TV all day. Our ancestors were hunter/gatherers and were forced to walk an average of 9 miles a day. Their physical fitness levels were the equivalent to today’s professional athletes. During that time, it was survival of the fittest.

We have a different choice now: Be fit or be fat, and die a painful slow death filled with disease.Statistics show that 50% of people in the U.S. have heart attacks. By following a green weight loss program, you are able to lose weight naturally and permanently. Exercise is a crucial part of living a “green” lifestyle. Exercise should be performed with a wide variety of activities. Your goal is functional movement that not only makes you look younger, but will also protect you from injuries.Studies have been done where the heart was worked at a variety of intervals. Not just long distance running, not just sprinting, but a combination.Below are some simple exercise tips to improve your ability to lose weight and live healthier.

• Take a half an hour walk every day.

• Take the stairs instead of the elevator.

• Buy a pilates video and start doing it 4 times a week.

• When doing cardio, try running in intervals. Go fast for minute and then slow for two minutes then fast for thirty seconds then slow for one minute and so forth.

Not only can the fat melt away, but your health will drastically improve when you exercise. Especially in the high stress world that we live in you can make a huge improvement to your quality of life.

Dr Charles Livingston is a structure/function doctor who specializes in advanced nutrition and weight loss. He is also the author and creator of http://www.greenlifeweightloss.com which teaches healthy “green” principles for shedding weight fast naturally.

Increasingly in America, a trend has emerged that has both good and bad aspects. This is the fat loss trend, or movement, or fad, or whatever you wish to call it. Increasingly the target of specific products and regimens may not take all factors into account in creating these program which are very important, such as individual differences in body types, for example..that is why you must do your research to locate a system that is proven to assist in fat loss.

There are countless products out there that promise the earth, but are usually short on delivery. When a product does advise using combined with a workout , you are probably just being sold a system that might not work for you in the end.

Some of these products work well but will have an adverse effect as well – you might lose weight in some muscle groups that are beneficial? With so many programs, the weight loss itself, can usually be achieved without the need to target fat as an area in and of itself. The fat will be burned off as you exercise, as a byproduct of using your exercise regime to its best, as muscles use fat as the best releaser of energy to the body.

Many people think that if they simply cut the meals they consume each day into half or omit a couple meals, then that would be the secret to fat loss.  This is not true.You can eat more every day.When I say "more", I do not mean huge plates of food.  What I mean is that you have to eat more frequent smaller meals each day.Eating 5 to 6 smaller meals a day helps you lose weight rather than having 3 larger meals a day.

Losing fat can be as simple or as complex as we chose to make it. That is why it is so important to find an effective fat loss program that can guide you through the process and use it in conjunction with everyday ways to lose weight.

You could cut out fried foods and all the fats that they contain, to eating more fiber in your diet, which is both low in fats and makes you feel full.  Little things that can be done by all of us can work wonders. Just walk to somewhere you would normally drive - do that four time a week and you are getting a low impact cardio workout for the week. Walk the dog yourself every morning, make a point of it.

Some methods can be hard to follow and keep committed if you try to lose weight on your own.This is where a great weight loss program would come in to keep you on track and losing weight.