The real key to losing weight is Metabolism!!

There have been no scientifically proven benefits to drinking extra water when you're not thirsty.
There was a study done with two identical twins- one drank the daily reccomended amount of water every day for a month and the other just drank when she was thirsty. At the end of the month there were absolutely no health benefits for the woman who drank the extra water.
I'm willing to bet a lot of the people who say they started drinking extra water and felt better are experiencing a placebo effect.

Of course if you WANT to drink extra water I'm not saying that you shouldn't- but I just don't understand why a lot of people on MFP preach that its a fact that you should drink a specific amount of water every day.

Article if anyone wants proof/evidence: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=eight-glasses-water-per-day

The real key to losing weight is Metabolism!!

METABOLISM:
definition: Metabolism is the process that converts the food you eat into energy to support life.

There are diets and then there are “diets.” But the real key to LASTING weight loss is making a lifestyle change and doing smart things to speed up how effective your body is in burning off calories AND to keep that calorie burning machine operating at full capacity for as many hours per day as possible.


So...what's has worked for you?

Wow! I'm shocked at all the negative posts! This is consistant with all the doctors, nutritionists and physical trainers that I have ever discussed it with. This is how I've lost my weight and how I will continue to live my life.

Thank you for posting - I'm sure there are SOME open minded people that are looking for suggestions.

This! I'd love to know how many of all the "there really is no starvation mode"-posters are actually doctors or scientists...

I understand that you're trying to help people but you should really update your nutritional information. Most of what you've written isn't correct and while none of what you said will be harmful, you're suggesting that people do a lot of things that really won't do anything towards helping them with their goals. See below.

1.) Breakfast IS Important:

Why is breakfast soooo important? Your body is naturally programmed to conserve as much fat (energy) as possible when it is not being fed trying to protect vital organs and lean muscle tissue.

Metabolic slowdown doesn't occur intra-day and doesn't even occur after 24 hours. 48-72h fasting might start to show metabolic issues but certainly intra-day periods of not-eating are not going to cause ANY metabolic issues whatsoever. Please see www.leangains.com for research to back this up.

When you are sleeping at night, so is your metabolism. Starting your metabolism as soon as you wake-up is vastly important.

Rubbish. Your metabolism doesn't slow down during the night and you will continue to digest food. Sure, you aren't active so you aren't running around burning calories through any activity thermogensis but you're still burning calories. Secondarily and MOST importantly, you're trying to narrow your scope to acute processes when the big picture is key. Your only goal when trying to slim down is to have lipolysis exceed lipogenesis and if you're in a calorie deficit, this happens by itself over time REGARDLESS of the short term effects.

Furthermore, after you eat your metabolism increases due to something called the thermic effect of food. Thermogenesis is the process of how your body increases heat to burn calories.

Thermic effect of food is based on macronutrient content and total calories consumed. It is not based on frequency of feeding. For example, if you eat 5 meals per day at 400 calories each, TEF would dictate that, for example, you'd burn 10% of that each time you eat (I'm using 10% for simplicity). 10% x 400 = 40 and you do this 5 times and burn a total fo 200 calories per day via TEF. If I eat 2000 calories all at once for 1 meal I will burn 10% x 2000 = 200 and we arrive at the same place.

2.) Frequency of Eating:

Pretty much everything you wrote in this section was false, at least the metabolic portions. See above for an explanation of TEF. But, there's part of what you said that I'd like to comment on additionally:

An added benefit of eating every three hours is that you don't get hungry. By never getting hungry, you reduce the chances of overeating, or grabbing something quick and unhealthy just because it's there.

This is personal preference and some people DO feel less hungry eating smaller, frequent meals. However, there's adequate research suggesting otherwise and you can also find that at www.leangains.com.

In short, Ghrelin is a hunger signaling hormone that adapts itself to behavior in that if you employ a specific feeding schedule, Ghrelin will adapt to this and the end result is (for some people) that you "feel" hungry around your feeding times. The bonus to this effect is that if you choose an intermittent style of eating (for example, when I cut weight I only eat between about 2pm and 9pm and it works wonders for me) it can be easier to go longer periods without food.

and more important, when you eat after “starving,” you body will immediately convert the consumed calories to fat. Not good.

This is just physiologically incorrect, entirely.

a.) Regular cardio raises your metabolism while you're doing it, but once your finished the exercise, your metabolism immediately returns to its regular rate. On the other hand, doing HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) cardio raises your metabolism for hours afterward.

EPOC or Excess PostExercise Oxygen Consumption is quite overstated with HIIT. While this is from 2006, it's from one of the best sources you'll find and I'd speculate that if this were out of date, it would be removed from his site. I'll link you the information for your reading and also copy the summary here:
http://alanaragon.com/myths-under-the-microscope-the-fat-burning-zone-fasted-cardio.html

Summary -- This is a direct quote from Alan Aragon:

: • In acute trials, fat oxidation during exercise tends to be higher in low-intensity treatments, but postexercise fat oxidation and/or energy expenditure tends to be higher in high-intensity treatments.
• Fed subjects consistently experience a greater thermic effect postexercise in both intensity ranges.
• In 24-hr trials, there is no difference in fat oxidation between the 2 types, pointing to a delayed rise in fat oxidation in the high-intensity groups which evens out the field.
• In long-term studies, both linear high-intensity and HIIT training is superior to lower intensities on the whole for maintaining and/or increasing cardiovascular fitness & lean mass, and are at least as effective, and according to some research, far better at reducing bodyfat.

A few final thoughts:
1.) Nutrition is vastly complicated and I do not pretend to know a fraction of what a nutritionist knows, I'm just sharing what works for me.

And a few final thoughts from me too sir: Despite me not agreeing with you, please understand that there's a lot of misinformation out there regarding fitness and nutrition. I'm not attacking you personally, I just find your information to be quite out of date and I'm posting so that you don't continue to misinform people. If I spew any misinformation I expect to be corrected and when done so I'll absolutely look into opposing arguments and change my stance when it calls for it.

To use an analogy, if I were to tell someone they could eat at a deficit, lift weights, wear a red hat, and consume adequate macro and micronutrients and in doing so they would successfully improve body composition and health markers, I would be correct and I could say that this worked for me. But they don't need the red hat, and they might not like wearing it.

Multiply that logic x 1000 and you end up with people doing all sorts of crap they don't have to do. It's complicated enough as is so it's best to get people straightened out, at least to some degree.

3.) Try not to combine fats & complex carbs. Both are turned into energy (fat) by your body and the combination will pack on the pounds. A perfect example is a PB&J sandwich…which is considered to be one of the worse sandwiches in the world…same with Mac & Cheese…both high fat and high carbs.

Food combination is completely bogus and has no scientific backing whatsoever. It literally makes no difference how you combine your macronutrients.

Here are some good sources for you:

www.alanaragon.com
www.bodyrecomposition.com
www.weightology.net
www.body-improvements.com

These are reliable sources that use science as the foundation for their statements, not dietary myths. These people are either top-in-their-field nutritionists and/or people who train others for a living but the commonality you'll see here is that they do their research and don't rely on anecdote or "what's in the magazines" to fuel their knowledge of nutrition.

Great information, Im following your facebook page now...