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A Common Sense Guide to Weight Loss

Some healthy eating advice for the holidays.

By Tom Fenstermacher, owner and founder of FACTS Fitness, Newtown Square, PA

http://wellspringhealthandstyle.com

Common sense tells you that to lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you consume. This means you will change your daily patterns by increasing physical activity while decreasing food consumption. The first step is an understanding of where you are today.

A person can exist in the following 3 states of energy balance:

1. Neutral Energy Balance – You burn what you consume and will stay the same as you are today.

2. Positive Energy Balance – You consume more than you burn and will gain weight. If you require 2000 calories and consume 2,100 per day, even if the extra 100 calories is a banana you stand to be 700 calories per week in positive energy balance. This will eventually result in 36,400 excess calories per year divided by 3,600 calories per pound of fat is over 10 pounds of weight gain per year. If you are overweight this means that you are existing in Positive Energy Balance, the big question is how much over Neutral Energy Balance are you??

What does this mean? It means that if you cut 250 a day calories out of your diet and begin exercising three days a week, but you are 1000 calories a day Positive Energy Balance, then you are still gaining weight, just not as fast. In fact, you are still in Positive Energy Balance by 642 calories a day or 1.5 pounds per week. (This is the “I don’t get results from diet and exercise syndrome” so many people have.)

3. Negative Energy Balance – You consume less than you burn and will lose weight. Reverse the scenario above and you can see over 10 pounds of weight loss per year from that same banana!

Diets DO NOT WORK! – Wouldn’t you rather be in negative energy balance due to an exercise regimen that burns excess calories and increase 24 hour a day metabolism and will ultimately help you live longer and reduce your risk factors and improve quality of life?
CRASH DIETS ARE ESPECIALLY BAD!! Consider this: You go on a crash diet and begin to deprive your body of its essential needs. Your body doesn’t know you are trying to lose weight, it assumes there is a food shortage in nature and goes into survival mode.

What is survival mode?
It is conservation of energy stores.

What are energy stores?
FAT!

Your body will burn anything it can EXCEPT fat. So, when you lose your 20 pounds on your crash diet and 10 pounds of that loss was in lean muscle that your body consumed what do you think happens?

For starters, it is important to understand that your lean muscle is the key to your METABOLIC RATE or your daily caloric requirement and the more lean muscle you have, the more calories you will burn.

It’s a fact that 98% of people on crash diets gain the weight back. Consider the information above: when you gain your 20 pounds back, the muscle will not return so the net gain is all fat. So all that your CRASH Diet helped you do is become fatter! The problem is that now you have less muscle to burn calories on a 24 hour basis, so you will be predisposed to gaining even more weight.

EATING HABITS 101
What fills you up more, a one pound brick with no calories or one pound of potato chips containing 5000 calories????
Answer- The BRICK!

It is food density that curbs your appetite NOT caloric value. Pick foods high in density and low calories and you will find that you will eat less.

• High Density Low Calorie Foods
• Water
• Lean Meats
• High Fiber Foods
• Fruits/Vegetables
• Unprocessed Starches

FAT IS NOT THE ENEMY! Fat in moderation is high in density and good for you as well!
Eat slowly…..Your stomach has a lag time to the brain of about 15 minutes. Many of us overeat due to not allowing the stomach enough time to communicate with the brain to say “I’m FULL”.

Know what a serving size is and what your daily servings are per food group. Knowing one without the other is useless. For example, it is OK to have a serving of pasta at a restaurant, but realize that you just had 5 of your 8 servings of starch for the day! It is far easier to count servings than to count calories.

Do not become consumed with counting servings either. Simply think about where your servings are when you are about three quarters of the way through your day, and eat accordingly from there.

YOU MUST INCORPORATE EXERCISE IN YOUR PROGRAM!! The average person loses one pound of muscle every year after the age of 30 due to inactivity. This will decrease your metabolism 50 calories per day for every pound of muscle lost. If you require 2000 calories per day at age 30, by the time you are 35 it will be down to 1,750 calories per day. This means that your in POSITVE ENERGY BALANCE by 250 calories per day. This can translate into 25 pound weight gain in one year!

Cardiovascular Exercise such as running, biking, aerobics, etc., will burn up to 500 calories an hour while you exercise, but has little impact on your metabolism. This is an excellent way to get into neutral or negative energy balance on any given day. If you are 250 calories over your requirement and burn 500 calories, you are 250 under your requirement. This is the difference between gaining 25 pounds in a year or losing 25 pounds during that time. In addition, you will strengthen your heart and lungs, plus reduce risk factors such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer, obesity etc., etc., etc.

Strength Training is the key to maintaining your lean mass! Cardiovascular exercise burns calories while you exercise, but strength training builds and maintains muscle which is the key to maintaining or improving your 24 HOUR PER DAY METABOLISM!!

Accountability is essential and is the number one key to your success. This program will provide accountability as well as educate you on way to hold yourself accountable.

This SIMPLE COMMON SENSE approach will allow you to enjoy a healthy lifestyle, achieve your goals; live longer and healthier without feeling deprived, starved, or overwhelmed.