Natural Weight Loss
Natural Herbal Remedies and Solutions for Weight Loss
Herbal Weight Loss
An Overview of Herbal Weight Loss Some of the common problems many people have when they're trying to lose weight are:
Lack of Energy - Many people choose the wrong diets for themselves, or worse: Try to starve themselves to lose weight, and these approaches deplete the body of energy it needs to go about it's daily business.
Always Hungry - This is also often caused by the type of diet people choose for their weight loss approach, and this is one of the biggest reasons many people fail in their weight loss goals too. Being hungry all the time is depressing and frustrating. It will make you cranky, and it will often cause you to give up your weight loss plans.
Subscribe to our newsletter & get: "Ten Habits of Extraorinarily Healthy People"
Mental Attitude - This is often weakened and worn down due to hunger and lack of energy, but many people get despondent when they're trying to lose weight. It's easy to become depressed when it seems like the weight is coming off way too slowly, particularly if you're denying yourself even some basic pleasures such as regular meals.
There are various other things that can happen as side effects of losing weight too. For instance many people become constipated when they're dieting, and many also find themselves retaining water. So the primary herbal approach to successful weight loss, is to manage and control these common side effects. Once you're able to manage and control these issues, you're much more likely to continue with your weight loss plans, and reach the goals you've set for yourself.
So let's look at several herbs which can help aid in the overall weight loss process.
Hoodia Gordonii is a plant found in South Africa which has gotten a lot of attention in the past few years. This plant has compounds which naturally supress your appetite. In fact, some studies done show the people have reduced their caloric intake by as much as 2000 calories a day when using Hoodia, with no ill side effects.
There is little to no information so far however, about whether Hoodia also has other health and medicinal properties.
Chickweed is a common herb in the United States which does much the same thing. It reduces your appetite drastically, though some people report it actually makes you feel as if you're full from a meal which could be considered slightly different.
Chickweed is very high in Vitamin C, calcium, magnesium, and potassium, and helps carry out toxins from your blood. This herb is also excellent for a variety of skin problems, and has been used to treat acne, boils, burns and many other ailments over the years.
Dandelion is another excellent herb to add to your daily weight loss regimine. This herb is most well known for it's liver cleansing effects. It too is quite high in vitamins and minerals, and it helps correct low blood pressure, build energy, and build endurance.
Earlier we explained how some of the common problems encountered when trying to lose weight include a lack of energy, hunger, and negative mental attitudes. We explained that by using herbs to combat and countereffect these issues, you can be much more successful with your weight loss goals and efforts. So let's look at several more herbs that can help with your weight loss plans.
Licorice Root is an herb which helps stimulate and regulate your adrenal glands. Since these produce adrenalin in your body, regulating them helps control your energy levels. This herb also acts as a mild tonic for your intestinal tract, an important part of your body which aids in losing weight.
Safflowers or Saffron are herbs which help with digestion. Helping your body to digest foods properly, and eliminate them properly from your body as well, helps with losing weight too. These herbs soothe the digestional tract, helps heal the walls of the intestines, relieves gas, is a mild diuretic, and produces a mild laxative reaction in your bowels too.
Black Walnut hulls are often used for killing and expelling parasites in the body. Many people that have problems losing weight, often find after trying natural remedies, that they were having problems losing that weight because of parasites inside their body. This herb is also useful for balancing blood sugar levels though, which is known to help with weight loss efforts. Additional, black walnut will act as food for your nerves and muscles, and is high in potassium, iodine, and manganese - all of which help to provide you with more energy while dieting.
Gota Kola is an excellent herb for treating depression, melancholy, and low energy issues. It's thought of as a memory herb, because it stimulates circulation to your brain. This stimulation helps your memory improve over time, but this stimulation also helps fight against depression, sadness, and general negative mental attitudes that can be so common when trying to lose weight.
Gota Kola also strengthens the heart and helps balance hormones and your nervous system, all of which contribute to helping lift your mood. Having an excellent mental attitude is one of the best ways to successfully stick with a good weight loss plan.
When Gota Kola is combined with Cayenne and Ginseng, it's considered to be a fantastic "pick me up" for both mood and energy.
Hawthorne is another herb which helps with energy, because it produces natural adrenaline. This herb is also excellent for strengthening and regulating the heart, plus reducing blood pressure. It's considered a great choice for anyone under a lot of stress too.
Kelp is an herb which can help with weight loss efforts too, because it helps regulate your thyroid. Sometimes people who have problems losing weight easily, have an imbalance of some kind with their thyroid, and regulating that can help. Kelp is also quite high in natural vitamins and minerals, which can help contribute additional energy and an overall wellness feeling while you're dieting.
Herbal Weight Loss, Hoodia
No herbal weight loss series would be complete without including information on Hoodia Gordonii. This plant was discovered by the modern world back in 2004, and has since taken the world by storm. This natural weight loss herb has been featured on major talk shows, major news casts, and is talked about all over the Internet as well. Because Hoodia is a natural appetite suppressant which has no known ill side effects.
Hoodia Gordonii comes from a plant in South Africa. Many people call it a cactus but it's actually a succulent plant instead. It has been used by the bushmen of that country for hundreds of years, to help them manage hunger when they were out in the wilds for long periods of time. The Hoodia plant takes several years to grow, and is protected by the South African government. Some pharmaceutical companies are said to have started hoodia plantations, so they may start selling patented products based on the plant in a few years.
There are over 20 varieties of Hoodia plants, but Hoodia Gordonii is thought to be the only one which has the appetite supressing properties in it. Hoodia Gordonii is reported to help supress your appetite by making you feel satiated and full, while providing you with an energy boost too.
Scientific studies have shown that Hoodia contains a molecule known as P57. This molecule essentially tricks your brain into thinking you're full. When you eat food, the glucose, or sugars, from that food trigger nerve cells within your brain and this is what lets your body know when it has had enough food. The P57 molecule in Hoodia also triggers these nerve cells in your brain, thus your body thinks it is full of food even when you haven't eaten.
Several journalists have tried eating actual Hoodia plants in Africa themselves, and one even reported not having much of an appetite for almost 24 hours.
A pharmaceutical company named Phytopharm did a double blind study back in 2001 to test the effects of the P57 molecule. Half of the participants received P57 while the other half received a placebo. One of the biggest take aways from this study was that the group who took P57 ate an average of 1000 calories less each day than the placebo group did.
And so far there have been no reported bad side effects from using Hoodia either. People who have tried it specifically note there is no racing of the heart, no strange tastes in their mouths, and no queasiness or nausea.
Now, Hoodia Gordonii is not recommended as a complete food replacement. In fact, it's suggested that you use it to control snacking and binging only. Many people have problems with weight loss and hunger, because they eat foods which cause their blood sugar levels to spike quickly. This creates a cycle where your body releases a lot of insulin to deal with the large sugar spike, but as soon as that sugar is gone, the body demands more because there is now excess insulin in your system. And this is what causes people to have severe cravings for sweets and snacks, even just an hour or so after a meal. By using Hoodia, you should be able to control and drastically reduce those wild sugar level swings within your body, thus prevent yourself from snacking and binging throughout the day.
Natural Ways to Lose Weight with Nutrition
Losing weight is not always easy, but it can be done. And it can be done naturally as well... without harmful pills and prescription drugs that might cause side effects, and without using stimulants which can cause other problems too.
There are many herbal remedies which are successful in helping with losing weight naturally, and of course there are dietary and exercise changes that help too. All of these techniques go hand in hand though. Doing one without the other will not help as much with reaching your weight loss goals, but doing two or more of these things in combination will make drastic differences.
Losing weight naturally doesn't have to be difficult either. It can be trying and frustrating at times, and it can be too slow for most of us. But we need to remember that it usually takes years to get as fat as we are today, so it could take just as long to become trim and slim again.
Now one of the most natural ways there is to lose weight is to simply change how you eat. Too often though, people will attempt to simply stop eating. Or they'll try to severely restrict how much food they eat, so they're consuming less calories. And consuming extremely low levels of calories each day will actually help you lose weight, but it will often make you sick as well.
Our bodies need food in order to function properly. By denying your body proper amounts of healthy food, you're essentially starving it. And the body will respond in kind... it will stubbornly hold on to every ounce of fat it has, because it thinks you're going through a famine, or starvation phase.
As odd as it might seem though, many of the things we eat today as part of a modern day western diet also trick the body into thinking it is going through a famine stage. And this is one of the reasons many people find it so difficult to lose weight. By eating foods with little to no nutritional value, the body thinks you're not getting any food. So it stubbornly holds onto the fat it has stored up, in an effort to keep you alive. This combined with the added sugars and starches our foods contain, all contribute towards adding even more fat to our bodies.
Pretty much all alternative, natural, and herbal remedies for any health problem involve treating the entire body. Cleansing your body of toxins is an often used technique to solve many health problems. As is getting proper vitamins and nutrition. In fact, one of the reasons herbal remedies work so well for so many health conditions is the added vitamins and minerals those herbs supply your body with. And it's no different for losing weight.
Changing what you eat, adding nutrition, vitamins, and essential minerals will make the biggest difference in helping you to lose weight naturally. You can take herbs which will help give you energy of course, or curb your appetite, or even regular your thyroid and adrenal glands. And these all can contribute towards helping you meet your weight loss goals.
But herbal remedies are not magic pills. They must be combined with proper eating and activity in order to be the most effective. So, start your weight loss program by taking stock of how well your nutrition levels are. If you're not getting enough vegetables in your diet for instance, try adding some or adding herbal supplements which will help give you those vitamins you're missing. If you're eating too much sugar and simple starches, try reducing those a little at a time if you're not able to remove them all at once.
Losing Weight Naturally With Exercise
Everyone who wants to lose some weight - whether a little or a lot - usually groans in frustration when the word "exercise" comes up. It seems to be a dirty little word in today's world... we don't have the time, energy, or enthusiasm for getting exercise into our daily routines.
But weight loss comes quite naturally when you start exercising. The problem most people seem to have, is that they see exercise as a sweating, hard work, sorness kind of experience. It's a chore they don't particularly like doing, so they avoid it.
There are many ways to work exercise into your daily routine naturally though, and make it fun too. In fact, I suggest banning the word exercise from your vocabulary to start with. There's too much negativity associated with it for most of us. Use the word "activity" instead. Or even movement. By getting more activity and movement into your day, you're exercising more without really even thinking about it.
Any natural remedy approach to health and wellness problems always involves treating the entire body, not just the symptoms of the problems. Unlike pharmaceutical medicines, which simply want to address the end results and problems, herbal medicine knows that you won't actually fix a problem just by addressing those end results or symptoms.
So losing weight is not about taking a pill to curb your appetite. And it's not about putting a staple into your stomach so you're physically unable to eat more. It's about fixing the body in general. And part of fixing your body includes making it become more active. This isn't the only thing you'll do to lose weight naturally though. You will add some herbal supplements to increase the vitamins and minerals in your body, and help correct internal imbalances. You'll also adjust the types of foods you eat, to stop putting toxic waste into it.
Getting active though, is a critical part of the natural healing process. Being active on a daily basis will help your body start ridding itself of toxins and excess waste faster, and these steps will help you to lose weight faster too.
Now, there are some fairly simple ways to get more action into your day. And almost anything you do which requires you to move more will help... even if just a little bit. Those little bits add up much faster than you might realize.
Walking up the stairs instead of taking the elevator for instance, gets your blood flowing and your muscles working. Going to the mall and walking through each and every store... this is fun for those who love shopping, and it involves a heck of a lot of walking.
The same applies to flea markets and yard sales: If you enjoy shopping at these, make an effort to do so at least once each week or more. Walking around a huge flea market for hours, or getting in and out of your car to walk around at yard and garage sales, gets your body moving much more than sitting on the couch or at the computer.
If you have kids, take them for a bike ride or go to the park and toss a frisbee or ball. Learn to play tennis or raquetball together, or be kid-like yourself and climb a tree with them.
These are all excellent examples of how you can lose weight naturally by having a lot of fun and being much more active in your day to day life, without using that dreaded "exercise" word.
Note: Some statements in this article may not be approved by the FDA. This article is for informational purposes only and should not be taken as professional medical advice.
