I'm Germa. I'm a fitness enthusiast who used to be, ummm, big. Now I'm proud of my still curvy but plus size figure and hope to empower women all over the world to love their bodies...while getting in shape.

One Thing I get asked about all the time is how I lost the first 50 pounds...because if you're really overweight, it's hard to get started. I'm not going to lie, I used some appetite suppressants and metabolism boosters to get started but those have slowed down in effectiveness so now I've transitioned into metabolic conditioning (HIT) training and carb cycling hoping to get to my target body.

How I got started:

By now you’ve probably seen garcinia cambogia free trial offers that claim that garcinia cambogia is the "holy grail of weight loss." Garcinia cambogia has been around for almost 3 years now and it’s been the most popular weight loss supplement ever since it was made famous by Dr. Oz on his TV show.

In fact, Dr. Oz is the one who originally claimed that garcinia cambogia was the "holy grail of weight loss." So this begs the question, is garcinia cambogia the real or just another scam? I was convinced it was a scam when I first saw it but being close to 100 pounds overweight made me finally break down and try it. Luckily for me too....

The Science of Garcinia Cambogia

The science behind garcinia cambogia is fairly straight forward, although heavily debated. My personal experience with using garcinia leads me to believe the science is right but lots of people think it's a sham. The accepted garcinia "facts"

Studies have found that garcinia cambogia contains hydroxycitric acid, or HCA extract. HCA extract is a potent fat burner that works in two main ways to actually facilitate weight loss:

Garcinia is an effective appetite suppressant: We’ve all been there when we’ve had the seemingly insatiable desire to eat unhealthy foods. There are several reasons why we may have been hungry for that ice cream or for those chips and cookies. One of the reasons we may find ourselves hungry is due to decreased serotonin levels.

Serotonin is a brain chemical that is responsible for regulating our mood and appetite. Several studies show that serotonin levels will influence our food cravings and that low serotonin levels will dramatically increase appetite.

Garcinia prevents unhealthy food cravings by increasing serotonin levels, thus holding these cravings at bay. It also appears that garcinia cam