You are "fearfully and wonderfully made" declares a passage in the Bible and it is the key to conquering the battle over losing weight and keeping it off. No, this is not a Bible lesson, it's an explanation of how to boost your metabolism, that is, how to tune up your internal engine to lose weight and keep it off.

Overweight people very often blame metabolism for their troubles with losing the extra pounds and they are correct, because speeding up metabolism is known to help burn more calories. Nevertheless, in order to control your metabolic rate, you need to know exactly what metabolism really is.

Simply put, metabolism is how your body responds physically and emotionally to demands made upon it. Metabolism is determined by physical and emotional energy moving through your body. Or, to put it another way, your body is more complex than the most expensive automobile in the world and it, like that expensive automobile, needs to be kept in tune, the right fuel used, and driven hard at times for best performance. You control your metabolism by speeding it up or slowing it down like you would stepping on the accelerator of your automobile.

If you wish to lose body fat continuously for many months until you reach your target weight, then work at boosting your metabolism rather than switching from one diet to the next. A controlled metabolic rate works better than any fad diet or herbal remedy because it automatically regulates your body weight based upon the demands of your everyday life. The key is finding the right combination of food and exercise that provides all the energy you need to look and feel fit everyday.

The problem with dieting alone is that many of the diet plans on the market actually cause the metabolism to slow down. A decreased metabolic rate is often the very reason that weight loss progress suddenly stops. Increasing exercise frequency may still have no effect at this stage. Plus, reducing food intake doesn't help because there is a net loss of protein in the overall muscle mass, and this net loss continues to lower your metabolic rate even further. This is when the body has adapted to the lower calorie intake. In effect, you are not putting the right fuel into your body to give you that balance of food and exercise. It appears complicated but it's really simple once you understand how your personal metabolism works.

Losing abdominal fat is probably the #1 complaint by all dieters. Before you decide to resort to drastic measures, consider these facts:

A high-intensity cardio workout that really increases your heart rate will make you lose the most calories and represent the most significant short-term metabolic booster; between 20 and 30 percent. However, it won't have a permanent effect on your metabolism because, after your workout, your metabolism will return to its previous level over several hours. While, you will continue burning extra calories during this slow down, this alone will not result in a fine tuned metabolism.

The diet pill industry has about the same success as the quit smoking industry - less than 50% of people succeed over a long term. This is simply because diet pills, like extreme exercise, are short-term solutions and can cause physical harm.

You would not drive that expensive automobile at full speed all the time, would you? Of course not because you know that such behavior will destroy the machine. The human body is no different.

So, what to do next? Go on the Internet and do research on metabolism. Talk to your doctor to see if they understand the relationship between metabolism and weight loss. If they do, have them provide a weight loss plan that fits your age, gender, and physical condition.