Gaining or losing weight does not have any direct connection with the metabolism of your body. Your weight is determined by the total calories consumption against the total calories burned. Weight loss takes place when you consume fewer calories.

Metabolism refers to the ability of the body to convert food into energy. During the metabolic stage, calories combine with oxygen in order to emit the energy your body requires to function effectively.

The amount of calories your body is required to burn each day is known as total energy expenditure. It consists of the following three factors:
* Although your body is at rest, it demands energy for basic needs such as fuel for organs, blood circulation, breathing, hormone level adjustment, and cell repair and growth. The basal metabolic rate (BMR) refers to the calories consumed to perform these functions. It represents 2/3 to 3/4 of daily calories burned on a daily basis.

* Calories are likewise required for performing other tasks such as digestion, transfer, and storage of food. It makes up 10 percent of daily calories consumed. Majority of the body’s energy needs for food processing remains steady and constant.

* Physical tasks such as sports, walking to the store, chasing dogs, and any other activity makes up the remaining calories used. You regulate the amount of calories being burned depending on the duration, intensity, and frequency of your activities.

At first, there is logic to believe that a considerable gain in weight or being overweight has something to do with low metabolism or with a condition known as underactive thyroid gland or hypothyroidism. The truth of the matter is that it is quite unusual for excess weight to be associated with low metabolism.

Majority of people who are not overweight do not have an underlying condition called hypothyroidism. But with a medical diagnosis it is possible to determine whether weight has something to do with a medical condition.

It is more likely for weight gain to consume more calories than what your body burns. In order to lose weight, you need to generate an energy deficit by consuming lesser calories and increasing the amount of calories burned by performing physical activity, or both if possible.

If you have identical physical and functional characteristics, it would be easier to calculate for the standard energy needs. However, there are several factors that have an impact on calorie requirements:
* For proper functioning of the body, you need to have more calories for bigger body mass compared to a smaller body composition. Likewise, muscles require more burning of calories than fat. Thus, more muscles in association with fat means a higher metabolic rate.

* As you become older, the number of muscles decrease and fat makes up most of your weight. At the same time, your metabolism rate naturally slows down. These developments contribute to the reduction of your calorie needs.
* On the aspect of sex, men usually have less body fat and muscles compared to women with a similar age and weight. This is the reason for a higher basal metabolic rate in men than women. This also explains why they burn more calories.

When considering weight loss, you need to bear in mind the factors mentioned above. Making drastic changes in your diet will not do the trick but will make you susceptible to complications in your body.

Yoga is often portrayed in the media using visuals of people standing on their heads or lying on the floor in some twisted position. No wonder, people get the impression that one has to be really into it to practice yoga. What they don’t know is that yoga can be practiced by anyone, even by handicapped and old people. One type of yoga such people can pursue is called chair yoga, one of the least physically straining practice of yoga.

What is chair yoga?

It is not really some type of yoga, which came from the Indian culture. It is called such simply because the practitioner uses a chair as support to practice yoga positions. Those who practice chair yoga don’t need to lie on the floor or stand for a long time or do some contortionist positions. With a chair as props, certain yoga positions become easier to do for practitioners. That is because chair yoga is designed for those who are not so capable of doing those things. They are the elderly, the disabled, and the injured.

Aside from the disabled and elderly, who else can engage in chair yoga?

If chair yoga is designed for the disabled and the elderly, why can’t younger and more physically able people do it? It can be done by practically anybody. Pregnant women can do it as well as people who have health problems. They just have to make sure that their yoga instructors know everything about their condition.

Parents can also do chair yoga with their kids; that way, they get to exercise as well as spend time with each other. And who else can practice chair yoga more often than those who are virtually glued to chairs? They are the office workers who stair at the computer all day, the commuters and frequent travellers who spend significant time in transportation vehicles, and of course, students who have to wait for their professors in class.

What are the benefits of chair yoga?

Like the practitioners of regular yoga exercise, those who have practiced chair yoga can attest to the good physical effects of chair yoga. Because of its meditative practices, chair yoga reduces stress levels, helps you concentrate more easily, and gives you a more balanced mental state. By relieving stress, this type of yoga also removes one of the factors that induce over-eating; thus, it also helps one reduce weight. It can increase one’s flexibility and endurance. Chair yoga can also prevent or slow down the progress of cardiovascular and bone diseases such as osteopenia, osteoporosis, and scoliosis. Plus, it is proven to improve the health conditions of people with asthma, high blood pressure, fatigue, anxiety, carpal tunnel syndrome, multiple sclerosis, arthritis, diabetes, and vertigo, among others.

What basic chair yoga exercises can one practice?

Chair yoga exercises are easy to do because they are commonly breathing, meditation, and stretching exercises. One basic technique is deep breathing: You place your hands on your ribs. Slowly inhale while feeling your rib cages expand, then slowly exhale while slightly pulling your abdominal muscles in. Another is the neck stretch combined with deep breathing: Take a deep breath as you tilt your head back to the fullest but comfortable degree you can, then exhale as you tip your head forward and down until your chin touches your chest. And there’s the twist where you hold the back rest of the chair with your right hand, while you sit on the chair’s front edge. Put your left hand on your right knee. Inhale deeply and then exhale as you slowly twist your torso as far as you can comfortably.

1) Change your diet
In the few days before you start your natural colon cleanse, start having a healthier eating habit. If you have been eating unhealthy foods in the past such as fast food and processed products, now’s the time to change that and start choosing healthier options. Caffeine, alcohol and other sugary treats should also be avoided. Basically, it’s just about preventing more hard-to-digest foods and toxins from entering your system so it will be easier to get rid of the wastes that are currently residing in your colon. Instead of your usual proteins, sugar and carbs, try to take in more fiber, which you can get from fruits, vegetables (especially the green, leafy ones), nuts and whole grains (such as bran and oats).

2) Cleanse with juice
One method of natural colon cleansing is the juice fast, wherein you take in only water, vegetable and fruit juices for a few days. Many people prefer this method since fruits and vegetables are known to carry plenty of vitamins and antioxidants. Aside from that, ingesting it in juice form makes it easier to digest and process. There is a wide variety of fruits and vegetables that are usually blended together for a great drink. You can simply create your own or follow many of the recipes that you can easily find online for a delicious and healthy concoction you can drink throughout the day.

However, before you choose this type of cleansing, it is important to check if you are healthy enough to go on this kind of fasting. If you have an illness such as kidney disease, nutritional deficiency, ulcer or any other chronic disease, or if you are pregnant, it is best to consult with your doctor first, or to avoid this kind of cleansing at all.

3) Introduce psyllium husk in your diet

Fiber is considered as nature’s broom and works wonders in cleaning our digestive system. Psyllium husk is another great source of insoluble fiber and is even used in those colon cleansing kits sold commercially. Of course, you don’t have to buy kits to get your dose of psyllium husk. You can easily find this in drugstores in capsule or powder form, which you can take as supplements to your diet. One thing to remember though, is that powdered psyllium husk needs to be mixed with liquids before ingesting, otherwise you can get problems in your system.

4) Add some bentonite clay

Another natural product used in colon cleansing is bentonite clay, which is formed from volcanic ash. This has been used for centuries as a healing agent for internal or external ailments. When consumed, bentonite clay acts as a detoxifying agent by pulling the toxins in the intestine towards itself and carrying them out of the body through regular bowel movement. You can also find bentonite clay in the same place where you can buy psyllium husk, and can also be bought in either capsule or powder form. You can mix both psyllium husk and bentonite clay into your drink to make a much more effective colon cleanser.

5) Take probiotics and prebiotics
When we flush out toxins, waste and bad organisms from our body, we also end up inevitably flushing out some of the good bacteria that combat the bad ones. We need more of this good bacteria, known as probiotics, to maintain the proper balance in our system and promote better health. This is why we need to replenish our body’s supply by eating yogurt, cultured milk, or other cultured dairy products. They also come in capsule form for easier consumption. Whether we follow a natural colon cleanse method or do it some other way, we still need prebiotics, food particles that we don’t digest but serve feed the probiotics for them to grow and thrive.