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The Truth About Weight Loss. The 6 Biggest Myths About Dieting!
All of our behavior results from the thoughts that preceded it,
so the thing to work on is not your behavior, but the thing that
caused your behavior, your thoughts. - Dr. Wayne Dyer
Let me preface this article with the notion that I truly, indeed
detest the word diet, but for simplicities sake Ill use it!
The stark reality is that sometimes eating too little can be a
literal roadblock in attaining a lean fit and healthy body.
Eating less in daily calories (food/nutrients), than your
minimum metabolic needs causes your body to burn muscle and
store fat.
This is what is called the 'Starvation Metabolism' response,
where the body, when deprived of adequate calories, will adapt
to need fewer calories to function. As a result, dieters often
regain the weight they lose almost immediately because they have
starved their body into becoming a "fat-storing machine." Sadly
the truth!
For most of its history, the human race was subject lock, stock
and smoking barrel to the whims and fancies of dear old Mother
Nature, especially where our nutritional needs were concerned.
When the conditions were right, food was plentiful; when they
were not, the populace starved. As a result, evolution shaped
our progenerators bodies in such a way that during times of
plenty, they were able to pack on layers of fat to provide them
with the sustenance they needed to get through the lean
timesnot the fit times, the LEAN times!
And as evolution would have it, humans became adept at mastering
their environment, nevertheless, famines grew rare, and the
built-up fat reserves often went unused; our ability to
manipulate the environment had exceeded nature's slow practice
of adaptation.
At present, obesity is pervasive in wealthy nations like the
U.S. So what in the heck happened to moderation and balance?
Particularly impacted are those of us of European and Eastern
African origin, whose forbearers needed bodies that could
efficiently manufacture fat reserves to outlast the periodic
famines. As a direct result, many of us have become corpulent,
mostly because it's hard for us to fight the natural tendencies
of our bodies to accumulate fat. Currently, some 64% of
Americans are overweight and more than one third are obese.
With that being said, as contemporary living human beings, we
don't have to allow nature to get the leg up on us (nature
nurture then nurture nature). Being overweight and more
specifically, over-fat isn't healthy, especially for those of us
who suffer from conditions like hypertension, diabetes, heart
conditions and other insufficiencies of adequate, abundant
health.
But what's the best way to lose weight (fat)and to regain a
healthy state of body composition?
As you might have guessed, there are to be nearly accurate,
thousands of specialized or Doctor/Guru-ized diets, procedures,
dieting devices, miracle pills, powders and the like out there,
all of which promise you they'll help you get lean and sleek.
Some of them actually work, but how can you tell which ones? How
do you thread your way through the plethora of dieting on your
way to a healthier, slimmer you, without setting off
self-destructive behaviors that can incapacitate your dieting
efforts?
Weight Loss/Control Glossary Of TermsA Little Help With Some Difficult terms ------------------------------------------ Aerobic Exercise. Any activity involving large muscles, done ..... The answer to that question is this: Very Vigilantly.
While persuasive and a little facetious, it's nonetheless true.
Some things are palpably false, fraudulent, misleading or simply
prey on our innermost desires; for example, there's no magic
pill (never will be), grapefruit or otherwise, that can in an
isolated form cause you to shed the pounds. New-fangled fad
diets don't work, and neither do most of the "scientific" ones
that are so fervently promoted. Despite this, Americans are
willing to spend more than $50 billion a year on fad diets and
gimmicks, when in fact the most effective dieting advice comes
down to this: Expend more calories than you consume! What I
refer to as the two (2) Es, Exercise and Eat Right! Get it! To
Ease!!! To ease all that ails us. This, we know is true; it's
just difficult to assemble the willpower necessary to belly-up
to such an audaciously unpleasant proclamation.
If you're adamant about your health and well-being and want to
attain real-results, keep this truth in mind You can lose
weight and keep it off. Peranent weight loss can happen. The
intention of this article is to help you along the way as you
edify and develop the management skills necessary to achieve
success by identifying the most common weight-loss myths that
can perplex you during your expedition. We've left out the
miracle claims and preposterous matter in favor of presenting
more reasonable-sounding myths that an intelligent person might
be beguiled and enticed by. Let's start with the most
omnipresent myth.
#1
THE MYTH: Avoiding meals can assist you in losing weight faster.
THE TRUTH: Erroneous, Incorrect and Blatantly WRONG! This is
Taking The Low Road!
It seems logical, just like its consequence ("the fewer calories
you eat, the more weight you'll lose"), but it's not true. The
effect is the opposite of what you expect. Dieting is based on
the fact that if you burn more calories in a day than you take
in, your body will begin burning fat. While this is true, if you
expect to lose weight effectively, you need to maintain eating
regular meals, especially breakfast.
Depriving your body of its necessary fuel and nutrients causes
it to go into starvation mode; when this happens, your
metabolism slows down so that you can get by on little to no
food. Once your metabolism slows, it can be quite difficult to
bring it back up to momentum, and until it regains its pace,
normal eating will just cause you to gain more weight.
It can be a vicious cycle that's excruciatingly difficult to
break. In addition, bypassing meals can make you feel
lightheaded and weak, can have venomous effects on your
cholesterol levels, and can be extremely perilous for diabetics.
In a nutshell, fasting and crash diets are forms of
self-sabotage best avoided. What's more, eating frequently (and
moderately) will leave you less hungry throughout the day and
cause a satiated effect, so you're less likely to have or give
in to your food cravings.
#2
THE MYTH: Starches are Fattening. THE TRUTH: False and Unsafe.
For one thing, it's difficult to completely avoid starches,
since they're a major component of staples like bread, pasta,
grains, fruits, potatoes, corn, and rice. Even if it were
possible to cut out all starches, if you did so you'd be
starving your body of the fuel it unconditionally needs in order
to maintain proper body-system function. Food consists of only
three basic substances or macro-nutrients: proteins, fats, and
carbohydrates. Starches are carbohydrates; and carbohydrates,
along with their metabolic products and core nutrients are your
body's basic fuel.
Most of the fuel your body uses comes from a carbohydrate
identified as glucose. Some glucose you might consume in the
form of candy or sodas; some carbohydrates in substances like
alcohol, quickly break down into glucose. Glucose is absorbed by
your cells and used to run your bodily processes; any excess is
stored in your liver or converted into fat, where it can be
called upon at need.
If your body lacks glucose, it'll eventually start using any
fuel source it can find. At first these might be fat cells, but
as they shrink, your body may begin attacking the protein
reserves in your muscles for the fuel it needs, referred to as
catabolisys. This is a "last-resort" move generally saved for
famine conditions, so if it happens to you, it's bad news. The
truth is that your metabolism by virtue of your circadian rhythm
is better able to digest, to process and to assimilate certain
food sources at certain times of the day Translation: Some
foods are more efficiently assimilated at set points of the day
because of the composition or complexity of the source and as
our metabolism rises and diminishes throughout the day. More
complex foods such as starchy carbohydrates become increasingly
more difficult to fully take through the digestive process,
without a diminished returns effect occurring and fat storage
beginning.
Weighing In On Weight LossDieters have long searched for secret paths to easy weight loss. Soon enough, anyone trying to lose weight will .....
#3
THE MYTH: Vegetarian or Vegan diets are healthier than
omnivorous diets. THE TRUTH: Not
A diet (merely a regime of frequent consumption) consisting
entirely of rice and french-fries, or of bananas and cheerios,
can be considered vegetarian, but neither diet is healthy in the
long run. If you're careful, you can get by just fine on a
properly balanced vegan or vegetarian diet, but you'll have to
manage your in-take very carefully. Vegetarian diets do tend to
be high in fiber and low in fat, but the fact is that humans
evolved as opportunistic omnivores. That is, our ancestors ate
anything they could get their hands on: greens, tubers, bugs,
and the occasional smidgen of meat and this dictated how our
bodies today, still require nutrients for efficacy and fuel for
performance, thats what we do Perform! Preferably Efficiently!
Poor Physical Performance is what we simply call SICK!!!
Emotionally, Physically, Spirituallywhat-have-you!
The human body developed and evolved to expect a diverse and
varied diet, one that could provide all the nutrients it
necessitates in a variety of forms. Meat was an important part
of their diet, perhaps the most important part because it was so
uncommon. Vegetarians must always be sure that they eat enough
protein; protein is easily available in meat, so few omnivores
have to worry about getting enough, but it's scarce in most
plant foods.
Fortunately, nuts, beans, and a few other vegetable products are
ready sources of protein. If you go vegetarian, you'll also need
to be sure you get daily doses of Vitamin B12 and Zinc,
supplements often missing in vegetarian diets.
Most people can continue to exist as vegetarians if they're
extremely careful, but it's a continuous mle, and guess what?
You can be just as healthy and out-of-shape on a vegetarian diet
as you can on a regular diet, especially if you don't exercise
regularly.
#4
THE MYTH: Sweating facilitates weight loss. THE TRUTH:
Absolutely If the sweat is exercise induced!
Otherwise, all you're doing is losing water weight. Sweating is
astonishingly effective at doing what it was meant to do:
cooling the body by glazing the skin with evaporative fluids.
It was never meant to act as a weight loss system. Lose enough
water, and you're toying with dehydration. Dehydration or
progressive dehydration can occur if you fail to rehydrate
yourself sufficiently after every workout. If you get
sufficiently dehydrated, your electrolyte balance will get out
of whack, your cells will be starved of the fluids they need,
and you could die. Not a happy prospect, so avoid it.
For this reason, the old sweatbox and sauna are of no use for
losing real weight. Neither are their modern "high-tech"
equivalents, such as body wraps and plastic sweat suits, no
matter how many people swear by them. All they do is dehydrate
you. Yes, you lose weight: two pounds per quart sweated away.
But that's weight, not fat. And the moment you drink enough
water, you'll gain all that weight back. Like I have said
Weight Loss is a LIE!
#5
THE MYTH: Fat Free is Calorie Free! THE TRUTH: YEAH RIGHT!!!
All "fat-free" means is that a particular food has no detectable
fat content. Sadly, however, is that fat and its related
compounds that give most foods their flavor. Ice cream, butter,
cheese, and a whole host of non-dairy products, including
chocolate, are little more than specially prepared, congealed
fat. When manufacturers design many fat-free products, such as
bread, cookies, ice cream, and the like, they know these
products will be mostly dry and flavorless without fat.
Some fat substitutes are available, but they can cause
gastrointestinal upset, and most are expensive. This leaves one
common ingredient that manufacturers can use to make their
products taste better: sugar. And they use it liberally; so many
fat-free products are high in calories.
Furthermore, plenty of foods like breads and pasta are low in
fat, but rich in carbohydrates and we already know what that
means. Carbohydrates break down easily into our friend glucose,
which can result in increased fat when consumed in excess.
You always have to consider calorie and portion size; you're
fooling yourself if you do otherwise. Moderation is the key to
dieting success Any long-term success for that matter.
#6
The Myth: You Either Diet Or Exercise, You Cant Do Both
Simultaneously! The Truth: Dont Get Me Started!!!
Yesyou can do both together and you should, it is referred to
as Synergy; the coordination of two effective components working
concurrently to derive a greater benefit than if isolated.
The dieting myths and misconceptions explored in this article
represent just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. There are
thousands of them out there: some are ridiculous and barely
worthy of notice-like the suggestion that eating standing up
helps you lose weight, or that you can base a diet on your blood
type or color of hair-while others are less obvious, like those
discussed here.
Dieting isn't easy and, while it's human nature to look for a
simple solution to a problem, that strategy just won't work in
this case. So heed these hints, and take it easy. Don't skip
meals, keep your diet properly balanced, and exercise regularly.
Avoid all fads, pills, and extravagant claims, because if it
sounds too good to be true...well, you know the rest.
It doesnt take more than losing a few pounds before you'll
notice a difference in the way you look and feel. And, if you
lose only a few pounds at first, even if you've been at it for a
while, so what? Pick up a five or ten pound bag of flour and
carry it around for a day, and you'll see how quickly you'll get
tired of lugging that excess weight around.
Application of sound methodology is always the most effective
means to achieve any objective, with that said, if you want to
truly shed those extra kilos of fat, then do yourself a favor
and draw up a plan, combine all the necessary elements of
success and execute that plan
About the author:
Kurt Lee Hurley's clients refer to him as the "Secret Weapon"
and after over 3,000 weight loss successes, his Provo, Utah
Wellness Facility has become known as a "Results Factory" a
"Living Laboratory" of Achievement, Enhanced Human Performance
and a place to congregate for Empowerment and of course, the
Success of attaining Weight Loss RESULTS!
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