Food for Thought

Food for thought: the human body is resilient. It WANTS to survive and thrive. If you are someone who has experimented with the "starvation" diet (i.e. reducing calories in order to lose weight) you probably know that this method is not sustainable. Why not? Because if you don't nourish the body, it will intentionally store fat. It doesn't KNOW that you are intentionally starving it, it really thinks you're starving! So it's going to store fat.

If you are looking to "lose weight" aka lose excess body fat, make sure you are:
1. eating to satiety (protein and fat will help you feel full longer)
2. losing the grains and dairy (inflammatory to your system, plus grains get broken down as sugar quickly and stored as fat),
3. eating ample FAT (as your body gets away from the grains, it will look to metabolize fat for fuel. Please realize that eating fat will NOT make you fat. You need fat for your brain to function properly, for cell membrane structure, etc. )
4. weight training/sprinting (NOT long slow distance. Running on the treadmill for 45 minutes induces a cortisol response and causes your body to store fat. Keep things short and sweet). 

Anyone have failed or successful training programs or weight management programs? Does losing weight = healthy???

How to Maintain a Healthy Weight

Note: The box to the right is an anonymous way of asking for certain topics to be covered here. This is a post in response to someone's request. 

adipose tissue (fat) can easily be observed in the cross section of a woman on the left

Losing weight. Come New Years or spring break or summer vacation or a 20th reunion, you can always find someone who wants to "lose weight." What does this really mean though? If I take off my shoes, I've just lost weight. If I cut my hair, I've just lost some weight. Of course people don't think of these things when they say "lose weight;" they mean "lose excess fat." When people want to "get in shape" (another very loose, relative term) the hope is that they want to increase muscle mass and decrease body fat. Let's be honest folks, YOU WANT TO LOOK GOOD NAKED.  Maybe you don't want to be shredded like Ahhnold back in his prime and hopefully you don't want to be twig-thin like these models.  But you DO want to maintain a healthy bodyweight. So how do we go about this? I can tell you right now, Diet Coke and rice cakes is NOT going to help you be lean and strong (but they can help you be emaciated and weak). Let's take a look at some factors and how to actually do this.