It didn’t get there overnight so losing weight the healthy way just isn’t going to happen in a short time frame. The diet industry is capitalizing on the fact that Americans love convenience, so they have come up with an arsenal of pills, shakes, books, and TV shows to show you how to drop pounds fast. After trying three or four of these “quick fixes” and ending up right back where they started, many people throw in the towel completely. The goal shouldn’t be to lose as much weight as fast as possible, but to keep you at a healthy weight long term through lifestyle change. That may sound like a tall order but when you try to do it the “easy way” you can do a lot more harm than good. Let me Explain.
A healthy weight loss is 1-2 lbs. per week. I feel as if I should repeat that. Healthy weight loss is 1-2 lbs per week. Any more than this and you are probably losing more than just fat. Low Carb diets have gained lots of popularity because it is easy to drop pounds fast by cutting out carbs. Consider this; Carbohydrates are your bodies preferred source of energy. Take them away and you literally force your body to feed on other less potent sources (ex. Proteins, fats) and tissue and muscle. So the weight your losing only partially comes from body fat, your muscle and tissue are getting cannibalized to sustain your body functions. Now that your body is in “survival mode” it wants to store any extra energy because it thinks that food is scarce. So it plays out something like this: First you cut out Carbs, Then you lose 15 lbs in no time. It is very hard to keep a diet without carbs because, let’s face it you’re not left with much. Now you are happy with the weight you have lost and start to eat carbs again and your body rapidly stores them as fat because it is still in survival mode and has been feeding on itself for energy. You gain all the weight back and sometimes more and now you are left back at square one.
A balanced diet, generally speaking of course, is going to consist of about 15-20 percent fat with the rest split up between carbs and protein. Now once again this is a very vague outline as to how you should structure your diet. Any diet or exercise program that promises “fast” weight loss is probably just going to work for you wallet. Remember once you get down to a healthy weight you want to stay there so a radical diet that is going to be impossible to stick too is not the answer. An all-around adaptation to a healthy lifestyle is what it is going to take to keep the weight down and increase your life expectancy. Keep in mind I am not a dietician so I can’t write out your diet for you, but in my experience just making better choices about what you eat can help drastically. If you have any questions or want to make a lifestyle change please contact me at jr.oliver@att.net
