If excess fat is unnatural, then natural weight loss is the right answer to an overweight problem. Is it possible?
“Help! I’ve tried everything, but I just can’t lose weight”! Let’s get something straight from the beginning; I personally do not want to go to a gym, eat pills, change eating habits or cover my body in mud or plastic wrap. So, what can I do to drop off pounds without dieting? I want my cake, I want to eat and enjoy my cake, and I want to lose weight!
Each year it seems that no matter what we do we add another permanent pound or two–or three–or five to our hips, belly and thighs! It is annoying! We want to lose sizes not gain more and more weight. Help! How do we stop this insidious weight gain?
We’ve tried everything. Remember, there was the January after the holiday’s diet that just worked for a week, and then here came the pounds back–creeping onto us again like remora fish hanging on a shark. We’ve tried as many different diets as we can and even threatened to begin jogging, but the reality is we don’t jog and the pounds just keep adding up. We hang up little signs on the refrigerator door–a moment on the lips means forever on the hips! We do not become what we think about, we become what we EAT! But the ankles turn to cankles and the thighs turn to thunder! I even heard of a prune diet…weight loss was minimal, but your spouse always knew where you were!
Remember when our chatty neighbor talked us into to using the unbelievable new and scientific; 300calorieinacansuperbodyflushingcarbohydratebondingsteroidampedprotienboostedmegamanwomandiet!
That new expensive program that promised you a Greek god/goddess body in a matter of days? Those programs are generally not natural weight loss. After eating horse pills and chewing cardboard crunch bars, we discover that the diet did not work any better than mowing the lawn.
The plan was guaranteed but we are too discouraged, embarrassed and lazy to jump through the hoops to get our money back. Besides, we are certain they will say it did not work because we did not use it right…it was not the program that failed, it was OUR fault. In our depression, we hit Starbucks for the low-cal 500 calorie; superlatemochablowkapackyourkanklesmoothie!
On the shelf in the grocery store we see that big can of Crisco and notice that it is a ONE POUND CAN…Wow! The sheer size of a one pound can of pure FAT terrifies us so badly that we prowl the isles of the store buying everything we can find that says no sugar added! Soon the lousy tasting food is just broken plastic bags in the pantry because…we just ain’t-a-gonna eat it! We simply are not going to jog, not going to go to the gym (for long anyway) and not going to eat differently. It is just the way we are…true victims of years of immovable habits. But dang-it, we are Americans in the 21st century-there must be a way to have my cake and eat the thing!
What is the lazy man’s answer to losing weight and keeping it off through natural weight loss?
It has not been possible, until recently! (Well, the deserted island thing works, but is not really smart or practical.)
In 2004, the UN estimated the average daily intake for a woman was 1877 calories a day and 2618 for a man. Today our fast food mega-burger is over 600 calories, and an appetizer of chili-cheese-fries can be over 2000 calories. (That is before you even begin the meal!) Is it too crazy to suggest that in America, where we consume 4000 to 6000 calories a day, we might want to cut that back? We may not realize that for every pound of fat we have hanging someplace on our body, that it will take a whopping 3,500 calories of heat to burn it off! That means you need to exercise 7000 calories to drop only two pounds! (No problem, that is 20 straight hours of badminton to burn off the two lbs and that’s only if you do not eat while playing!)
Bottom line–we know that sustained weight loss is difficult or impossible without increased regular exercise! But we’re not going to do exercises–don’t they get it! We want another plan! Something we can live with! What we want is a natural weight loss method that molds into our daily routine and eating habits and yet it allows us to diminish our weight.
The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) recommends that your calorie levels do not drop under 1,200 calories per day for women, and 1,800 calories per day for men. So some logic tells us that our safe number to consistently reduce, is dropping our caloric intake by 500 calories each and every day–NO MATTER WHAT! Yea! This seems achievable…after all, we have been to the moon, for heavens sakes, we should be able to devise a way to reduce our caloric intake by a measly 500 points each day, right? (Of course, that mans without changing our eating patterns–remember, we are selfish lazy overweight North Americans, right?)
Warning! EVERYONE with any kind of credentials–back me up here! A loss of more than 500 calories a day in intake, can be harmful. BUT WAIT! That means 499 calories a day in reduction must work! Reduction of more than 500 calories a daily is a signal to notify your doctor that you are on a program. So let’s just nail down the safe level and stay with it.
First objective–500 calories a day less, everyday, no matter what!
But wait! That dang PLATEAU– I lose ten pounds then I get stuck there! Then what? You are right in your concern. Over time, our bodies engage an energy conservation program (lowered metabolism) that burns less fat when operating in a day to day environment. Fortunately, this marvelous feature does have an override system which must be employed. Simply maintain your hydration and increase your metabolism. This is where many of the weight loss junkies make their big money–they have you here at plateau–and in frustration and maybe desperation, you buy whatever they are selling to keep losing–but it generally fails!
At this critical point, most people drop the diet; (the diet sellers did not know what to tell you anyway) and you immediately begin to gain the weight back again.
Professionals tell us that just dropping calories can actually lower the metabolism rate. Well, if we are staying at the same caloric intake without metabolic change (exercise) the pounds can (frustratingly) actually start to come back on. So here is what you do. First, take a gentle metabolic inducer–second, take a mild colon cleanser and third–walk farther from the parking lot to the front door of the store! THAT’S IT! Really! You may be thinking, “if it is so simple, why don’t more people do it?” The answer is the “D” word, discipline. Between forgetting not caring enough, we kill the weight management program.
Studies show that a gradual decrease of calories allows your body to properly adjust and the pounds will begin to diminish, a natural weight loss. If your caloric reduction is too sudden, your metabolic rate will drop at an illogical rate (to your body’s system) causing sluggishness, fatigue, and irritability. This sets you up for a return to your previous consumption patterns and failure of the weight loss program you attempted.
What we need is something to come in and rob, steal and cheat us out of the calories that we are going to keep eating. Up until recently, there have not been products you could take along with your diet that would capture and illuminate calories. Now there are, and surprisingly they have been around for over a thousand years. I will discuss more about them in part two of this article.
So, what to do next? Well, everyone has a different opinion based on the scientific opinion of the next scientific opinion?!?! Here is what we all know for a real fact….if we dropped you on an island…with no food, you would eventually lose weight! Just reduce caloric intake for starters, but then it must be sustained! How do we decrease our caloric intake on a sustained bases in light of years of habitual poor eating habits? My research has yielded only two possibilities–one is to take serious advantage of the existing technology of calorie encapsulation–and the other is to be dropped off on an island in the remote PACIFIC!
You must use a calorie blocker or encapsulator!
Blockers are not new, but over the years have been slightly controversial. The reason is that calorie blocker required the ingestion of at least two large tablets of crushed shellfish thirty minutes before each meal.
This program never reached wide success because of the simple reality that people do not like to try to time a horse-pill (two horse-pills) 30 minutes before each meal. Alone with that, we do not desire the accompanied and required two large glasses of water. Even when they did attempt the program they were often found to be allergic to shellfish, the primary ingredient!
There are other programs that block calories by simply adding a food additive to the current meal you are ingesting. These programs use herbs and organic grown fauna that effectively encapsulate food value and do not allow the digestion of the gross caloric value of the meal you eat. This happens while effectively allowing the absorption of the nutrient vitamin and mineral content into your body. With these programs there is good news and kinda-good news. While there are products that work well, until now there have not been good delivery systems.
New and ingenious programs are now emerging as the crisis of weight gain continues to develop. My next release, part two of this article, outlines specific things you can do to actually lose weight through natural weight loss without changing your eating habits.
Kelton Drew Earl