Body Fat Solution
Body Fat Solution
You might be saying to yourself, "The real cause of body fat is obvious; we eat the wrong foods". Body fat is the result of a surplus of caloric energy. You start to realize that body fat isn't an isolated issue, but rather it's a bundle of physical, emotional and social problems producing a single physical symptom. Removing body fat is not simply a matter of going on a diet - it's a much more complex issue. Without a doubt, a solution always begins with understanding the problem, but when it comes to body fat, that's often easier said than done. Getting rid of body fat appears simple on paper, but proves more difficult in practice. Your body is made up of many diverse and dynamic systems. The body fat solution is not nutrition, mind-set or social support. The body fat solution is focused on increasing your choices rather than taking them away. A big part of the body fat problem is the fads, fakes and downright weird stuff sold in the marketplace today. Many even experience a rebound effect, ending up with more body fat than they had in the first place. When it comes to body fat, extreme approaches often produce the most impressive results in the short term. To burn fat, you must consistently eat fewer calories than you burn, but even your calorie reduction should be moderate. In long term body fat control, slow and steady wins it almost every time. Dozens of factors can shift your body's energy balance equation and affect whether calories are "partitioned" into or out of your body's fat stores or lean tissues. In 2005, a study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association comparing four of the most popular diet programs with approaches that include carbohydrate restriction, fat restriction, calorie restriction and macronutrient balance. All four modestly reduced body weight. They found the diets on the extremes - very low fat and very low carb - had the lowest compliance rates. The researcher's final comment pointed the way toward a solution: "To manage a national epidemic of excess body weight, practical techniques to increase dietary adherence rates are urgently needed." Most of us would also agree that certain diets are clearly more effective than others in terms of greater fat loss and improved health. While your mind and ego require fresh stimulation, your body requires a small number of essentials every day. Your success with losing body fat will come from repeating a small handful of fundamentals over and over again. If you have a lean, fit body, it wasn't luck. If you have an overweight, unfit body, it didn't happen by chance. Genetics plays a role in body fat, and some diseases and prescription drugs can also make fat loss more difficult. I also believe that your health is your greatest wealth, and the condition of your body will be about equal to the average of your five closest friends. Millions of people believe myths and fallacies about body fat and weight loss. Excess body fat isn't simply a frustrating cosmetic problem. Myths about body fat and weight loss only perpetuate it. If you want to know how to solve a body fat or health problem, then take the news with a grain of salt. Does the TV set cause you to get fat? Does the TV screen emit some kind of "fat radiation waves" that disrupt your cellular physiology and make you an adipose storing machine? That conclusion is so far fetched, it's silly to even consider! If you eat at night, will the food automatically turn to fat? Once again the answer is no! How many times have you seen the headline "Diet Soda Makes you Fat"? This erroneous conclusion was based on studies that showed overweight people drank a lot of diet soda! The "fat burning zone" myth actually tells you to intentionally slow down in order to burn more fat as fuel. It is more reassuring to believe that excess fat is not your fault and that a slow metabolism is to blame. It's more reassuring to believe that eventually a weight loss pill will be developed that gives you a fit and slim body without work. If you buy into any of these myths, it can be the single obstacle that holds you back from better health and a leaner body. The cause of excess body fat is a positive energy balance. Once you've established a baseline, if you want to speed up your fat loss, you simply increase your energy expenditure by getting more exercise and activity, decrease your energy intake by eating smaller portions, or both. I assure you, if you have a maintenance level of 2,000 calories a day and you eat 4,000 calories a day of protein and fat (no carbs), you will gain fat. Men and women with a large body mass actually burn more calories because their resting metabolic rate is directly linked to their total body mass and their lean body mass. Futhermore, the energy cost of moving around a very large body is greater than the energy cost of moving a light body. As you lose weight, your calorie requirements go down in proportion to your total body mass. If you keep eating the same for your smaller body as you did for your larger body, your calorie deficit shrinks as you lose weight. People seem to get "amnesia" about eating specific foods such as fats or sweets. Body fat is a complex problem with numerous causes and genetics are only one part. Although many people prefer to pin all the blame on something outside their control, current evidence says that the condition your body is in today is primarily a product of your own lifestyle, behavior and mind-set and not just genetics. "The fat you eat is the fat you wear." Dogma such as this was responsible for millions of people becoming "fat phobics". At the peak of the low fat diet movement, it seemed like almost every food package had the words "no fat" or "low fat" emblazoned in bold print. Even hard candies had "0% Fat" printed on the packages. Why are most people so afraid of dietary fat? It seems completely reasonable to assume that fat in your food will get stored as fat on your body! Another reason the "fat makes you fat" myth survives today is because there's research that says it does. Anyone who wants to make a case against dietary fat can pull out a whole stack of studies that show that eating more fat is associated with weight gain. The truth is, the subjects simply ate more calories, and dietary fat was the high payload vehicle. Dietary fat is the most calorie dense macronutrient, with nine calories per gram. Since high fat foods are high calorie foods, people who eat more fat but don't pay attention to portion sizes tend to eat more total calories as well. However, this still doesn't mean that eating fat causes you to gain fat. You can eat a large percentage of your calories from dietary fat, but if you're in a calorie deficit you will still lose weight. Much of what I said about dietary fat applies to carbs as well. If I told you the only thing you could eat was lean proteins like chicken breast, egg whites, some healthy fats, and salad vegetables, it would be nearly impossible to overeat. There's also a big difference between the health benefits and body composition benefits you get from eating certain foods. I call this the health-body fat paradox. High body fat usually comes with a cluster of other health problems, including hypertension, high cholesterol and high triglycerides. However, the first part of the health-body fat paradox is that you can be healthy while having unwanted excess body fat. The second part of the paradox is that you could eat white sugar or virtually any other junk food you can think of, and if you consume only small amounts so you stay in a calorie deficit, you'll still lose body fat. Conversely, you can be a clean eating fanatic and cut 100 percent of the refined foods out of your diet; if you're in a calorie surplus, you'll still gain body fat. When you understand the health-body fat paradox, you'll be able to strike the right balance between calorie quality and calorie quantity. Insulin also plays a role in the body fat picture because high insulin levels prevent your body from releasing fat. Insulin is also a storage hormone that carries glucose into your fat cells. In the low carb world, since eating carbs causes a large release of insulin, this means "insulin makes you fat". Insulin is a double edged sword you must manage carefully but it's not some evil "fat storing monster". Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of symptoms including high blood pressure, low HDL cholesterol and abdominal body fat. There's a close relationship between excess body fat and metabolic syndrome. It's the surplus of calories that actually causes the fat gain Instead of losing fat, try burning, releasing or discarding fat. You may want nothing more than a lean, healthy body. Part of you wants the pleasure of a better body. It is easy to believe myths about weight loss and body fat. If you accept the possibility that you might believe things that are actually holding you back, then you've taken the first step toward transforming your behavior, your body and your life. While people start off with good intentions and good nutrition and training strategies, they don't believe they could achieve a ripped body worthy of an "after" photograph. Limiting beliefs must be dug up and replaced, because only then have you dealt with the true cause of many body fat problems at the source. Disliking yourself turns into low self worth, which means you don't deserve the good things in life, including a lean and healthy body. Body fat is not a person. The way your body looks today has nothing to do with your capabilities or intrinsic worth as a person. Your body is capable of astonishing feats. Even if you don't notice the small body changes that happen from one workout to the next, you'll feel better just by taking a step in the right direction.
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