Hi Again,
Welcome to the second part of your myth buster’s series. Hope you got through the last email, enjoy your reading.
Myth 5: Walking is all you need to lose weight
Would be nice wouldn’t it, a leisurely stroll a day and you will lose all the weight you want. What about if you conduct your leisurely stroll in Darwin where it’s hot and your sweating a lot? This would surely be the ultimate weight loss solution? Walking will burn some calories and help you to establish some clarity by clearing your head of day to day issues – Two nice positives. However the body is a machine and machines are ever searching to find more efficient ways to do things to make life easier for itself.
The more efficient we become the easier the task becomes and subsequently the effort that is required (therefore less calories we burn). But back to walking, you have now been walking since you were about 2 years old and when you first started wobbling around with 1 step to the side 1 step forward and 2 steps back, that is very inefficient – which makes it a great calorie burner but doesn’t really help to get us to where we want to go. So as we continue to practice the task it becomes easier and easier to a point where not only can we walk but we can also run, and run fast.
Now fast forward 20-30-40-50 years (dare I go on …) we don’t even think about walking as a task we simply perform it as a means of getting from point A to point B. You can relate this example to almost anything you do now, your current occupation I am sure when you started you would have thought ‘gee how am I going to get all this work done in a day’ but now fast forward a month or two I am sure you do all of it and more. Motherhood is another example, going from looking after one child to looking after two children shows how time management is forced to improve in order to complete all daily duties.
So walking will lose weight for you initially but over time your body will become more and more efficient at it and the calories you will burn in your second month of your walking program will be less than the calories you burnt when you first started your program.
Myth 6: Going on a low GI/High GI/Low carb/High Carb/Not eating after 8pm/High Protein/Low taste (or any of the combinations) diet will help you lose weight
Well the easy answer is yes on a combination of any of these you will lose weight. There I said it. But my question to you is at what cost? Personally, I am Italian, could you imagine me going to a family function and refusing to eat pasta or a magnificent lasagna? Not having a glass of home made wine? What’s more my mum happens to make just the best tasting cakes and biscuits how impressed will she be if her boy now after 23 years of munching them down tells her ‘sorry mum, on a low GI kick at the moment and your cakes are no good!’ Granted mums cakes though tasting great, really aren’t that good for me at all, I know this. But for me life is there to be lived, enjoyed and experienced.
What is the point of going through life if you look great but can’t enjoy any of life’s simple pleasures with your closest friends and family? Imagine traveling to France and not enjoying some champagne and pastries, going to Spain sorry no Paella for you, even a humble BBQ in the backyard where everyone is forced to eat tofu and salad (not that there’s anything wrong with either of those) so as not to upset your whatever diet… yeah great fun, nice party thanks for the invite!
My point is here that life is about a balance, you need to find yours and identify what is and what isn’t important to you. It’s no secret that by giving up alcohol, limiting carbohydrates, eating lean proteins and consuming mountains of fresh fruits and vegetables will keep you healthy and help you to lose weight. But I firmly believe that this has to be balanced against some of the foods we all enjoy. Otherwise it will not be sustainable in the long term, you will then tend to over indulge when you do get something ‘naughty’ and that will lead to weight gain rather than weight loss.
Everyone has heard of the yo-yo dieter, probably even have been one from time to time. Where you eat naughty for to long, then go on a new diet, lose weight, once satisfied with this you then go back to eating naughty again subsequently weight increases and the cycle starts all over again. This is exactly my point. If your first diet was appropriate (the yo) then there would be no reason for you to change it to a new diet to lose weight (the yo-yo). So in essence what we are looking for is simply a ‘Yo’ diet. One that maintains a healthy weight range for us, allows us to consume the foods we enjoy but understanding that this must be balanced out with other foods and appropriate exercise to maintain our appropriate weight. If you have weight to lose, fear not, as by simply finding your ‘right’ balance you will begin to lose weight as your body will realize that it has been ‘over consuming’ for to long and it will start to burn the excess fat.
Myth 7: Not eating breakfast and not eating after 7pm will help you lose weight
Firstly, I want to point out that there are protocols where these timed eating plans do come in to play and do work extremely well. However, for the purpose of this email series as a basis of information, I won’t be talking about those.
To lose weight you have to develop something called metabolic momentum, this is where your body continually burns calories, all the time. It gets used to doing this and as such requires more fuel from your body, which you give it and then your body burns that as well. This process continues and your body never stores any calories you consume as it burns it all during the day maintaining its physical processes. How do you get this ‘metabolic momentum’ I here you ask? Well by eating, consuming small meals regularly allows your body to get to a stage where it says ‘hey I don’t need to store this anymore as I know in another 3 hours I will get some more so I will use this for energy now.’
Rather than a normal persons body saying ‘hey I have just received some food and it was about 7 hours ago I got some energy, I don’t know when I will be receiving my next installment so I better store this just in case I need it later.’ Lets forget for a second that your body actually talks – that is a whole different email. Point is, you cannot create or sustain metabolic momentum by skipping meals or not eating after 7pm. In essence this means, assuming you ate dinner at 6pm (to beat the cutoff) and didn’t eat again to early lunch at say 11am; you would effectively have 16 hours with no fuel in your body! This is as crazy as it is unhealthy!
You will probably relate to one, some or even all of the myths, don’t worry your not alone in that. But I am sure you’re asking by now ‘ok Mr. Smarty, how do I fix it then?’ Well I have given you enough to read for today, so check your email tomorrow and I will send you another email and give you the first of my tips in the training series.
Until then, stay safe….and just start being mindful of what you are really eating, that’s when you’re going to see results!
To a Happier and Healthier You,
Andrew Zagami