How to Drop the Body Fat
This morning I began reading an interesting book on metabolism titled Ultra-Metabolism, by Mark Hyman, MD. “We have evolved over hundreds of thousands of generations under conditions of food scarcity. The genes and molecules that control our eating behavior were shaped by those times. Our DNA(therefore) was designed for accumulating fat in the days when we had to forage for food in the wild.”I can’t seem to lose weight. Every time I diet, I put the weight back on. It doesn’t seem to matter what I eat, I still gain weight. Ever heard any of those lines? Our bodies were designed over time and out of necessity to gather and store fat. It’s what caused us to survive!Once you understand this fact, you will begin to look at your body from a different perspective. It’s not working against you, it’s surviving. The crazy part is, it doesn’t have to survive any more. We can make it thrive. We just need to work within its old programing to have the body we want.If you’ve read the other posts here on Nutrition you can see that this truly is a “Fat Loss” discussion and not simply a “Weight Loss” discussion. Weight loss is what you hear about on TV and from friends, in articles in magazines and their mantra is Lower Calories = Less Weight ! If that is or was true, how has it worked for you? Most of us have been on a diet before(most of us, me included, have been on 10-20 diets, cleanses’, etc. over the years!) So, how has that approach worked? For me, not so good. Out of high school in the mid 1970′s (yes, I’m 54… thought I’d save you time!) I weighed 160 lbs., after 4 years of college I was at 180 lbs. Over the next 30 years I found my “set point” to be 232 – 245 lbs. Excuses Why we Keep our Body FatOh, but I had excuses…. “I was working so much!” “We all get fatter as we get older.” “I’m big boned.” and our latest favoriate, “Winters are long here in Vermont!” …. yada, yada, yada….. See I had always operated from a Weight Loss mentality. The thought that I needed to take on LESS calories to weigh LESS. Seems to make sense UNTIL you take into account our DNA and how our bodies were trained over millions of years and have come to be. The way to make your body THRIVE is to understand how to crank up your metabolism. Your body stores more fat if you eat less! (Back to survival) and 95% of all diets are about eating less. Our bodies know what to do with less……. it stores more fat and won’t give it up for anything!!!
Here’s the answer… you will have to eat more! Yep, I said it. Eat more. How much more? Here is a good rule of thumb.
Weight x 10 = RMR (Resting Metabolic Rate, which is how many calories you need to stay alive while you are sleeping) to that add 20% more for daily activities. So for me today 233 lbs. x 10 = 2330 calories + 466(20% of 233 lbs.)=2796 calories per day to maintain my current size without a workout. For me this was a huge number! I had been eating less than 1500 calories per day under the old idea that less calories = less weight! Well at nearly 2800 calories I started losing weight. More importantly, I started losing body fat! I lost 5% body fat in 5 weeks!
Some weeks I lost weight and other weeks I lost inches! I discovered a certain flow to my weight and fat loss…. It wasn’t a straight line, meaning it didn’t go down at a consistent 1-3 lbs. per week. So I found I needed to not only weigh myself regularly, but also to check body fat, try on my “tester” clothes, and take measurements. So, be flexible. Identify a success this today or this week! It may not be weight! The reality is, that the bathroom scale is likely not in your top 3 important ways to track your weight and fat loss. I find the top 3 to be
- How I feel
- How I look
- How my clothes fit
In fact, when I lost 5% body fat in those 5 weeks, it occurred to me that I didn’t care if I weighed 300 lbs, if I was lean, toned, cut, had high energy, etc. So identify and set real life goals and don’t get caught up in the images we all see in magazines & TV.
Lose Body Fat Now
So, crank up your metabolism by eating enough food on a daily basis and lose the body fat !!
Health is a Habit, not an Event!
Dave & Joy
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