Why Can't I Just Eat Less Food Altogether?

This is essentially starvation. Your body needs a certain number of calories just to cover your basal metabolic rate (BMR) in order to function. This does NOT include daily activities, or intentional exercise. This number (usually you can hit the ballpark if you just take your weight and multiply it by 1000, or just add a zero to your weight in pounds, ex: if you weigh 120, then you should consume 1200 calories just to cover your BMR) is an indication of how much you should consume, just to cover living, breathing, or sitting on the couch. This is for basic human function. Eating has a thermic affect on the body.

All Calories Are Not Created Equal

If you think of burning off more calories than you consume, then you are only getting part of the picture. Even though eating less can equate to weight loss, there is more to this equation than most people are aware. Where that calorie comes from plays a big role in the kind of weight you lose, how much of it you lose, and your overall health.

Imagine the "You are what you eat" adage. Think about how your body will turn out if you eat 500 calories of fat, let's say donuts, pies, ice cream etc, or 500 calories of broccoli, brown rice, beans, lean meats, green leafy vegetables, vibrant colored vegetables....do you see where I'm going with this? How much do you think you will be able to consume eating just 500 calories from poor sources of fat, as opposed to 500 calories of better quality of sources? Do you get the picture? So, stop assuming that the sources of calories are not important. Without the healthy group of choices you will quickly begin to lose lean muscle tissue because your body needs quality sources of protein in order to create and maintain lean muscle.

If the scale says you weigh less, that does NOT necessarily mean you are doing the right thing.

Here’s why…..

THE TRUTH: Eat less weigh less does 3 things:

1. You lose water.

2. You lose very little fat.

3. You lose lots of muscle.

Let me explain further…..

When starving several things happen:

√ Your body goes for the metabolically active tissue – muscle.


&radic It goes into survival mode, and the way it survives is by eating your    muscle--- it stores fat because that’s how it can survive the longest.    Your remarkable body doesn’t know that fat loss is your goal or what    you’re trying to do so it seeks for the way it will preserve itself the    longest. It wants to help you survive your self-imposed starvation.

√ Gives you sugar cravings.

√ In the meantime, your body continually catabolizes itself (muscle).

√ If muscle is eliminated, then it can survive on fewer calories,    preserving itself.

√ Low-cal diets have no real lifetime affect-it makes you worse off in the    long run. It catabolizes your muscle until your brain decides that you    will provide it with the necessary nutrition it needs in order to stop    feeding on your precious muscle.

√ Your body goes into an unhealthy state, driving you to the quickest    energy nutrients it needs to survive: FAT & SUGAR! This is a vicious    cycle. Your job is to take yourself out of this cycle by first stop starving    yourself, and second, eliminate the sugar.

Muscle is good!

• The scale cannot differentiate between fat, muscle, bone, water, the last meal you just ate, clothing, or your internal organs - it simply sums it all up and gives you the grand total. It is how much gravity is pulling on your body at that point and time. The method that gives you the most information is a body caliper test, or body fat test which determines your body fat percentage. This gives you the percentage of fat you have on your body so you can figure out your lean muscle mass. A healthy range for a woman would be between 18 – 23%, Men are between 12 – 15%. You want this number to be low, but your lean body mass (LBM) to be high. You want your body composed of as much LBM as possible.

• Muscle does not weigh more than fat. A pound of muscle weighs the same as a pound of fat. The difference is that muscle takes up far less space on the body than fat and is far more appealing than a pound of fat on your body.

• If you lose weight and the weight loss is primarily muscle, the “loss” will be short lived and unhealthy, provided that your goal is to maintain muscle which is the only site where fat can be burned from your body.

• If seeing the # rise on the scale is stressful to you, get rid of the scale. The muscle that you are working to feed and build will begin to do it’s job by burning off the fat on your body. Build the muscle first! Then watch as the fat seems to effortlessly melt from your body. Don’t let the scale determine how your mood should be affected for the day!

I talk about this and more in my Incinerate Your Fat! Monthly Seminar.

References:

Kaplan, P. The Answer, Fitness & Weight Loss Solutions.Florida:Kaplan and associates a division of Personal & Club Development, 1999

Kaplan, P, writerThe New TRANSFORM! A Fail-Proof Program for A New Fit America.Phil Kaplan. Copyright 2005.Preserved on DVD.