What Makes You Overweight... *Hint: It's NOT What You Think!
[7 Days To Permanent Weight Loss - Day 4]
In the next two lessons, I'll talk to you about what you can eat, and what you should avoid eating, in order to lose weight. There aren't many surprises here, but it's amazing how often most of us choose to ignore medical research and resort to hair-brained schemes of losing weight (such as starving yourself, using "fat-burning" supplements and sticking to those ridiculous one-food diets (the "banana-diet" is a prime example of something like this). So, what makes you fat?
Apart from a "fast-asleep" metabolism, the main culprit would be your dietary choices. There's a lot you can learn here from understanding medical theory on being over-weight, but I'd like to start you off with revisiting the "evolution" facts we discussed in the second lesson.
Over time, society has evolved and along with it so have our eating habits. The shift from being hunters to being farmers brought three major changes - a more sedentary lifestyle, food "on demand", and a massive change in our diet. From eating food that was naturally beneficial in keeping our weight in check, we moved on to the "easier" choice of eating foods that would eventually cause us to gain weight.
In short, anything that is not part of a "natural" diet is likely to make us gain weight. Now by natural I don't necessarily mean that you go out and start hunting game, or go picking fruit, or even grow fresh vegetables in your backyard (although if you have space, why not…). Instead, the idea is to concentrate on what is "natural" for our bodies, and build on that.
Your Natural Weight
Here's a shocker for you - humans are not naturally over-weight. Sure, some individuals are genetically predisposed towards retaining more fat, and some are naturally skinny, but even if you allow for such variations, the key conclusion is that we are NOT fat by nature.
Instead, the ideal (natural) condition for a human body is to maintain an equilibrium through a healthy diet, an ideal weight and regular exercise.
Your natural body weight is your ideal body weight - not something contrived or artificial. What is actually artificial is your current body weight, especially if you are over-weight.
This is a very profound paradigm shift from simply thinking about your excess weight as a liability and a burden and focusing on reducing weight to arrive at some "ideal" number of pounds as your desired weight. Now, you aren't just getting rid of excess weight - you are removing the "artificial" weight you've put on thanks to bad eating habits (which I taught you how to change in the earlier part of this series) and striving towards "getting back" to your natural body weight.
Once you get the hang of this, you'll also realize that it becomes very, very easy to stick to your ideal weight when you get there - it is natural and specific to your body.
Fat Foods
Fats are the obvious focus for people looking to lose weight - the theme of many diets is to avoid fat content, switch to "low-fat" alternatives (skimmed milk, low-fat yogurt, "diet" soft drinks) and generally shift to a low-fat diet.
There is a good reason for all this - today's plethora of processed sugars and fat-laden fast food is the root cause for the weight problems that afflict so many of us. Have a sweet-tooth (who doesn't)? Then unless you can keep your whims in check (or find suitable alternatives), you're out of luck. Enjoy fast food? Once again, you need to find your "low-fat" alternatives otherwise you will run into weight problems very soon.
However, fat isn't evil by itself - it's the excess fat in our diet that causes us so much trouble. Our bodies need fat to function properly - usually this is translated into 15 to 20 percent of our diet. In certain proportions, fat might actually be good for us.
The moral is: Focus on reducing fat from your diet (instead of fretting over the "fat content" of every grocery item and trying to totally eliminate fat from your diet). As always, the key is to maintain a balance. After all, our hunting ancestors consumed considerable amount of animal fat - and yet the rest of their diet was varied and balanced enough to help them maintain their natural weight.
Fight The Carbs
Surprisingly enough, fat foods are not always the problem with people who are "just a bit over-weight" - say 10 or 20 pounds over what they would call their natural weight. Instead, no matter what they do, nothing short of starving themselves or running an hour a day on the treadmill will bring their weight down.
The reason is misinformation.
In an effort to eliminate / reduce fat from our diets, most experts instantly recommend that people just focus on the fat - at the expense of understanding that any sort of excess in the other two factors (carbohydrates and proteins) will cause a serious health and weight problem in itself.
Carbohydrates are an essential part of a healthy diet (just like proteins and fat). However, today's processed foods contain an extraordinary amount of carbs - as a result, people often shift away from fats only to fall into the "carb-trap". Now, they are doing everything they think they can do to lose weight but they still manage to gain weight, because of the extra carbohydrates in their diet.
If you want to lose weight (AND keep it off), ditch your high-carb diet right now. If you eat processed foods, figure out alternatives that still taste great but manage to give you less carbs than before. A common tactic in ditching carbs is to switch to whole-grain alternatives - eating brown bread and brown rice instead of their white supplements.
This is, of course, easier said than done. Carbohydrates are today part of almost every food that we take for granted - juices, snacks, low-fat desserts and almost everything that is designed to satisfy your "sweet tooth".
So what's wrong with carbohydrates? For one, carbohydrates, especially from processed foods, are designed to give us lots of "instant energy" - that is, energy that we can immediately use for physical activity such as sports or a workout session. If you're not physically active, the carbohydrates are conserved by your body for the future - in the form of fats.
Whatever amounts of carbohydrates in your system that are not used by your body are turned into fats.
Secondly, a high-carb diet is not as "filling" as a mixed diet that is balanced by fiber and proteins. As a result, you might be tempted to eat more because you "feel" hungry, whereas you've already eaten more than enough calories. This is a double-edged sword. If you don't eat more, you'll feel that you are starving yourself. If you do give into the temptations and eat more, you'll end up gaining a lot of weight.
And all this because you are sticking to an artificial, high-carb diet.
Cutting Out The "Fat" - Naturally
Does this ring a bell? Earlier in this article I talked about figuring out what was "natural" for our bodies in terms of diet. Carbohydrates form a limited part of that natural diet, and are always balanced by proteins, fats and fiber. On the other hand, the natural diet is one that is geared for an active lifestyle - if you are not into sports, or don't enjoy working out, then the question is, what should you do to cut out the damaging factors from your diet?
In the next lesson, I'll not only tell you what you should be eating, but also how to plan your diet so that you can actually develop an efficient metabolism that helps you lose weight.
All the best,
Brad Callen
Health and Fitness Consultant
http://www.dietplannerplus.com/
