Summer is here. According to a survey by Slendertone, the thought of bearing all on the beach causes lots of women stress, including me initially when your figure deos not look great.

You think that stop eating chips, chocolate and just having salad everyday would solve your problem. Instead, you find yourself not losing weight at all.

WHY?

Under the impression, anything that is cold and green food means healthy and waist-friendly. Hot and stodgy food means lots of calories and fat. Unfortunately, it is not true all the time. Carina Norris, a nutritionist explained “Many seemingly innocent summer salads are packed with fat and calories. Anything containing croutons, dressing, potato salad or cheese probably contains more calories and fat than a regular sandwich. Always ask for the dressing on the side so you can add it sparingly.”

Do you know that McDonald’s Crispy Caesar chicken salad weighs in at a whopping 530 calories and 30g fat? Even eating a Big Mac is better off as it has only 493 calories.

For instance, eating at Pizza Express, you will think that eating Chicken Pollo Salad is a good choice. Wrong again. It contains 739 calories and 43g fat – compared with one of the restaurant’s hot, tasty Margherita pizzas which boast a more bikini-friendly 668 calories. “Don’t automatically assume a salad is a healthy option,” says Carina.

Carina’s suggestion: Forget about butter. Ask for only a small sprinkling of cheese, get salad on the side and you’ll only be getting around 450 calories. Do not keep thinking that a hot and filling food is always too much calories for you. Sometimes, a jacket potato with plain tuna or baked beans is very filling, and does not cause any increment in your calorie-intake.

According to the latest study by researchers from the University of California Los Angeles that adding some spicy hot peppers to a healthy meal may help you to burn a few extra calories and a bit more fat. If you do not like spicy food, you can still take the not-so spicy peppers which can also work to burn fat and speed up metabolism.

The researchers from UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles) Center for Human Nutrition led by David Heber, professor of medicine and public health, found eating dihydrocapsiate (DCT), a non-burning substance related to capsaicin, the pepper-derived substance that does burn, “can have the same potential benefit as hot peppers at least in part by increasing food-induced heat production. They were also able to show that DCT significantly increased fat oxidation, pushing the body to use more fat as fuel.”

They studied the before and after body weight and fat of 34 men and women consuming a low-calorie liquid meal replacement. Three times a day, a third of them were given a placebo pill, a third were were given a pill containing 3 milligrams of DCT, and a third were given a 9 milligram pill.

Those DCT doses weren’t big, Heber says. They’re like a generous sprinkle of seasoning.

What they found was that the people given the most DCT after a meal showed an increase in heat production and fat burning without the burning sensation. That is, DCT acted in their G.I. tracks the way hot peppers do — boosting metabolism. And, the chemical structure of DCT is such that it doesn’t fit the sensors on our tongue that detect pain, so no burning, Heber says.

They found that the 9 milligram, three-times-a-day dose helped the average-sized woman burn an extra 100 calories a day. No magic bullet, but a help, Heber says. (You can download the PowerPoint presentation here).

Still, as boring as it sounds, an overall good diet and regular exercise are the key to weight loss. “If you have chocolate cake with your chili pepper, you’re not going to lose any weight,” he says.

Have you heard about Nancy Makin who managed to lose 530 pounds over just 3 years without any fancy diet or exercise program?

Nancy Makin weighed an astounding 703 pounds in May 2000. She was forty-five years old and suffered from diabetes and other obesity-related maladies. The weight gain started after a divorce and fear at her job. Makin began overeating to avoid her feelings and soon she just couldn’t stop.

After 12 years of weight gain, Makin had spiraled into despair. The more food she ate, the more shame she felt, and nothing could stop the cycle. At her heaviest, she wore a skirt with a 108-inch waistband and missed her son’s wedding and father’s funeral.

Then one day her sister gave her a computer. Inspired by the friends she’d made online and no longer judged by how she looked, Makin finally took control of the situation.

“The anonymity of the computer gave me access to a world that would have just as well have left me alone, alone to die but I did not,” Makin wrote in a letter describing her saga.

It was the gift of getting online that ultimately let Makin escape her misery. Before she knew it, the political junkie was surfing through chat rooms and making friends, beginning to find value in herself again.

“I was being loved and nurtured by faceless strangers,” she said in 2007. “Friends accepted who I was based on my mind and soul. “I was so busy and happy to get up every morning that I like to say I lost weight in my fingers first.”

Conclusion: Makin basically changed her mindset and her perception of herself. It is her own psychological transformation that helped her to lose all that weight without diet pills, exercise or even a diet. She just stopped gorging.

“I achieved this on my own, in a natural way, with no surgical procedures having been performed. No particular ‘diet’ plan was followed; no pills, potions or ab-crunching exercises played a part in my recovery,” she wrote in a congratulatory letter to herself.

After losing 530 pounds, she wanted people to know that crucial first step is realizing that the weight is not the problem.

Advice: Unless you focus on what’s going on inside and start to feel better about yourself, you won’t be able to stop the cycle. It is important to find contentment and value in yourself by reaching out and doing something not for you, and the weight will come off as a side effect.”

Now: Today Makin weighs a healthy 170 pounds and hopes others will be inspired by her story to take back their own lives.

Are you inspired by her story? I am. In fact, I just ordered a copy of her book from Amazon. Have you?

Do you want to achieve the same success as Nancy Makin? Get her book – 703: How I Lost More Than a Quarter Ton and Gained a Life today and start to lose weight seriously for good.