The first thing I want to teach you is about your "Set Point". Body fat is actually regulated by a control center in the brain referred to as the "weight regulating mechanism" which chooses the amount of body fat that it considers ideal for our needs and then works tirelessly to defend that level. So here in lies your "set point", the point at which your body at any given time and age is set to stay at a certain weight. Now in order to move that set point you have to do something to change it. You can raise it by over eating or you can lower it by healthy eating and exercise. You notice I did NOT say DIET. So lets look at what a set point is and does. Think of your set point as a "Fat-O-Stat". Just like your hallway thermostat in your home regulates the temperature throughout the house your "Fat-O-Stat" is fixed in the internal hallway of your body and it regulates how much fat is put on at any given time. Just like the thermostat in your home can be turned up to burn fuel, your "Fat-O-Stat" can be turned up to burn fat day and night. You do this not by dieting but a healthy change in your lifestyle.
Burning off fat isn't quite that simple. It depends on the foods you eat, amount of rest and fasting you do, other lifestyle practices you have that combine to affect the fatty disposition on each individual person. So lets look at how the set point works in two important ways. Based on your nutritional needs you get a message to eat. At this point you don't have control over your eating drive but you do have control over what you will eat and how much. Diets don't work because when you consistently restrict your set point demands the drive to eat becomes so strong that you no longer have control causing you to eat quantities and kinds of foods that push the set point higher resulting in weight gain. The second way is the "weight regulating mechanism" also directs the system in your body to either conserve or waste energy (gain or lose weight) and is regulated by the amount of food you eat.
The problem with diets is that all diets are restrictive in nature. They restrict calories, fat, carbohydrates or any combination of these. When you restrict your diet and activity it will lead to three other problems. First the restriction of diet and activity leads to a rise in your set point which starts a vicious cycle of hunger and energy conservation. Second it causes a loss in muscle tissue and less fat will be burned. Third it affects your response to insulin which causes an increase in fat storage. The last two are especially not healthy for a diabetic. It is no wonder overweight people are frustrated and retain their weight despite diets of 500-1000 calories a day and on other restrictions. As you can now see this is why diets have failure built in them. You train your body to run on less and less food at the same elevated weight. Trying to lose weight with restrictive diets is like bailing water out of a leaking boat. Water keeps pouring in no matter how hard you bail. Repeated bailings can make the holes bigger due to more rapid water flow in which makes the problem worse. In order to stop the boat from sinking the holes must be found and repaired! Successful treatment to weight problems require the same approach: Find the basic problem and fix it!
So now I am sure your asking what do I do? Where do I start? First you have to get out of the diet mindset of "I want this but I can't" and change to " I need this and I can" attitude of a healthy lifestyle. Here are some tips to keep in mind. Exercising within 20 min after eating adds fuel to the flames of digestion to burn more calories. Aerobic exercise on a regular basis regardless the time of day increases your metabolism all day long. Aerobics also increases your muscle mass at the same time it burns fat and since muscle has a higher metabolic rate than does fat you will burn more fat. Also keep in mind there are other systems at work in weight loss.
The second system that directs your body to conserve or waste energy (gain or lose) is your "brown fat". Brown fat can burn part of the food you eat and waste the excess energy as heat so it doesn't have to be stored as fat. People who can eat large amounts of food and not gain weight have more brown fat through genetic inheritance and therefore use brown fat activity to waste some of this extra energy. People who have weight problems have inherited less brown fat and therefore have less brown fat activity. Another system that naturally thin people have that overweight people don't is higher levels of sodium-potassium ATP-ase and can therefore waste excess energy much more. When you recognize the important role of these energy conserving and energy wasting systems in weight control you will then understand why restrictive diets don't work. When you decrease the amount you eat in an effort to lose weight your body slows down its metabolism to protect its fat stores. Think of it this way.....we were designed to be hunters and gatherers going sometimes great lengths of time in a famine situation and designed to store fat just for those times. In our world today we have no famine we have feasts and yet we are still designed to store fat for the famine that never comes. With that said we are a culture of starving people not because of lack of food but due to lack of proper nutrition. So as we eat our food like substances, or overeat, we store up for the famine and raise our set point higher and higher with each diet we go on and continue to starve at a cellular level while continually gaining weight. We are on a roller coaster to poor health, chronic illness and death.
The good news is you can change your set point! You do this by lifestyle choices you make everyday. Exercise is the most crucial factor in weight control. Inactivity is always detrimental to your body. When you exercise and increase your activity level, the weight regulating mechanism senses the need for high mobility, the set point is then lowered, fat stores are willingly given up to produce a smaller, healthier, mobile body. As important as exercise is there is another critical factor in weight control and your set point and that is the type of foods you eat. High fat foods especially refined carbohydrate (sugar) increase hunger and if eaten regularly will raise your set point. When you understand these factors you can then begin a lifestyle that will promote the lowering of your set point and be able to eat more than you ever have before and still lose weight by simply adapting a basic, vigorous exercise program and nutritious way of eating. You will lower your set point, burn fat, build muscle and lose weight and be healthy and happy. This is what it take to get weight problems under control. A simple plan that is easy enough to do for the rest of your life with out restricting yourself.
Join me for my next blog that is part two of this blog on exercising. We will finish up our new plan for weight control and learn a few more things as we go. I hope you have enjoyed this blog and that I laid it out in a way that you could understand and apply to your life. Get yourself out of the diet trap today. No more resolutions to start a diet on Monday and gorge all weekend in preparation of restricting yourself next week. You are smarter than that so don't fall for the diet trap one more day. Now you know why diets don't work and you can now avoid the vicious cycle of losing 30 and gaining 40-50. If you stay on that roller coaster you can diet your way to 300-400 pounds over a lifetime. We have all watched as Oprah did this on national television. Don't make that mistake one more day.
Yours in health, happiness and freedom!
Cherise
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