There are 2 disasters to dieting:
1. The inevitable hunger, cravings and low energy that typically hitch a ride with traditional low-calorie dieting
AND
2. The hardest to swallow of all, the loss and predictable regain.
How is it that you can work so hard and despite your best efforts, you can’t lose the excess body fat and keep it off? Why does everyone keep shouting at you that weight loss is as simple as eating less and exercising more? If weight loss was just a simple math equation, so many wouldn’t be struggling.
I want to take time to unpack the first “disaster of dieting.” The first disaster of dieting is the inevitable hunger, cravings and low energy that hitch a ride with traditional low-calorie dieting.
Why does this happen? If we desire to get healthier and lose excess body fat are we doomed to suffer through the negative symptoms just to get the results we are looking for?
Absolutely, positively NO. You can simultaneously be getting healthier AND feel amazing. It’s completely counter-intuitive that you would chronically be feeling BLAH while moving towards a state of vibrant health. Listen to your body. Think about it. If you feel like crap all the time doing what you are doing, it’s not working. (little side step: when people lower their carbohydrates, initially, they can get some symptoms, but those are correctable. Just add in electrolytes and your body breaks through. That’s not what I’m talking about here).
HOW JUST CUTTING CALORIES SLOWS YOUR METABOLISM…
Imagine you lost half of your income. What would you do? You’d slow your spending. Maybe you’d get a smaller home, take public transportation, spend less on groceries. You can’t spend the same amount of money if you lose half of your income.
The same is true with our bodies. If we decide to go on a traditional low-calorie diet and cut our caloric intake, our body has to slow down. Sure, there is a little buffer zone there and we lose some weight initially while our metabolic rate remains high, but our body pretty quickly figures out what’s going on and slooowwss down. It takes energy (calories) to grow hair and nails and to regulate your body temperature. It takes energy to keep your heart, lungs and thyroid active. When you go on a low-calorie diet and cut your energy income, your body slows it’s spending. Know what that means? Your energy drops. Your body can’t have you out running around burning through a bunch of calories when not enough is coming in, so you start to feel tired and blah. It takes a lot of energy (calories) to keep things like nails and hair growing. Are you cold all the time, the longer you’ve been eating low calorie? That’s another sign your body is slowing down some systems. And eventually we all know what really happens: we start to get ravenous. We get SO HUNGRY. We never feel satisfied. Sugar and carbs call our name. We think we have no willpower, but it’s really by design: your body is trying to find more energy to keep your system running efficiently.
So, what are we to do? Is it even possible to feel our best and lose weight without sacrificing the inevitable hunger and health crash we feel with traditional dieting?
The answer is a beautiful YES.
Let me let you in on a not-so-secret, secret: if you have excess body fat, you have a lot of stored energy on your body. Nutrition 101 teaches us that fat is more calorically dense than proteins and carbohydrates. The fat we have sitting on our body is there as a storage source of high energy for when we need it. Fat is energy storage.
Let me let you in on something that shouldn’t be a secret, but kind of is: high carbohydrate and sugar eating LOCKS your body fat in place so it is inaccessible for energy use. Let me say that differently: if you eat lots of candy, cereal, breads, chips, pastas, soda, your metabolism is on lock down. Cereal for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, low-fat yogurt for snack, pasta for dinner – I promise you this is creating hormonal chaos in your body and not allowing you to burn fat for energy. Even if you are a lean individual, eating this way can be detrimental to your health.
Let’s say that daily example I laid out was 1200 calories worth of food. Because you can’t access your stored energy (body fat) since you are eating in a way that locks your body fat away, your body has a measly 1200 calories to run off of. Not enough, friends. You’ll crash. Or you’ll feel like you need to cut your calories EVEN LOWER to get results. That’s a health disaster in the making.
I have 2 solutions for you:
1. Try reducing the amount of sugar and processed carbohydrates such as cereal, chips and candy you are eating.
2. My favorite solution: my Best You Plan. I take all the guesswork out for you! The next round is July 23rd, 2018 and sign-up starts on June 26th! Check out more information here on upcoming rounds.
