Happy New Year everyone! With the new year comes renewed interest in health. And no where is that more evident than in the world of weight loss. It seems everyone has an interest in losing more weight, and for good reason. Excess fat tissue in the body is an inflammation engine that creates changes in our blood, organs, and muscles. Fat also creates Estrogen in both men and women. There is no shortage of advice out there on how to lose weight. Food companies, celebrities, and talk shows are buzzing with their opinions and products. But when you lose weight on many diet programs, you actually lose muscle and gain fat. The scale may show you don't weigh as much, but you are less healthy. How do you know if you are losing fat tissue, not muscle? A general rule of thumb is that if you are starving on your new "diet" then you are losing muscle and gaining fat. Starvation is very stressful for the body and it causes us to catabolize or breakdown our own muscle to feed ourselves. Yes, this approach will make the scale show a smaller number. And yes, it is a common diet for many people who think that starving or fasting is the correct way to lose weight. They call them "crash" diets because it crashes your health! There is a better way to annihilating your fat than to try and starve yourself. You can actually custom tailor your diet to your unique body type. Research has proven that human beings store fat in specific areas of the body. Where we store our fat - hips, stomach, buttocks, thighs - actually is under the control of hormones. Each person holds fat in the area of their body which corresponds to the hormone that is most out of balance. If you are trying to get rid of fat from a certain area of your body...if you find one area of your body always stores fat more than another...then you need to balance your hormones! As shown in the image above, we store fat in areas where we have hormone imbalances. Dr. Bob Rakowski, DC, who created the slide above, first brought this information to my attention two years ago. Dr. Bob has adapted this Bio Signature technique of targeted fat loss from Charles Poliquin. Mr. Poliquin is one the most highly sought after person trainers and strength coaches in the world. When two world-renowed experts recommend a new technique, we should all listen!The take away from all this is that human beings store fat based on hormones. Many of us have hormone imbalances because of blood sugar imbalance, psychological stress, environmental toxicity, physical laziness, etc. With a new year comes new interest in getting healthy and many people are trying to loose stubborn fat deposits. Start the year off right by correcting the underlying hormone imbalances and watch the fat disappear from your body.Yours in Health,Dr. Andrew