THE ACT of depriving your body of food and its essential vitamins goes against the basic law of nature. To purposely put yourself in a state of starvation is to die a slow death. Why on earth would anyone knowingly do that to himself?
When I started my journey to fitness and health I had a lot of trial and error along the way. I had to find a way to keep moving forward as far as my health was concerned. Sometimes, my experimentation would work but not for long. But eventually my efforts paid off and I found a program that worked for me and my clients. What I discovered was that one must eat real food to lose weight and begin a healthier life. That’s right, you heard me correctly. You must eat real food (not fake, chemical-laden powders, drinks or food) to lose weight.
How much you eat and exactly what you eat makes all the difference in whether you will win the battle against your weight. Our bodies need carbohydrates, protein and fat to survive. If you deprive yourself of any one of these you will be out of balance. The food we eat has a huge effect on how we think, feel and act. Simply reducing calories won’t necessarily result in weight loss. The body is an extremely functional machine when treated properly.
In the simplest terms, I have always had this mental image of little men inside our bodies shoveling coal into a big hot furnace. If they run out of coal to keep the fire burning, the stove just shuts down. Putting fewer calories in your body won’t solve the problem because your body is meant to work at its maximum. If you don’t feed it properly it cannot run as efficiently as it should. You’ve got to give those little guys the coal to keep the fire burning. If the body is not sure where its next calories are coming from, it views any sudden drop in caloric intake or energy supply as a threat. The body readjusts itself to adapt to that change and learns to get by on very little coal (calories). That’s why when people go on a very low calorie diet for a period of time they will lose weight. But as soon as they go back to their regular eating habits, they will put the weight back on because the body has set itself up for the famine. That is why we need eating habits that we can live with everyday as opposed to a diet that is not intended for long-term use.
I have seen every diet fad come and go over the years and what I have discovered (especially after trying every one of those fads) is that there is no substitute to eating a balanced diet. There are some quick fixes but you cannot sustain weight loss and live a happy normal life on those programs. I admit that I have gone on “crash” diets in the past to get in perfect shape and body weight during my competition days. I’m not saying that once in a while you can’t go that route. But this need in your life can be and will be greatly diminished by changing your relationship with food once and for all.
A lot of my clients did a “crash” diet that made them lose 15 to 20 pounds in a month but only to bounce back after they went back to their normal type of eating. I advise a diet program that is not one of deprivation, starvation, or some quick fix fad diet. It is an honest-to-goodness natural way to live your life. It is doable, attainable and above all, it is long-term.
Starvation
You are usually at one extreme or the other if you are a typical yo-yo dieter (losing the weight and gaining it back). It is simply an unnatural relationship with food. This up-and-down approach only makes you feel worse in the long run because it does not teach you how to live as you should. Somehow I figured out that I would never have to live a life of starvation again if I could reconcile the feast and strike a balance. My overall idea is not only to show you how to lose weight but to teach you how to be a healthier version of yourself. You can be thin and unhealthy and likewise heavy and healthy.
I know a lot of people who would fit each of these descriptions. My intention is to share my experience in dealing your problem of losing weight effectively and help you change your approach and relationship to food and eating. In my case I wanted to eat foods that I liked and to teach myself how to really taste I was eating. The results were dramatic and comfortable.
It has taken a lot of fine tuning and acceptance to realize that even on those days where I might follow this program exactly as I should, it is in no way a failure. There are times especially weekend or special occasions like birthdays that I overeat. I’m human and so are you and there will be those days for sure. Just knowing that you can do something to counter balance the indulgence should help you confirm that this is a lifestyle program and not just another diet.
I think women today are not as interested in their health as they are in their weight and jeans size. Thin is in, right? Wrong! Health is in. In fact, if asked, most men would prefer a woman who has an athletic body over the stick-thin models on the covers of fashion magazines. According to a survey conducted by health experts, 30 percent of most adults are overweight. The reason few dieters win the war against their weight is that most are victims of their own bodies. They have successfully messed up their metabolism over a period of years and they simply can’t figure out how to undo the damage. There is a simple, practical way to maintaining your weight.
In theory, the calories consumed must equal the calories you burn. So logic tells you that reducing your caloric intake should equal weight loss, right? Well, sorry to tell you, not exactly. A lot of variables impact individual results. Factors such as genetics, metabolism, emotional state, physical activity, and of course eating habits, the types of food you are eating, the quality, timing, and the combinations, are just some of the elements that can affect your ability to lose weight. So what do you do. There’s a ton of conflicting information out there and no wonder. Even the experts cannot agree on what is best approach to weight loss. The only two things they can agree on are that regular exercise is very much important and that obesity is unhealthy. But there is so much more I have learned about weight loss and health. Some critics and opinions that your chance of sustaining long-term weight loss with diet is about the same as winning the lotto. Health authorities claims that despite the millions and billions of pesos spent each year on weight loss, very few people will reduce their weight to their desired level and even fewer will maintain that weight loss. Well, guess what this is telling us, folks: Diets do not work!
With all the programs available to you, how can you know which is the safest and most effective one? It is truly a game of diet roulette and in the end you may be the one who gets the bullet.
The idea of dieting and weight loss, like most industries, is a money-making machine. Every person I know who wants to lose weight is willing to spend hard-earned pesos on it. There has never been any convincing truth that short-term weight loss will result in improved long-term health for the average overweight dieter. In fact, the weight usually returns and that in itself can be more detrimental to your health than being overweight. Most dieters are choosing programs that promote quick weight loss and not a lifestyle change. Most of those programs never address the bigger issues of how a dieter relates to food or how to be healthy or how to maintain a normal existence while eating in a restaurant. Eating a candy bar (diet bars) as substitute for lunch is not going to cut it as a way of life. Maintaining the rigidity of these programs is impossible for most people. But most importantly factoring in all the other aspects that can affect your results is extremely important to better your odds in this game of roulette. In conclusion, eating a well-balance diet, eating healthy foods (a combination of protein, fats and carbohydrates) is still the best way of losing weight.