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Potassium and Weight Loss



Did you know that potassium is classified as a metal? Strange as it sounds, your body needs this metal – it’s an essential mineral that occurs in abundance in your body. Roughly 95% of your body’s potassium is stored within your cells. It’s called an electrolyte, like sodium, calcium, magnesium and chloride, because it conducts electricity when dissolved in water.

Potassium and Electrolyte Balance

It’s very important for our bodies to maintain the correct amount of potassium. A deficiency can manifest itself as muscle weakness, fatigue, irritability, confusion or heart problems. Potassium is often loss through sweat, which is why athletes drink electrolyte balancing drinks – to replace loss potassium and other electrolytes. The same is true of alcohol consumption, so down a sports drink after a night of drinking too.

This mineral can have a big impact on your weight through indirect means. It won’t cause fat to magically melt away, but it will support some bodily processes that your body must go through for weight loss.

One thing potassium does is contribute to healthy muscles. Healthy muscles are able to contract correctly, heal after injuries, and grow with the correct exercise techniques. This is important because muscles are 24 hour calorie burning machines. The more you engage your muscles, the stronger and bigger they’ll become – making them burn more and more calories whether you’re actively trying to or not. Muscles take up a lot of energy (calories) just to survive. Fill your body with more muscle mass, and fat will naturally start being reduced.

Another thing potassium will do is assist your body in converting food into energy. Potassium is important to the health of your cells. Inside your cells, an organelle called mitochondria is busy combining your food’s nutrients with oxygen, thus converting it into energy. Potassium helps keep this process running smoothly. With the increased energy, you’ll find you have better workouts and more energy to keep up with your weight loss goals.

Potassium and Water Weight

Potassium also helps to balance sodium levels. This helps a great deal if you have problems with water weight.

There are many differences in expert opinions about just how much potassium you need on a daily basis. There’s no number set in stone, but aim for around 3500 mg a day. In most American’s existing diets, only 2000 mg of potassium is provided. Although it doesn’t seem like too big of a deal, it means most American’s are slightly deficient in potassium and may be suffering from minor ill effects of that deficiency.

Luckily, it’s easy to increase the amount of potassium you’re consuming by adding more healthy foods to your diet. Potassium is found in large quantities in many fruits and vegatables. Look to swiss chard, mushrooms, spinach, celery, romaine lettuce, squash, basil, tomatoes, cauliflower, asparagus, cucumbers, bananas, oatmeal, peanuts and yogurt to name a bunch.

Whenever possible, avoid cooking or adding water to foods when you’re eating them for the purpose of increasing potassium levels. Doing so will reduce potassium intake. If you think you’re not getting enough potassium because you like to cook your potassium rich foods, consider drinking parsley tea, which extracts large amounts of potassium from the parsley, leaving it in the hot water.

And although potassium does so many great things for you and will help with weight loss, it’s important that you don’t go overboard. You can go too far, and taking too much potassium could put you in danger. Excess amounts can cause hyperkalemia. Hyperkalemia may cause stomach irritation and possibly trigger a heart attack because it causes irregular heartbeat. It’s hard to overdose on food and supplement sources, though. It usually only becomes a danger if you take potassium salts or if you’re naturally prone to develop hyperkalemia.

Potassium is a great tool to help you reach your weight loss goals. It’s simple to obtain too, as you simply have to eat a variety of healthy foods, which should have been the first commitment you made when deciding to lose weight anyway.

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Weight Loss Exercise

Does Fiber Help Lose Weight?



Fiber – we can’t digest it and it provides us with no calories or nutrients, yet we know that it’s good for us and most of us need more. What is it exactly, and what is it about fiber that makes it so healthy for us?

What is Fiber?

Fiber is simply the part of the plant foods we eat that we aren’t able to break down in our digestive systems. There are two types of fiber: soluble and insoluble. Soluble fiber will form a gel when dissolved in water. This type of fiber will slow down the rate of your digestion, leaving you feeling fuller for longer, and off of fewer calories, too! Insoluble fiber doesn’t dissolve, instead, passing through your digestive tract intact. It fills you up and “scrubs out” your insides by collecting toxins and fats, and taking them out when it passes.

You shouldn’t focus on getting specific amounts of any one type of fiber. Eating a healthy and varied diet will take care of that for you. The only thing you should be trying to do to get more fiber is eat healthier foods on a consistent basis.

Does Fiber Help Lose Weight?

Does Fiber Help Lose Weight?

Does Fiber Help Lose Weight?

Fiber affects weight loss because of the effect it has on our sense of hunger. Your feelings of hunger are controlled by many things, including the amounts of carbs, fat, protein, water and fiber that are present in the things you eat. Eating healthy amounts of an appropriate mix of these foods will eliminate excess hunger and cravings.

Did you know that people eat basically the same amount of food each day. There aren’t usually any drastic changes in the amount people eat from day to day – aside from special occasions that may call for pigging out, that is. When you replace some of the foods you eat with foods that are high in fiber, you’re doing one of the best things you can for weight loss. After all, fiber adds no calories to your diet and most fiber rich foods have ver y little calories compared to other foods of the same weight or volume. It helps you feel full faster, and for longer periods of time. It also absorbs fat, leaving less of it for your body to digest. And most fiber rich foods require you to chew more because of their texture, and this simple act of slowing the rate at which you eat is the perfect way to avoid overeating.

Fiber Helps Blood Sugar

Plus it’s good for your blood sugar. You may think that’s something only diabetics would be concerned with, but everyone – especially those trying to lose weight – should be aware of the consequences of consuming sugar. When you eat sugar or foods like refined carbohydrates that turn into blood sugar quickly, your pancreas is signaled to release insulin. When the body is flooded with insulin, your brain thinks you have more than enough energy (calories) to keep you going, so it shuts off the fat burning systems in your body. Plus, the spike in insulin that occurs after eating sugar or refined carbs is followed by a big dip in insulin levels, leaving your body exhausted and craving more sugar and calories. It can quickly turn into a vicious cycle that will leave you hunting for candy bars when you should be working out.

So, now you know exactly why you should be getting more fiber, and you’re ready to start. Before you go doing anything drastic, though, you need to know how to use fiber safely. Even though it’s extremely healthy for you, it’s never a wise move to overdo anything. Too much fiber can prevent your body from absorbing nutrients or utilizing medications. Upping your dosage too quickly can lead to uncomfortable gas and possibly constipation.

The best way to get your fiber is to eat more plant based foods. Sure it’s not as convenient as those juice flavored fiber supplements you mix with water, but it’s better because supplements don’t keep you feeling as full as food sources of fiber do. Plus food sources that are high in fiber are usually high in vitamins, minerals and nutrients that will indirectly assist your body with fat burning.

Anytime you eat fiber you should be drinking lots of water to go along with it. This will keep your stools comfortably soft and help even more with weight loss, being that water is right up there with fiber when it comes to making you feel full and satisfied.

Fiber is an essential part of a healthy weight loss regimen, and most people don’t eat enough, especially with the prevalence of convenient foods. Get more fruits, vegetables, beans and whole grains in your diet and you’ll notice you have less room in your stomach for the unhealthy stuff. Your weight will start dropping and you’ll feel a lot better, too.

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Weight Loss Exercise

Why You Need Magnesium


Why You Need Magnesium

Magnesium is an extremely important mineral to both your weight loss goals and your health. In fact, it’s the 4th most abundant mineral in your body and it’s constantly being depleted. Half of your magnesium is contained within your bones. The rest is found in your cells and blood. It’s needed to carry out more than 300 processes and reactions in your body. A deficiency in magnesium could cause complications and weight problems.

Increasing your intake of magnesium is likely to have positive effects on your weight, but magnesium itself doesn’t cause weight loss. It’s not your typical weight loss supplement, since your typical weight loss supplement will work either by increasing metabolism due to containing stimulants or causing you to feel full due to containing appetite suppressants.

If it doesn’t do either of those things, how in the world can it help with weight loss? It helps in a variety of meaningful but subtle ways. Let’s go into more detail

Magnesium Affects Blood Sugar

Why You Need Magnesium

Nuts are high in Magnesium

Blood glucose (sugar) levels have a big impact on weight fluctuations. The steadier your blood sugar remains, the healthier you will be and the healthier your weight will be. When your blood sugar spikes, insulin is released by your pancreas to help your cells take in the sugar where it can be stored as energy. When glucose is stored for energy and not expended, it turns into fat. Blood sugar spikes and insulin surges also signal the release of cortisol – the belly fat hormone. When your blood sugar spikes all the time, your body becomes resistant to insulin and more and more is needed. Constantly raised insulin levels also increase cortisol levels.

Magnesium helps you to maintain a steadier blood glucose level by improving the function of insulin. Adequate levels of magnesium discourage insulin resistance, making the amounts of insulin released by the pancreas more effective.

Magnesium Makes Other Nutrients More Accessible

This wonderful little mineral does a good job at helping your body better absorb other minerals too. Suffering from a magnesium deficiency leads to improper absorption of fats, carbohydrates and proteins. Think this is a good thing? Like you’ll be able to eat food and it’ll pass through you unused? Wrong. Your body needs the correct amount of fats, carbs and proteins to function properly. When your body has adequate amounts of these nutrients, it will activate the enzymes that tell your brain your body has had enough to eat. It helps you feel satisfied, leading to reduced calorie intake.

It Gives You Better Sleep More Energy

How does one mineral accomplish seemingly opposite effects? Well, as mentioned, magnesium is responsible for a number of processes and biochemical reactions. Falling short on this mineral leaves people tired but doesn’t allow them a deep, restful sleep. Getting more magnesium (if deficient) can help you fall asleep easier, enjoy a higher quality sleep, and have the benefit of increased calm energy while awake. These are all necessary for weight loss, since the sleep deprived tend to weigh more (due to increased cortisol resulting from the lack of sleep) and the fatigued have less energy to use for resisting temptation and exercising.

Magnesium: The Great Stress Fighter

Did you know that one of the most common ways people react to stress is to eat more than they usually do? And guess what they eat? That’s right, crap foods… Disgustingly delicious, easy-to-overindulge-in comfort foods. Junk like chips or ice cream. No effort required fast foods. You get the idea.

Your adrenal glands will excrete adrenaline (also known as epinephrine or norepinephrine) whenever it feels stressed. For many of us, this happens way too often. Like any other part of your body, your adrenal glands can suffer from poor health. Magnesium, though, is one of the supporters of healthy adrenal glands. Getting adequate amounts of this mineral make your adrenals less likely to overreact and flood your body with the stress hormone adrenaline.

And you already know how magnesium helps to control cortisol by helping us sleep better. Reduced amounts of stress hormones will do a world of good for your health and will help to whittle down your waistline, too.

Foods high in Magnesium

By now you’re sold on the benefits of magnesium and are ready to make sure you have adequate levels to keep your body functioning, right? Good!

Dietary sources of magnesium are bran cereals, all types of nuts, spinach, potatoes, beans, oatmeal, peanut butter, brown rice, bananas, and – oddly enough – chocolate milk. People also take Epsom salt baths to absorb magnesium through their skin. Supplements are yet another option. If you choose the supplement route, look for magnesium chloride, magnesium lactate, or magnesium citrate on supplement labels. Avoid magnesium oxide as it isn’t as bioavailable (absorbable and usable by your body) as other sources.

Obviously, you should discuss your plans to get more magnesium with your doctor to make sure it doesn’t cause you any complications. Your doctor can also give you a personalized dosage recommendation tailored to your individual health profile.

Magnesium is a valuable nutrient that can help a great deal in helping you lose weight as long as you use your common sense along with it. Please don’t go expecting a magnesium supplement to help you shed 20 lbs if you sit around all day eating cheeseburgers and fries. Take advantage of all magnesium has to offer, along with employing a healthier lifestyle as watch the pounds melt away.

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