Weight Loss Lies

Weight Loss Lies

The most nonsensical piece of advice—don’t think of this as a diet, think of it as a lifestyle. A weight loss regimen’s end goal is to reach a reasonable weight and eat normally to maintain it. Who would start restricting their calories if it never ended?  And I’m sorry, but while you will be healthier eating more fruits, vegetables, and lean protein and less processed junk, you won’t lose weight simply by doing this.

You have to eat fewer calories than your body needs before it will tap fat stores to make up for the deficit. Your body isn’t stupid. No matter how much fiber-rich, calorie-empty foods you eat to fill yourself up, your body will react. Especially in the beginning, hunger will haunt you. Then your body will adjust and lower your metabolism to require fewer calories. Exercise can raise the metabolism and lessen this effect but you still have to slog through it to find the balance.

And no matter what the promises of any diet or supplement, the body cannot lose more than one pound of pure fat a week for women. Men can lose one and a half to two pounds a week. Anything else is excess water or worse, muscle, if you don’t have the proper intake of protein or try to severely restrict your calories. We want instant results, but not going to happen. You have to set your mind to be in this for the long term. The more pounds you need to shed, the more overwhelming a task it can seem.

Exercise

Most know that exercise adds muscle, which weighs more, so determine your fat loss by inches rather than pounds when first starting to exercise. The latest studies suggest that exercise is less important to losing weight than diet. Exercising makes you hungrier and people tend to eat more, they say. Duh. If you are following a specific diet program with a prescribed amount of calories, you may have more cravings, but if you follow the program, you will lose weight. If is the problem.

The Diet Wheel

I have spent my life either gaining or losing weight. I’ve managed to maintain one weight for no more than a few weeks. They call it yo-yoing. It’s a wheel you start one way to lose weight. You lose focus or heart and it starts backtracking and you gain weight. It’s very hard to stop the wheel. I haven’t found the solution, and of course it’s getting harder with age to lose weight. If anyone has found something that worked for them—losing and keeping the pounds off—please share.