Q: Can drinking coffee help me lose weight by giving me energy?

A:   Drinking fluids and hydrating the body are essential to good health.  Dehydration can result in fatigue and contribute to poor performance on the job or in other activities.  Looking to caffeine to supply extra energy, however, may be a double-edged sword, depending upon how your body accepts it.

Caffeine stimulates the release of fatty acids into the bloodstream, and the body uses this fat as an energy source first, sparing limited glycogen stores in muscles and the liver for use later.  Caffeine can also facilitate and increase contractions of muscle fibers; but it is not without its hazards.  It can cause headaches, insomnia, nervous-system irritability and irregular heart beat.  High doses of caffeine act as a potent diuretic, stimulating a loss of fluids, vitamins and minerals that may result in thermoregulation problems during exercise in hot climates.

In large amounts, caffeine may also cause blood sugar levels to rise.  Because of this, people with diabetes should only drink a small amount of beverages containing caffeine.  For all of the latter reasons, Herbal Lite™ contains no added caffeine.

Q.  I’m taking Herbal Lite™, but what is the minimum number of calories I need to expend each week in physical activity to stimulate weight loss? 

A:  What we think you’re asking here is what is the minimum number of calories you need to burn in physical activity each week to encourage your body to lose weight.

A minimum expend calorie threshold of about 1,000 calories a week in physical activity and/or exercise should be the initial goal for beginning exercisers.  To meet this minimum in a busy week, walk 3 miles (about 45 minutes at a brisk pace) Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. 

Or walk two miles (about 30 minutes) four days each week.  If you have the time to exercise daily, your initial expend calorie target is 150 calories per day.  This can be accomplished with 30 minutes of walking.  

Pressed for time?  Divide up your activity by taking a 10-minute fitness break in the morning, at noon and in the evening. 

As fitness improves, gradually increase your calorie expend target to 2,000 calories a week (or about 300 a day).  This is how much energy it takes to change body composition significantly through exercise.  The average person will use about 70 calories for every 10 minutes of stair climbing.  Done five days a week over a year’s time this equals five pounds of fat weight loss or prevention of weight gain. 

Because the average person gains about 1.5 to 2 pounds a year after age 25, this modest level of physical activity could help prevent weight gain.  Using Herbal Lite™ in conjunction with your exercise will promote speedier weight loss by helping to stabilize your blood sugar level and stimulate your body’s metabolic rate.

To boost your metabolism even more, try adding Super Booster™ in addition to Herbal Lite™, which is designed to further increase energy, burn off fat faster, decrease hunger and cravings, which means you burn more calories. 

Q: Will taking Herbal Lite™ help me lose weight in specific areas like my stomach and hips?

A:   Unfortunately there is no weight loss product or diet that can guarantee weight loss in specific areas of your body.  The belief that we can somehow selectively zap fat from an offending area is a persistent misconception.  Neither can we exercise away specific areas of unwanted fat.  Problem areas are genetically determined on an individual’s body where excess fat tends to be stored. 

The only way to reduce fat deposited on any area of the body is to reduce the overall level of fat storage.  Herbal Lite™ helps with the overall fat reduction by promoting the burning of body fat as fuel as well as increasing your metabolic rate.   

What you can do to effect a trimmer look while Herbal Lite™ is doing its job is to tone muscle with exercises specifically aimed at muscles in the areas where you feel the greatest need as, for example, in your stomach or hip areas.  

Q: I am taking Herbal Lite™ and seeing results, but I wish I could take the weight off faster.  Any suggestions?

A: The first thing to ask is have you tried adding Super Booster™ in addition to your weight loss program? Super Booster™ is designed to enhance Herbal Lite™. Studies have shown as much as 60% increase. 

For many people, taking Herbal Lite™ works just fine, but others have a slower or more stubborn metabolism. There are many reasons for this. Sometimes it’s just a matter of genetics. In other words, the trait for having a tendency towards a slower metabolism is inherited from one or more relatives in our biological families. 

Other times, it happens because of years of unhealthy eating habits, such as grabbing junk food or skipping meals due to a busy lifestyle. What happens here is that the body gets programmed into a ‘fat-hoarding’ mode. In either case, adding Super Booster™ can often help jump-start your body  so it burns more calories.

There can also be undiagnosed medical conditions. Thyroid ailments may be one of the best known of these kinds of unknown medical conditions. If the situation seems to persist, make an appointment to see your doctor. Jot down a list of questions so you have them handy to take to the appointment.

Our Adren-Aid formula helps the body regulate blood sugar by regulating how the liver stores and releases glycogen (converted, stored sugar in your liver) into your system. Adren-Aid also helps sluggish metabolism.

Q: Must I follow a special diet when I take Herbal Lite™?

A: This is a frequently asked question.   One of the best features of Herbal Lite™ is that you should eat normally.  By that, we don’t mean patronizing fast food restaurants each day.  But it is important to eat three meals a day.  Starving yourself may cause an initial weight loss, but then your body slows your metabolic rate to conserve body fat.  So you can see that severely limiting food intake will work against you.  With Herbal Lite™ your body is not starving because you are eating three times a day; you just feel like eating less at each meal.  Furthermore, Herbal Lite™ increases your metabolism to utilize more calories throughout the day than you normally would, as well as helping you to reduce the cravings for sweets and fatty foods. Your diet will change for the better, but you will not have to make a conscious effort for that to happen. It’s weight loss made easy!

Q: I can tell that my body is getting trimmer, but I read in your information that “a change in your body size will seem out of proportion to the amount of weight you have lost at first”.  What does that mean?

A: We get this question a lot.  Herbal Lite™ contains calcium pyruvate, which not only helps your body to store glycogen (the fuel the muscle burns for energy) but also helps protect the muscle from being used as a fuel source.  This extra storage of glycogen will add some muscle weight, but more importantly it will signal to your brain that you do not need to re-fuel the muscles (i.e. eat).

Just know that muscle weighs more than fat, and you should go by how your clothes fit, not by what the scale says!  Your body composition is changing (what we want) to more lean muscle tissue and less fat (what we really want), but for the first month the scale may not reflect any changes.  In some cases we have had people lose inches from their frames, but their weight only dropped a few pounds the first month or so.  Understanding this process should help you to see the benefits of losing the “dead weight” of fat and keep the “good weight” of muscle.

Q: I love the Herbal Lite, and when I signed up for the reorder program you mentioned that I should make sure to eat breakfast.  I don’t have the time, and won’t that make me gain weight?

A: That is a good question.  A great many Americans don’t take the time to eat in the morning.  With our hectic schedules, cutting any corners to gain an extra five minutes in the day seems justified.  But to skip breakfast is doing your body a disservice!

Here’s why. Let’s look at the word breakfast. You are “breaking” your “fast”, which means you have gone for a period of time without eating (the 12 hours or so since dinner) and your metabolism has slowed during this time. The longer you go without eating, the more valuable the food becomes to your body, and it “hangs on” to the calories for dear life, literally! You end up teaching your body to store food for this extended fasting period. And we all know how the body stores food!

By eating a small, quick meal in the morning, you are getting your body out of the fasting mode and telling it to get to work. So grab an apple or bagel and cream cheese on the way out the door in the morning.  In the long run you’ll be glad you did.

Q: If I use Herbal Lite and go on the low-carbo diet, will I lose weight twice as fast?

A: In the very short run you may lose a few extra pounds this way, but read on! The low-carbohydrate craze has led many people to believe that carbohydrates are the primary source of weight gain. This idea is reinforced when people stop the strict diet, start eating carbohydrates (carbs) again, and gain back all of their weight, plus more!

What really happens is that the body becomes starved of glycogen, the main source of fuel for the muscles and brain. This forces the body both to hold on to the carbs that come in, and use protein as the primary fuel source. This protein breakdown, known as ketosis, is hard on the kidneys and is a cause of bad breath. Since the body was starved of carbs (any vegetables, fruits, cereals, breads, etc.), once they are resumed, the body will “over-store” this vital fuel source. This leads once again to excess weight gain.

Herbal Lite™ will help you to lose weight, keep it off and still allow you to maintain a sensible, balanced diet without starving your body of the nutrients it needs.  So watch out for those fad diets!

Q: Is it necessary for me to take a multivitamin while I’m losing weight?

A: It is advisable. By reducing your caloric intake, you may be reducing some of the vital nutrients that support your body’s needs. The soil in which many fruits and vegetables are grown is being depleted of its nutrients, and processing and even washing of these foods takes its toll on nutrients essential for maintaining our good health.  Given this, it makes sense to take a supplement everyday, especially when dieting.  This will help provide your body with the necessary nutritional support, as well as increase your energy level, strengthen your immune system and supply you with superior antioxidants to combat aging.

Q: I only needed to lose 15 lbs. and I’ve done that. But I like that I don’t crave snacks  anymore. What should I do?

A: We receive many questions about this. Once you have achieved your weight loss goals, but still like the added benefits found in Herbal Lite, you can simply reduce the amount you take by about half.  We call this a “maintenance dose”.  You are taking less while keeping the benefits you enjoy, and you’ll save a little money to boot!

Q: I’ve tried things with chromium picolinate, but you use chromium polynicotinate. What’s the difference?

A: Chromium is necessary for blood sugar stabilization. The main difference is that the chromium polynicotinate is chromium that has been bound to niacin (vitamin B3) and is therefore more readily absorbable than any other form. This means the body can actually make use of this trace mineral, and you get more of a benefit.

Q: I used to be able to diet and lose weight easily, but now I can’t.  Why?

A: There may be several reasons.  When you diet, your body’s metabolic rate slows down so that more food is stored as fat than if you were not dieting.  our body works against you further by slowing your metabolic rate to conserve body fat. Any time you stop dieting, you add more fat because your body thinks it’s going to starve, so it holds the fat it currently has and adds more as insurance against starvation, often causing a permanently depressed metabolic rate.  

Also, as you age, your metabolic rate naturally slows, and your body burns less fat than it did before. Typically, up to 30% of lost weight when dieting is muscle; this lowers your metabolic rate, further slowing the burning of calories. To stop the cycle of dieting-weight loss-added fat, it is important to lose only fat while maintaining, or even increasing, muscle. 

Herbal Lite™ is designed to protect lean muscle, and you aren’t required to diet while taking it.  Herbal Lite™ also helps to increase your metabolic rate along with your energy level, which results in the burning of more calories.

Q: In last month’s newsletter you discussed your Joint Rejuvinator™.  My husband and I are both going to try it.  I enjoy the Herbal Lite™ and have lost weight and we want to start walking, but we both have “bum” knees.  This sounds like the answer for us, but can I take them together?

A: We have your answer.  Once people begin to lose weight, the pressure on their joints is lessened, and they tend to get out and do more. If a person’s joints are not in perfect condition, this increased activity, along with the usual wear and tear of everyday life, may cause joint discomfort.  So combining your weight loss with improved joint function is a match that will put you on the road to good health.  To accomplish this, we suggest taking Herbal Lite an hour or so before meals, but due to the healing qualities of the herbs in Joint Rejuvenator™, it should be taken with a light snack or meals.

(Note: BioTreasures® no longer publish this newsletter.)

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Customer Testimonials

"Herbal Lite gave me the discipline to lose the weight I wanted."

-- Lost 84 lbs in 9 months
-- Nancy B., Lincoln, NE

"I started to cry. I had my husband step on the scale just to make sure it was working correctly!"

-- Mrs. T. J., Omaha, NE

"Herbal Lite has given me a new outlook on life, words can't express my gratitude."

-- Robert F., Omaha, NE

"I have lost four dress sizes and counting! I really love this stuff!"

-- Gina G., Albuquerque, NM

""I have tried all kinds of weight loss products. They either race my heart of make me jittery, or they just don't work. Herbal Lite really works!"

-- Phyllis H., Albuquerque, NM

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Share your weight loss success stories with us:  yourfriends@biotreasures.com