By Gail M. Davis

A steaming bowl of delicious soup isn’t just for the cold winter days. You could experience impressive results on the scale if you made soup a regular part of your diet!

A Purdue University study led researchers to report that a bowl of soup either before a meal or as a meal could help you consume less calories and feel full longer. Soup, unlike most liquids, has a high satiety effect, comparable in fact, to solid foods. This is one of the reasons why soup is so filling and satisfying.

How would you like to lower your caloric intake by 20%? A study at Penn State found that you could do that, just by eating a bowl of low-calorie soup before your meal. Except for the creamy ones, soups tend to be very healthy and lower in calories than many other choices.

Did you realize that making and eating soup could free up time that you spend in the kitchen? Sure, you might have to do some dicing and chopping to make many soups, but a big pot can be enjoyed for a whole week, or you can freeze a portion of it for a later date!

You could easily satisfy your vegetable requirement of 2-3 cups with a couple of bowls of soup. Imagine all the wonderful vitamins and minerals that you’ll be consuming. Squash, cauliflower, broccoli, tomatoes, peppers, onions, celery, carrots, and cabbage are all delicious and healthy when added to soup.

A large pot, filled with diced vegetables and low-fat, low-sodium chicken or vegetable broth, can make a delicious appetizer or meal in less than an hour. It takes no culinary skill to make a mouthwatering soup. Tasty, low-calorie recipes abound!

An additional benefit of eating low-calorie soup is the important fiber it provides. Adults should have 25-35 grams each day and eating vegetable-packed soup will help reach that goal in no time.

One complaint that manufacturers listened to loud and clearly was the sodium issue that is often associated with soup. Many of them now make low-sodium versions. If you make the soup yourself however, you can control the ingredients and not have to worry about this problem.

So if weight loss is your goal, quit thinking of soup as a winter food and start thinking of it as a daily necessity. Don’t forget that there are wonderful versions of soup served cold, and there are even soups made from fruit! Enjoying soup as an appetizer or as a meal will help you slim down while feeling satisfied.

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A suggestion I would like to add is that if you are rushed for time, many grocery stores offer pre-chopped vegetables in the produce section, as well as in the frozen foods department. (You may have to pay a higher price for the convenience, but it  can save you a lot of time, and still allow you to prepare a healthful meal.)

By Wendy D Hearn

If you want to lose fat you probably also want to learn what the secrets are to doing this. The secret is to ensure that you’re doing the right things to burn your fat and not use any quick fix methods which don’t work for fat burning and leave you disappointed with the results after. Here are 5 things you need to be doing to ensure you’re burning your fat.

Eat breakfast The first thing you need to make sure you’re doing is to eat breakfast every day. This starts your metabolism again in the morning after a night of fasting. A well balanced and healthy breakfast gets your metabolism going early in the day and this helps your body to burn fat.

Use interval training Adding interval training to your exercise routine helps your body to burn fat. This type of training is based on a slow – quick method of changing your heart rate. For example, you can increase the fat burned during your exercising by keeping the body guessing(muscle confusion) such as walking at a constant heart rate and increasing it with little bursts of running or sprinting added in.

Include strength training Strength training increases your muscle mass which in turn demands more fuel just to exist and hence will help you to burn fat even when you’re doing very little. The increase of lean muscle in your body also helps your appearance as its firmly toned up. You may choose to add some strength training to an existing workout or add it in as a separate routine.

Reduce or eliminate fizzy drinks Fizzy drinks have a high sugar content and if this sugar is not used up by the body then it turns to stored fat. Instead of sugary drinks move over to drinking more water. If you think you cannot stop drinking soda, at least cut back the quantity you drink each day.

Reduce saturated fats If you want to lose body fat, then you need get rid of foods that contain unhealthy saturated fats such as the greasy and fried foods. These need to be replaced with healthier choices. Instead eat more baked or grilled foods along with lean meats such as turkey or chicken.

Now you have some ideas of what you need to do to lose your fat. I encourage you to get started with at least one of these ideas today and keep learning how you can burn even more fat.

About the Author:

Discover how to triple your fat loss and lose inches of your body to look better and feel great! Wendy Hearn has helped thousands of people to weight loss success

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These are good tips, useful, and not too demanding.

I have often said that skipping meals is not a good way to lose weight, eating breakfast is important, but make healthy choices (for example Canadian bacon is a better choice than regular bacon, if you need to eat meat with breakfast, since Canadian bacon is lower in fat than regular bacon.) and don’t be limited by what you may think of as “traditional” breakfast foods.

As far as exercise goes, it’s important to be sure to discuss exercising with your doctor, especially if you are out of shape, and have not exercised in some time. Be sure what you are planning is safe for you. (Getting a personal trainer to help design a workout for your goals can be very helpful.)

I agree that eliminating sodas is a good thing. Research has never shown that diet sodas help you lose weight, in fact, the opposite seems to occur, people who drink diet sodas seem to gain weight, perhaps because the artificial sweeteners confuse the body, and don’t really satisfy cravings for sweet flavors. And some research suggests that sodas may contribute to osteoporosis.Good reasons to eliminate them from your diet.