Diets, Fat and Weight Loss

"I'm allergic to food. Every time I eat it breaks out into fat." - Jennifer Greene Duncan

Fat

Fat - that's the problem. If fat had never been invented, we could all eat what we like, stay beautiful, and never have to diet or lose weight. Unfortunately some fat is essential to good health. It is a handy insulator that helps regulate internal body temperature, and it really does come in handy when we have flu and don't have the energy, or the desire, to eat.

Fat really is necessary and needs to be a part of a healthy diet.

The trick is to have just the right amount.

Many people consider that whether or not you accumulate fat is down to simple maths. If you eat more calories than you use then you get fat. If you use more calories than you eat then you lose weight. This is the basis of all the calorie reduced diets for weight loss.

Now, If you have an active life, this isn't too bad. If you spend your work day sitting on a chair and your evenings and weekends sitting on a couch, then calories in have to be reduced to almost zero to make you lose weight.

Yo-Yo diets

Thousands of people use this simple maths to create the Hell of yo-yo diets; the Hell of being unable to eat what they want when they want; the Hell of social isolation because they don't have enough will power to eat lettuce when all their friends have huge plates filled with steak, fries, onions, mushrooms... and desserts filled with cream.

Thousands of people use this simple maths to watch the pounds fall off for a week or two, then slow down, then accumulate, then fall off again and they fight a constant battle with themselves and their diet. They can even end up hating who they are because their bodies won't do what they think their minds are telling them to.

Diet clubs

My local coffee bar has a meeting room where the Weight Watchers and Slimming World diet clubs hold meetings. I feel a little sad when I see women arriving for their weigh in and nipping into the toilet to relieve themselves of those few desperate ounces so they might just tip the balance and clock up a loss rather than a gain. Because, of course, the public humiliation of having gained a pound, never mind two, is more than can be tolerated. I feel sad because there is a much better, much easier way to lose weight without public weighing or a gimmicky diet.

This is no way to live.

This is not happiness.

I know how to lose weight without dieting.

And this is all down to that simple maths...

...simple maths that is just plain WRONG.

Dieting fights the body's own intelligence

You see bodies are intelligent. Your body is an intelligent system. I bet that when you were a child you cut yourself. And I bet that within a few days there was almost no trace of a wound. This is the intelligence I am talking about. You did not have to tell the body to start vasoconstriction to reduce blood loss. You did not have to send the message to rush platelets to the damaged blood vessels to start to shore up the hole. Nor did yo have to tell the body to form fibrin to hold the platelets in place and eventually form the protective clot. And I bet you didn't have anything to do with then rushing white blood cells to gobble up any invading micro-organisms to prevent infection.

And then there's the whole process of making an invisible, or almost invisible, mend that follows on from this initial reaction to bleeding.

Supply & demand

Fat is survival. When food is in short supply, fat is deposited. Now you would think that fat would be laid down when food is plentiful. So consider this: from the days when our body systems evolved. Plentiful food would have been frequent small meals (fruits & berries eaten while they were gathered). Eating would stop once the stomach was full - because there was plenty more where that came from. In these circumstances there is no need for fat deposits.

But infrequent meals and very large meals when eating is continued after the stomach is full (a successful hunt after several days without game), is a very strong message to the body that food supply is uncertain so fat deposition would be helpful.

Most people who are overweight eat past fullness. This tells your body food shortage.

Most people who are overweight get little exercise. This tells your body that there is no food to find, so conserve energy.

Most people who are overweight go on diets. This tells your body that food is in short supply.

And what your body does when food is in short supply is to LAY DOWN FAT and conserve energy.

Energy conservation

Now I mentioned the simple maths that is the basis for the calorie reduction diet plans designed to help you lose weight. Because your body is intelligent, when food is in short supply and it needs energy (Calories) it does something quite brilliant. It burns up lean muscle rather than burning up fat. The reason it does this is that lean muscle tissue uses up calories by simply being there. Take two people in the same room sitting watching tv, one very fat, the other very fit. The fit one is burning up many times more calories than the fat one. This is because lean muscle tissue burns calories just by existing. A fit individual will use up 500-700 Calories a day just lying in bed. So the intelligence of the body says - we need to get rid of lean muscle because food is in short supply and we will stand a better chance of survival if we save our fat calories for real emergencies.

The consequence of this of course is that, as you diet, your muscle/fat ratio slowly shifts in the direction of more fat. The effect of this is that your body's metabolic rate is lowered (your intelligent body's energy conservation planning). Making it ever harder to lose weight the next time you start a diet. So next time you start a diet you will give up sooner because each time you repeat the cycle - it gets harder to lose weight.

If you diet regularly all you are doing is accumulating more and more fat, making it harder and harder to lose weight - because the weight loss is largely from muscle loss and you have less muscle to lose.

You cannot fight this.

You cannot effectively lose weight, long-term, like this.

Lose weight without dieting

If you want to lose weight, you have to work with your body's intelligence, not against it.

You don't have to diet to lose weight. You just have to eat differently. But you can still eat what you want. It sounds too good to be true. And it gets better. It can be fairly effortless. No more fighting. No more will power battles.

More details are available on my website.