Every earthling is battling the bulge, a monotonous task involves
So, what's the secret?
*WAAA! WAAA!*
There IS no secret. There are hundreds of websites and blogs -- WEB MD, weight loss portals --BEST WEIGHT LOSS TIPS that offer the same advice:
EAT SENSIBLY
VARIED WORKOUTS
Did I just blow your mind with the same thing everyone already knows?
The fact is that people want to be told what they want to hear --
Client: "Darrell, how do I lose weight?"
Darrell: "Well, just eat whatever you want. Drink plenty of alcohol
and soda. You'll only need two hours of exercise a week, and even
that's overdoing it"
Client: "Great! So, the weight just goes away on its own"
Darrell: "Yep, but then you already knew that, right?"
NEGATORY!
For years, the advice to the overweight and obese has been that we
simply need to eat less and exercise more. While there is truth to
this guidance, it fails to take into account that the human body
continues to fight against weight loss long after dieting has stopped.
This translates into a sobering reality: once we become fat, most of
us, despite our best efforts, will probably stay fat.
The best way to countermand your body's craving for calories is to
simply put fewer in. Yes, it is that easy! The hard part: Cut out
sugars, alcohol and processed food, and replace them with veggies,
whole wheats and other complex carbs.
Anyone who has ever dieted knows that lost pounds often return, and
most of us assume the reason is a lack of discipline or a failure of
willpower. But that's oversimplifying things. The larger problem is
environmental: people struggle to keep weight off because they are
surrounded by food, inundated with food messages and constantly
presented with opportunities to eat. We live in an environment with
food cues all the time. We’ve taught ourselves over the years that one
of the ways to reward yourself is with food. It’s hard to change the
environment and the behavior.
There's no consistent pattern to how people lose weight — some do it
on Weight Watchers, others with Jenny Craig, some by cutting carbs on
the Atkins diet and a very small number lose weight through surgery.
But their eating and exercise habits appear to reflect what
researchers find in the lab: to lose weight and keep it off, a person
must eat fewer calories and exercise far more than a person who
maintains the same weight naturally. To really keep weight off you
should exercise about an hour or more each day, putting in the
equivalent of a four-mile daily walk, seven days a week. Get on a
scale every day in order to keep your weight within a narrow range.
Eat breakfast regularly. Watch less than half as much television as
the overall population. Eat the same foods and in the same patterns
consistently each day and don’t “cheat” on weekends or holidays.
You've also got to eat less than most people, up to 500 fewer daily
calories.
Research at Columbia University shows that the changes that occur
after weight loss translate to a huge caloric disadvantage of about
250 to 400 calories. For instance, one woman who entered the Columbia
studies at 230 pounds was eating about 3,000 calories to maintain that
weight. Once she dropped to 190 pounds, losing 17 percent of her body
weight, metabolic studies determined that she needed about 2,300 daily
calories to maintain the new lower weight. That may sound like plenty,
but the typical 30-year-old 190-pound woman can consume about 2,600
calories to maintain her weight — 300 more calories than the woman who
dieted to get there.
After you’ve lost weight, your brain has a greater emotional response
to food. You want it more, but the areas of the brain involved in
restraint are less active. Combine that with a body that is now
burning fewer calories than expected and you’ve created the perfect
storm for weight regain. How long this state lasts isn’t known, but
preliminary research at Columbia suggests that for as many as six
years after weight loss, the body continues to defend the old, higher
weight by burning off far fewer calories than would be expected. The
problem could persist indefinitely. (The same phenomenon occurs when a
thin person tries to drop about 10 percent of his or her body weight —
the body defends the higher weight.) This doesn’t mean it’s impossible
to lose weight and keep it off; it just means it’s really, really
difficult.
What’s not clear from the research is whether there's a window during
which we can gain weight and then lose it without creating biological
backlash. Many people experience transient weight gain, putting on a
few extra pounds during the holidays or gaining 10 or 20 pounds during
the first years of college that they lose again. Robert De Niro lost
weight after bulking up for his performance in “Raging Bull.” Whether
these temporary pounds became permanent probably depends on a person’s
genetic risk for obesity and, perhaps, the length of time a person
carried the extra weight before trying to lose it. But we don’t know
how long it takes for the body to reset itself permanently to a higher
weight. The good news is that it doesn’t seem to happen overnight.
(For a mouse, the time period is somewhere around eight months. Before
that time, a fat mouse can come back to being a skinny mouse again
without too much adjustment. For a human, we don’t know, but research
indicates the time is not measured in months, but in years).
If anything, the emerging science of weight loss teaches us that
perhaps we should rethink our biases about people who are overweight.
It's true that people who are overweight get that way because they eat
too many calories relative to what their bodies need. But a number of
biological and genetic factors can play a role in determining exactly
how much food is too much for any given individual. Clearly, weight
loss is an intense struggle, one in which we are not fighting simply
hunger or cravings for sweets, but our own bodies. While the public
discussion about weight loss tends to come down to which diet works
best, those who have tried and failed at various diets know there's no
simple answer. Fat, sugar and carbohydrates in processed foods may
very well be culprits in ourobesity problem. But there's tremendous
variation in an individual’s response.
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Brilliant analysis Darrell. You should get an honorary degree!
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