Weight Loss Your Way

It’s that time of year again. The holidays have come and gone, complete with food, drink, fun and just a wee bit of over indulgence in all three. With that comes the requisite New Years resolutions to lose weight, get fitter, faster, stronger etc. I’m writing today to say beware the get thing quick promises that are floating around out there at this time of year.
Don’t kid yourself, the weight loss industry is big bucks, with an estimated total revenue for 2006 of close to $50 billion dollars. Yup, $50 billion, that’s a lot of zeroes, and unfortunately all those zeroes mean that while a lot of peoples wallets are lighter, their bodies, well maybe not so much.


And here’s the deal. In all honesty, the vast majority of that money really doesn’t need to be spent. I’m going to share a little secret with you, the ultimate secret to weight loss for the vast majority of people, and I’m going to share it with you for free.
The secret to losing weight in a healthy, effective and sustainable manner is…a proper ratio of the right calories in, and the right calories out.

That’s it, in a nutshell. Consume a little less than you expend through exercise and normal day to day activities and the calories will come off. With one little caveat, those calories you take in, and the ones you burn off need to be the right calories. For too long, it was believed in the world of diet and nutrition that a calorie was a calorie and all you needed to do was burn more than you consumed. Thankfully that is starting to change, slowly but sure. If you take the theory that a calorie is a calorie to its extreme, that would be saying that you could eat 1500 calories of chocolate bars and potato chips, and as long as you burn 2000 calories you’ll be ok. Now we all know that a diet of chocolate bars and potato chips isn’t going to do the body any good from a health standpoint…well, hopefully we all know that. And, more importantly, a diet so high in simple sugars and starches is not going to satisfy the body, it will never feel like enough calories, and it will cause the body to store the excess energy as fat. Yup, that’s right, too many carbohydrates, especially those high in simple sugars, means the potential for an excess of body fat.

Here’s the deal…Insulin is released by the pancreas after you eat carbohydrates. This causes a rise in blood sugar. Insulin assures your cells receive some blood sugar necessary for life, and increases glycogen storage.
However, it also drives your body to use more carbohydrate, and less fat, as fuel. And, insulin converts almost half of your dietary carbohydrate to fat for storage. If you want to use more fats for energy, the insulin response must be moderated.
Diets high in refined sugars release more insulin thereby allowing less stored fat to be burned. High insulin levels also suppress two important hormones: glucagon and growth hormone. Glucagon promotes the burning of fat and sugar. Growth hormone is used for muscle development and building new muscle mass.
Insulin also causes hunger. As blood sugar increases following a carbohydrate meal, insulin rises with the eventual result of lower blood sugar. This results in hunger, often only a couple of hours (or less) after the meal.
Cravings, usually for sweets, are frequently part of this cycle, leading you to resort to snacking, often on more carbohydrates. Not eating makes you feel ravenous shaky, moody and ready to "crash." If the problem is chronic, you never get rid of that extra stored fat, and your energy is adversely affected.
So you can see, it really is important to not only to eat the right amount of food, but also the right types of food if you want to lose weight, improve energy and burn off those excess fat stores.
Ok, now you know what to eat, and more importantly what NOT to eat. The next part of the equation is the knowing how much to eat. If you go online there are a variety of resources for calculating your caloric needs based on your age, weight, height and gender. This typically gives you your resting metabolic rate. From there, you factor in your daily activity level based on your work/home life and any exercise you do, and voila! You have your metabolic rate. The problem with this system is that it’s nothing more than an estimate. It doesn’t take into account the efficiency and strength of your body and its engine. Higher lean muscle mass burns more calories, as does a strong, efficient aerobic system. In my personal case, I require close to 500 calories more than my mathematical guesstimate would indicate. Which means that if I were to go by that estimate, and then subtract another 500 calories in order to lose weight, I may in fact put myself into too much of a caloric deficit and enter a starvation mode, which is not a healthy or happy place to be. On the flip side, if your estimate is higher than you actually needs, you may end up thinking you are doing the right thing, but still end up gaining weight because you are eating more than your body truly needs.
How then can you know what your body truly needs? Thankfully there is scientific metabolic testing available to the masses now that can tell you accurately and consistently how many calories your body needs on a daily basis, and how efficient your body is at burning fat for fuel. A Resting Metabolic Assessment consists of a breath gas exchange analysis, which basically measures the amount of oxygen you are consuming and the amount of carbon dioxide you are expelling while at rest, comparing the two and coming up with an accurate, scientifically valid measurement of your own, unique and current caloric needs and where your body is getting it’s fuel from. With that knowledge you can then make the changes to your eating habits, both from a quantity and quality standpoint to improve your energy levels, increase your fat metabolism and lose weight, confident that you are doing exactly what your body requires of you at that particular point in your life.
You can then couple that with an Active Metabolic Assessment to determine your proper training intensity to burn the most total calories and the most total fat calories while you are exercising, whether it be running, walking, cycling or any other mode of cardiovascular training. If you aren’t training at the right intensity, you run the risk of burning too few total calories, or too many of the wrong type of calories. Either way, exercising at the wrong intensity is quite simply a waste of time and effort, and I think we can all agree that life is too busy to be wasting the time you devote to exercise.
So, there you have it. Weight loss really is simple, in spite of what the massive weight loss industry would have you believe. Beware weight loss programs that require you to buy things like supplements and proprietary foods. All you need is to know your body, know its needs and work within them. Eat the right amount of the right types of food, exercise regularly at the right intensity to burn more than you are consuming, and you will see and feel the results.