Lifestyle Eating and Diet - Part 4 - Calorie Reduction Rebound

So you feel you have some (or a lot of) pounds to shed. You know the logic "calories in versus calories out" and you want to lose a lot and lose them fast, so you decide to eat few calories. For discussion sake, we will use the 2000 calorie diet as our baseline. We will also presume your daily metabolism rate is where it needs to be for this lifestyle.

Knowing what you know about "calories in versus calories out" you will start to eat one piece of dried toast for breakfast, a small bowl of fruit for lunch, and a protein shake for supper. This total is going to be between 1/4 to 1/2 of a 2000 calorie diet - for your entire day! If you are averaging greater than 2000 calories per day, that reduction is even more.

You are starting to notice the pounds come off, which is making you happy. However, your appetite is not happy, after a few days of a diet that is drastically different than what you were accustomed to eating.

If it has been around the week mark and you go back to your normal way of eating, you have probably not altered your metabolic rate much. You will probably see a gradual weight gain if you haven't increased any in your exercise levels.

However, let's presume that you have begun this regimen and it has continued for a few months, and you are at or near your target weight. You can now fit into the clothes you wanted to wear or look the way you wanted to look. So you are going to return to that previous way of eating or at least increasing what you are currently eating significantly.

You have been training your body to be accustomed to a certain number of calories and have caused your metabolism to be reduced. Now that you are going back to the pre-diet diet, you are going to end up gaining the weight back and you are at a greater risk for being heavier than you were, depending on your calorie intake and your exercise regimen.

Metabolic rate will not alter much in a short amount of time; however, given a greater span of time, we can reduce that rate. Thus, when your diet is now given greater calories to burn, your body will have a high chance of not being able to function in a way to burn all of calories you are giving it. This will result in a likely weight gain. After buying your new wardrobe, you may not be able to fit into that wardrobe.

I have seen this exact scenario in people. Their bodies are trained in one lifestyle, they drastically reduce their calories, resulting in weight loss. Then they return to some or all of their previous calorie intake and gain the weight they were happy to lose.

There is a lot which goes into keeping weight off. Part of it is consistency, determination, commonsense, exercise, and proper diet.

For the normal lay person, 1-2 pounds per week is healthy to lose. If you have a high body mass index (BMI), you may see those pounds be higher in the first few months. But with everyone there will be a plateau period where you will not see the pounds come off like you would prefer. Be patient and look at what may be inhibiting the lack of weight loss. Outside factors, aside from "calories" do impact your body. Stress, for example, can inhibit the body from losing weight. For women, the menstrual portion of the month may also have an impact. Don't become too frustrated, just be patient and sensible.

Next time we will focus on weight loss inhibitors...such as stress.

Lifestyle Eating and Diet - Part 3 - Skipping Meals

So you want to lose weight and you want to do it quickly. You know that if you reduce your calories you will lose weight. However, if you reduce too many calories you can cause your body to not lose weight or to lose it very slowly. Skipping meals will have negative effects in losing weights. I found a short, concise article that explains it well. So instead of "reinventing the wheel" I am simply going to copy this article in for you to utilize.

Our next article will be to focus on eating too few of calories. In other words, you are not skipping meals, but you are eating too few of calories.

Here's the article from "FitDay"

3 Reasons Skipping Meals is Unhealthy

Skipping meals is often seen as an attractive way to lose weight. Unfortunately, the side affects of skipping meals are much more serious than any potential benefits. Some consequences of skipping meals can include promoting the development of diabetes, inadequate nutrition, and drastically altering the way that your body digests food.

Blood Sugar Drops and Spikes

One of the most important reasons that skipping meals is unhealthy is due to the affect this has on your blood sugar. When you eat a meal, your body breaks up the food. Some of this food is stored as fat, while other parts of it enter your bloodstream as sugar, and work to provide you with energy throughout the day. When you skip a meal, your blood sugar drops dramatically. This not only can make you feel sluggish and tired, but it can also wreck havoc with insulin in your body. If you chronically skip meals, you can be setting yourself up for the development of diabetes later in life.

Inadequate Nutrition

Another important reason why skipping meals is unhealthy is due to the fact that you are more than likely not receiving adequate nutrition. Eating a diet that is rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean meats helps not only to ensure that your body functions properly, but can also help in the treatment and prevention of a number of serious conditions. Some conditions that can be improved with proper nutrition include cardiovascular disease, strokes, and some types of cancer. You may believe that you can skip meals and still achieve optimal nutrition by supplementing your diet with multivitamins. And while multivitamins do have their place, research has shown that these pills aren't as effective as real food at providing your body with what it needs. For good health, try to eat as naturally as possible.

Altered Metabolism

You typically skip meals for two main reasons. One, you are ultra busy and don't have enough time to grab a quick snack, or two, you are trying to lose weight. If you are one of the people who are trying to lose weight, you may be actually sabotaging yourself by skipping meals. When you eat, your metabolism, which is one of your body's functions, works to break the food down into smaller, usable parts. When you skip a meal, your metabolism has nothing to do. In a way, your metabolism is like a muscle. You must use it, or you will "lose it." When your metabolism does not have to work to break down food, it begins to slow down. Then, the next time you do actually eat something, your metabolism is not able to break the food down as quickly, and as a result the food is stored as fat. Therefore, in order to maintain a healthy weight (or even lose weight), it is essential that you eat regularly throughout the day. Recent research has found that five to seven small, regularly timed meals eaten over the course of a day works best when trying to maintain a healthy weight.

Lifestyle Eating and Diet - Part 1

One of the things that people tend to do when "I" walk into a room at a County meeting is joke about not being able to have "good food" and must resort to fruits and vegetables. As much as these foods may be more iconic to "health" they aren't always realistic. Plus, there are other ways to be "healthy."

The basic principle to weight management is calories in versus calories out. You keep it even, you stay same weight. You have an elevation on one side or the other and you will either lose weight or gain weight.

One of my first memories of "diets" were related to Weight Watchers or Richard Simmons' videos. I can remember in the early 80s that my mother did one or both of these. Now, she is over 70 years old and does she eat like she did then...no. Why, because it was not a lifestyle change it was a short-term "lose weight" issue.

As a former athletic trainer, I have witnessed people become anorexic due to trying to live up to a certain look. Two extreme cases were females. One went as far as passing out many times and going to see counselor due to the mental/psychological issues related to anorexia.

When it comes to the style of food intake, for the "normal" person (non-diabetic, elevated heart issues, or other conditions), we live in a culture where we are not going to be able to simply have "fruits and vegetables" all the time. Nor are we going to have sugary snacks all the time. Of course there are more health benefits in fruits and vegetables than sugary foods, let's not discount that fact.

One thing that is important to remember that we had plenty of "bad stuff" in the diets of our culture before we were born. But something that made a huge difference was they didn't have all the "lack-of-exercise" amenities" which we have now. Until "recent" (in all reality) if you wanted to get a hold of someone you had to be outside and go to their house, either by foot or horse/buggie. Now, we can e-mail/text/call in a few seconds.

The other problem is, those past generations brought their delicious food with them into a "lack-of-exercise" culture. So we have same good food - fatty, fried, sugary - but we don't burn it off.

Keep in mind that I am NOT suggesting we violate healthy eating, even if we exercise. However, there are times when we may eat a donut or choose to have a shake. There may be times which you do not eat very "healthy" in a given day or weekend. However, may we make it the "occasional" and not the norm.

Another concept to consider is portion control. Buffets are evil when it comes to health. I will be the first to think "I paid for this, I'm going to eat." This generally causes me to eat way more than I needed to in the first place. Most of us can survive on about 650-700 calories a meal. This is roughly around the 2000 diet, without snacks. However, to be about 165 a person needs to maintain about 1650 calories. If you chose to eat at McDonald's and you ate a McDouble (390 calories w/ cheese, 340 without), small fries (250 calories) and unsweet tea (0 calories) you would be close to that amount per meal. It also shows that it adds up with very little food.

The number presented to maintain 165 pounds is number is not limited to intake, this is what you need to have to maintain normal body functions. If you are taking in 2000 but burning 350, then you are going to be in that range. Keep in mind, digestion does burn some calories. Overall it is minimal - so don't count on it for weight loss.

The bottom line is that if we decide to eat something other than fruits and vegetables, which we need a balanced diet, then we need to be moving to burn some calories. We must keep in mind that if we are going to eat the "fun" foods, then we must be willing to burn them off through some sort of exercise routine. Otherwise, we will be gaining weight or increasing our chances for other health-related risks.

Let's eat (even fun things) and move.