Fat Loss! Stop and Think for a Second.
Are you aware that 3500 calories is one pound of fat? If you want to lose one pound in a week, you have to cut out 3500 calories, so to lose five pound in a week, you have to cut out 17,500 calories.
But the thing is, the average person only takes in about 2000 calories a day, or 14,000 per week, and that is pretty much what it takes to sustain your health. In other words, to diet away five pounds in one week you can’t eat anything, ANYTHING, for the whole entire week, PLUS one day before AND one day after the week. An average daily food intake of 2000 calories would need nine days of zero, zip, nada, none, no food whatsoever to lose 5 pounds. The problem should be obvious at this point: You can’t just diet fat off. It takes more than diet.
So if you eliminate food, you’re in for a rough ride. Your body has this involuntary reaction which we refer to as hibernation, in bears. As good a name as any in people, but we usually call it metabolism. When the food stops coming in, your metabolism picks up on it and starts burning protein, which is your lean muscle. It’s 75% water, and is your first line of weight loss. You lose your water. You ever see body builders with their protein drinks and protein bars and protein powder? Lots of muscle there, isn’t there? But the next thing that your metabolism does is worse. It starts to burn carbohydrates, which means that your fat increases. You start to put more weight on!
Since you can’t diet off the weight then it stands to reason that you have to work on increasing your burn rate. Normally a diet gets you to take in fewer calories and what you burn slowly reduces your size. Actually, you are just losing water, and because 75% of your lean muscle protein is water, pretty soon you start to gain again. You are in hibernation. Your body has made a choice. Give up the protein, live off the carbs, and store as much fat as possible. Any food you take in is converted immediately to fat to help you through this period of starvation. Remember, a bear can sleep though an entire winter without eating.
One thing is for sure: Body Builders are mostly protein, and very little fat. They don’t eat a lot of Big Macs and Whoppers. They have a totally different diet with protein drinks and bars and shakes. They couple that with some simple exercises, and they control their metabolisms. If you like that sort of look, they are usually pretty hot, yet they eat like there won’t be food tomorrow. You have to control the burn rate, not the caloric intake.
By now you must understand that you can’t just diet and make fat go away, so you have to make a choice, a complete lifestyle choice. You want to lose weight? Start with a little exercise to get your metabolism kicked up. THEN start your diet. After that you increase your exercise. By starting after you have increased your metabolism, the whole thing will be more effective, and the pounds will come off faster and more easily. The lifestyle change is more likely to be permanent.
This isn’t about trying to sell you a product; it’s about what will be good for you. Wrap your head around the fact that you put your weight on because you don’t burn everything that you eat. You store some of it, and over time, that weight becomes your weight problem. Storage is driven by consumption, and consumption is mostly about water. Protein is 75% water. When you go on a diet, after you clear out the water you burn protein from your storehouse.
You can’t just diet fat off because your body will give away all of it’s protein to protect itself, so you start to live on carbohydrates- and gain weight. When you lower your food intake, you lose protein, and this loss lowers your burn rate.
Ifyour diet seems to be taking forever, consider that 3500 calories is one pound. Go ahead, come to my website at the link, or see my blog. There’s lots of articles and the blog has some interesting opinions as well.