Metabolic Optimizers:
Everything your body does burns calories: breathing, snoring, fantasizing, biting your fingernails, reading articles on weight loss. You burn up energy at varying rates throughout the day. Your metabolism is a measure of how fast your body burns calories. Exercise is the quintessential metabolic optimizer, speeding up calorie use and burning up energy.
Salicin, made from willow bark and related to aspirin, also "optimizes" metabolism. So does ephedra (ma huang). Ephedra is not recommended for those with high blood pressure; all persons should consult a health practitioner before using.

Diuretics:
Water can weigh you down, diuretics can help you drain some of this moisture. Diuretic herbs include: corn silk, thyme, uva ursi, juniper berries, oat straw, hyssop, yarrow, hydrangea, dandelion, parsley and alfalfa. Among nutrients, vitamin B6 can help clear water. (Talk to your health practitioner before indulging in B6.)

Appetite Suppressants:
Certain natural supplements can help you eat less by decreasing your appetite. For example, studies show that hydrocitric acid (HCA), derived from a South Asian tree called the garcinia cambogia, can make you less hungry, help you eat less and inhibit your body's fat production. In a study presented at the 7th European Congress on Obesity (Intl Jrnl of Obesity 20 (4), 1996: 75), 30 people given HCA for eight weeks each lost about 14 pounds. These researchers noted that people taking HCA enjoyed a significantly reduced urge to eat.

Lipotropic Substances:
Under certain circumstances, your body may be stimulated by particular supplements to move fat off those troublesome areas and burn it in mitochondria, tiny fat furnaces located in each cell. These substances include L-carnitine, lecithin, pyruvate, chromium, choline and HCA.

Mood Boosters:
An emotional roadblock may stand between you and the increased physical activity you need to burn off calories. Mood boosters like St. John's wort are believed to remove those blocks by pumping up your emotions.

Also helpful: coenzyme A, a natural substance manufactured by the body that takes part in fatty acid metabolism. (It may also take part in limiting stress damage and retarding certain aging processes.) Supple-ments supplying the components of coenzyme A are now available.

Another supplement enjoying growing acceptance is chitosan, a substance made from marine organisms such as crabs and shrimp. Derived from the exoskeletons of various shellfish, chitosan is supposed to prevent the body from absorbing fat. Some experts also believe that aside from aiding weight loss, chitosan, when taken along with an adequate exercise program, may lower cholesterol and heart disease risk.

Another natural substance that can help you lose weight and lower your chances of heart disease is fiber, the indigestible carbohydrates found in vegetarian foods.

A study in the Journal of the American Heart Association (10/27/99) that looked at the dietary habits of almost 3,000 people between the ages of 18 and 30 found that those who ate the most fiber weighed about 8 pounds less than the folks who ate the least.

The people who indulged in fiber also had lower blood pressure, exercised more than the low-fiber people and smoked less.

No Matter What You Do
No matter what you do to lose weight, you should change your lifestyle in such a way that you can maintain your weight loss, not merely lose pounds today only to risk putting the weight back on tomorrow. Therefore, your weight loss efforts should induce a gradual weight loss and include measures that you can sustain over a long period of time.

How much exercise should you perform in order to maintain your weight? Three recent studies show that the optimal amount be be about twice as much as experts have traditionally recommended.

This research appears to indicate that the folks who are most successful at losing weight and keeping their waistlines slim burn about 2,800 calories a week working out. That translates to about an hour of walking every day, according to Rena Wing, MD, who teaches at the University School of Medicine in Providence, Rhode Island.

Up the Weight Loss Staircase
While many weight loss experts have advocated burning about 1,000 calories a week in exercise to lose weight, Wing's research shows that may be too little for some dieters to successfully slim.

One of the weight loss studies, reported to the 1999 Annual Meeting in Charleston, North Carolina, of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity, found that of more than 2,5000 people who dropped an average of 60 pounds and kept if off for 6 years, the average weekly activity level burned up about 2,800 calories. The exercises included jogging, walking, stair climbing and other prolonged activity.

Yet another study performed by Dr. Wing found that the most successful slimmers burned more than 2,500 calories a week.

Minutes Per Pound
What do those exercise levels mean in terms of time strolling or jogging the streets? Dr. Wing's group of researchers found that people who spent 200 minutes a week exercising lost more pounds that those who topped out at 150 minutes a week.
In this research, working out for 200 minutes consumed about 2,600 calories, while 150 minutes used up about 1,300 calories.
In addition, the exercising weight losers often performed a variety of exercises which included aerobic activities like walking, biking, skiing, jogging, stair climbing, hiking and swimming, but also incorporated anaerobic activities like weight lifting and isometrics.
The lesson for those wishing to shed unwanted, unsightly extra pounds: Slow, steady and consistently persistent may be the key for your victorious race to the weight loss finish line.

Think of yourself as a tortoise in the contest to drop pounds. You may not race at a blinding speed comparable to the flighty hare, but, using your long term weight-loss plan, the extra body fat will come off and stay off.