Welcome to the first of my 3 part series on Dieting and Weight. This topic is on dieting in itself. The next part will include an actual diet along with grocery help. The last part will help you out with easy exercises that are targeted at losing fat. Enjoy!

There seems to be a phenomenon that dieting must be followed by some type of celebrity or ‘scientific breakthrough’. I’m here to tell you this simply isn’t true. The same fundamentals that existed for healthy weight is still true today. You need a healthy diet combined with daily activity that increases your heart rate (exercise). Diet pills that circulate around have a bottle full of promises, but they all say ‘combined with diet and exercise’. Why do we try to dance around this subject and not do anything properly? Even if you could start slimming down by simply popping a pill would it be worth it? This is highly doubted and let me tell you why. Weight gain is simply a by product of bad diet and/or overeating. You still have health risks of taking in unhealthy food. Secondly, about every ‘diet pill’ has either come under scrutiny, been sued, or killed a handful of people.

Thankfully many recent diet fads are at least ‘diet programs’ or ‘diet plans’. The diet simply consists of sending you healthy meals that just need to be heated up to eat. The thought here is that it’s so convenient you will eat the meals and combined with some exercise can lose weight. Pills are frankly mostly psychological in nature in that you feel like its going to help and hopefully you continue to diet. Diet pills have continually changed what they put in them, usually because it kills someone, but usually consists of ways to speed metabolism and help curb hunger. There are frankly too many diet pills to look at, but a good way to gauge a good diet pills is take a look at Dimmak LITE - weight loss pills from www.DimmakHerbs.com . This is an all natural herbal diet assistant that helps maintain and speed up your metabolism, curb appetite, and help you maintain a regular bowel movement. Lastly the pills help with body water maintenance.

Many people are familiar with water weight lose, whether they know it or not, as when people start a diet they lose 5-10 lbs in the first week. In subsequent weeks they can lose very little to nothing at all. This is when the diet crash comes in to play. People now believe they aren’t losing enough weight, the diet isn’t working, or they are doing something wrong. Water weight is an ever changing thing in your body in very small amounts. When you become active and eat good food, a 180 from previous, you end up shedding a lot of water the first week. It is now possible for you to have a slight over lose and your body brings water back in. You may now be exercising so your water intake and expel have increased.

‘Bottom line is a diet take some time. You can’t expect drastic changes in the first few weeks. You lose and gain water; you lose and gain pounds’

The best way to take error out of watching weight lose is to weigh yourself at the same time everyday, preferably in the morning first thing. Water weighs a lot! If you don’t believe me then weigh yourself before and after you pee. It can be ½ to an entire pound of weight!

When people begin to diet they also believe that they should be drinking some ridiculous amount of water. This is simply not true and is quite unhealthy for you. Men should be taking in about 10-12 cups of water and women 8-10. This includes food, drinks, and everything else with water in it! Make sure to gauge this out by how intense your exercising routine is. Overdrinking water will cause sodium and electrolyte balances in your body causing cramping and intense shooting of pain. This also over-works your kidneys which is the root of your energy.

On top of all of this I hate to be the bearer of bad news. Losing more than 2-4 lbs a week is quite unhealthy for you. You will not only be losing weight in an unhealthy way, but you will also be losing weight faster than normal skin adaptation. Bottom line if you aren’t losing weight properly you are going to have a handful of excess skin to deal with in the end.

For real diet success I would recommend contacting a nutritionist, person trainer, or dietician. I have helped many people lose weight and when it’s done right its semi-permanent. You can eat out when you want, grab some fast food here and there. This is because your diet staple has become healthy; a treat every now and then has little effect on you!

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If you want to find out what your western diagnosis is or what type of medication your going to get when you see your doctor you can easily go to WebMD and it can tell you how terminal your cough is.

However, some of us are proactive and use complementary medicines for disease and illness. Not every answer out there can be found on Google and other sites for alternative healing and help. This was the first blog to move into a proactive approach to helping those with questions. I can’t however get back and post to everyone’s question that is sent to me.

Introducing a way to get much more immediate answers, help others and interact in the holistic community. Myself, a friend of mine Russell, and www.DimmakHerbs.comhave come together to bring you a forum to parcipate and ask questions that people from many different backgrounds and disciplines can help you with! Simply go to www.AlternativeMedicineForums.com and sign up to start asking and participating!

Don’t pass up this opportunity for top notch help and interacting in a community that shares your views on Health, Nutrition, Medicine, Diet, Exercise, etc…
On top of General discussions and chit chat there are specific medicine categories on:
Oriental Medicine / Acupuncture
Naturopathic
Chiropractic
Physical Therapy
Ayurveda
Massage and Body Work
Homeopathy
and more…

Can’t wait to see you all there!

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I have seen other sites and pages on the Internet that are dedicated to the power of Garlic. It seems however that Garlic is just too simple of an herb for people to give it any credit. Garlic seems like a ‘grandma herbs’ or something that you just use for Italian cooking. Well, there is of-course some truth to this because to use an herb medicinally you have to use it in much higher potency than you put in your spaghetti. Once we get passed the herb as a simple food and get the right potency we are left with an herb that can be attributed to being able to treat all ailments. Lets see why-

Garlic is a tonifier, bile stimulator, metabolism increase, detox, and its antibiotic AND anti-parasitic (I’m sure I even missed something).
Garlic has a very pungent smell and one that lasts, as most of us know. This smell is due to compounds of sulfur, but that same compound is what makes it a great antibiotic. Since Garlic is also anti-parasitic you can use it as a ‘general herb’ for any time you are sick or even as prevention!
Medicinally as a herbalist the main usage for garlic is lung conditions, colds, flu’s, and infections. Garlic is for these acute conditions so it should be taken in smaller amounts and often. One of the best ways to make a preparation of Garlic is to make it into an oil that can be kept in a bottle in your cupboard. The reason is fresh Garlic has the better properties for invasion conditions and it makes for a very easily used product. Here is how:
Buy a bunch of fresh Garlic
Buy a small-medium bottle of olive oil in a glass bottle
Peel the Garlic and mash it up in a mortar or similar. Put all of your garlic in a glass jar and cover with your olive oil. Put the lid on your jar, shake it up and put it away for a 3-4 days or so. A warm environment would be better. After a few days simply strain the ‘Garlic Oil’ back into the olive oil bottle and put it in your cupboard.
Typically a good dose is going to be 1-3 teaspoons every 2-3 hours internally for respiratory issues, colds, flu’s, stomach issues, etc.
This oil can also be topically! Put a few drops in your ear for an earache or apply on small cuts and scrapes to aid in healing and repel of bacteria or parasites.
Lets not forget that you can just use this  oil to dip some whole wheat bread in etc at meals. I would also like to note here that my dog gets ear infections quite often. I simply feed him some garlic and put some of the oil in his ears and it clears up usually in about 3 days or so.

Now, lets also get back to Garlic as a building and tonic herb. Garlic and onions together can be added to about any meal, and I highly recommend it. Garlic and onions can be traced back to Egyptian workers to keep them healthy and strong while building the great pyramids.

Garlic also is absorbed by the body very quickly. If you eat large doses of it you can smell it on your skin just a few minutes after. Also you can try rubbing some on your feet and you will be able to taste it in your mouth.

Got intestinal, hook, pin, or ring worm? Other parasites? Well, you should probably go to the hospital, but in true Blog of Herbs fashion I have some help for you anyway. You need alot of Garlic, get it mashed up and in a jar for multiple uses. First, rub the garlic directly over the area of problem (or garlic oil). Do this about 3-4 times daily. Ingest a couple cloves worth of garlic every 2-3 hours. Make a tea of a hot cup of water and dissolve 1 ounce of Garlic in it, now take this as an enema 1-2 times daily.

So whats the bottom line? Lets have a little more respect for Garlic although no need to fall prey to rediculous claims and sham stories.

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Vanessa, 31 from Garner, NC asks me “what is a good herbal expectorant for phlegm? I am having allergic reactions to ?? I am not sure of. However, i seem to have alot of phlegm collecting in my lungs.”

Well Vanessa lets look at this. Phlegm is also called sputum and mucous. In Chinese Medicine phlegm does not really need to be a physical form coughed up from your lungs, but that is another discussion. Typically here is how phlegm develops. Phlegm starts as a form of dampness and then is decocted down into a much thicker substance. Your lungs are naturally a damp place and if that place is heated up and that fluid is cooked you have created some phlegm in there. This is a generalization, but a very common source of getting this phlegm. Now, typically phlegm will be a dark color from the heat. The lighter the color the more heat you have there. Usually you will end up with a more clear runny phlegm, a yellowish is more ‘cool’ but I will go over herbs to cover both of these.

Vanessa wasn’t very descriptive with her condition. So lets cover a nice general condition. Let’s add in a cough that will usually accompany the phlegm, which is your bodies natural instinctive way to expel the phlegm. What we want to do here is get rid of the phlegm by breaking it down and expelling it. We also want to soothe your throat, tonify your lungs and quiet your cough.
I like to use syrups here since we can soothe the throat at the same time and give an application that will coat the area leaving the medicine on the area. An alternative is a smoking mixture where you can use mullien, but lets move on to the syrup.

We want to use an expectorant, in other words something that expels the phlegm out. Comfrey and/or Playcodon are the good herbs here. To quiet the cough we will use the ultra powerful Kuan Dong Hua or Coltsfoot. This herb can be a little pricey but it works very well and tastes/smells wonderful. To compliment and soothe we will use Wild Cherry Bark that will also add some good flavor. I personally would use Lobelia here to open the system up to the treatment.

Gather these herbs and throw them in a stainless steel pot. You want 4oz of herb and add water to the pot to match the height or 500ml would be good. Bring to a boil and then simmer on low heat for over an hour. Keep decocting and cooking down to get a think substance but make sure not to burn anything. You can remove the herbs and throw the water back in and a add a bit of Slippery Elm pre-mixed with a little water and add it in there. This will thicken the decoction, but don’t add too much it will get slimy. After this add honey and or glycerin to the decoction to thicken.

1-3 teaspoons of this mixture as needed should do a great job to our condition here. Should you rather buy this ready to take, Dimmak Herbs Cough Herbal Remedies also sells a cough syrup that is similar to the formula I talked about and works great (go under products and its under ’syrups’). I feel a nice tingle in my throat and fast relief. On a final note your concoction should be kept refrigerated. This should now last you about 3-6 months.

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