I know it sounds too good to but true but weight loss is actually quite easy. I know that many people who read that sentence will go “yeah right!” but weight loss is about eating real food. Read over these Seven Deadly Sins of Weight Loss and see the solution at the bottom.
1.) Don’t Count calories
Always remember that if weight loss was as easy and “eat less and exercise more” I wouldn’t have a job. I would not be writing this and you would not be reading this, if weight loss was about eating a small amount of calories and exercising a lot. If that was true, you would suggesting that everyone who is over weight is a lazy sloth that eats all day and never exercises.
Counting calories is very stressful and how do you even know how many you’re supposed to take in? How many calories is too many and how many calories is not enough? How many calories do you burn during the day, plus exercise? How many calories do you eat? And on and on and on. You can see that it is impossible to count calories. You have a 3% chance of measuring this out perfectly. There is no way that slim people magically hit that magic number daily. The amount of calories you eat it secondary to what they are. For more information on the type of calorie to eat, reference my other blog post here: http://www.mitchelblackwhatishealthy.blogspot.com/2013/06/why-calories-dont-count.html
2.) Exercise is almost irrelevant
There are millions of people who exercise daily or spend hours and hours on the treadmill and do not look any differently. You should not view exercise as a way to lose weight because no matter how hard you work, you cannot out-exercise a bad diet. Exercise should be viewed as a way to preserve your body. A person goes into the nursing home when they lose functional capacity of there body. You should be exercising/training to preserve that so you can walk or tie your shoes at ninety without needing assistance. Exercise will make you feel amazing regardless of your weight but it is not the key to helping you lose weight.
A trick you can do though his to set a performance goal with your exercise. If you set a weight loss goal or say “I want to look this way” goal then you will probably never be satisfied, which is only human nature. If you set a performance goal of lifting a certain amount, doing a hand stand push-up, or running a certain speed will keep you focused on exercise and when you reach the performance goal you set, you will probably say “hey, I lost 10lb!”
3.) Not eating breakfast
I am not saying that breakfast is not important. Breakfast plays a a very important roll with your metabolism and breakfast can help you lose weight but lets look at breakfast for a minute. A typical American breakfast is loaded with carbs and sugars coming from oat meal, cereal, cina-bun, fruit, yogurt, and many more sugar options. Orange juice is commonly used for marketing “healthy” breakfast but due to the sugar in orange juice, it is actually number seven on the top ten foods that make you fat.
Along with orange juice being marketing as making you healthy, eggs with bacon is marketing as unhealthy which is not true at all. Eating a breakfast filled with carbohydrates and sugar isn’t the breakfast you want you’re actually better off not eating breakfast at all if that is what you would eat. Eating a breakfast high in fats and proteins is what you want and need. Here is a link to another blog I wrote about foods that make you thin with some recipes for breakfast: http://www.mitchelblackwhatishealthy.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-top-10-foods-that-make-you-thin.html
4.) Eating five to six times a day
We typically read that we need to eat every two hours to keep the metabolism high. Let’s replace metabolism with blood sugar and that is a little more accurate. The Standard American Diet (SAD) is about 65% carbohydrates and we focus on “snacks” all day day that are carbohydrate based. Chips, crackers, bread, pretzels, etc are snack options for us. Those carbohydrate foods don’t raise our metabolism, they raise our blood sugar to make you feel full and make you think that your metabolism went up. Eating carbohydrates only raises your metabolism 3-5%. If you eat a diet made of protein and fat such as snacking on ham/turkey slices, protein shakes, protein bars, asian tuna, chicken salad, tuna salad, salmon pouches, or any other high protein and fat meal, you will raise your metabolism 23-28%. You do not have to eat every 2-3hrs but if you do, eat proteins and fat. This will actually keep you full much longer so snacks start to disappear from your diet and you will eat meals instead of snacks so you will feel full all day.
5.) Don’t believe the hype
Never buy your food from a company that prides themselves in hoe cheap it is. Low fat, low cholesterol, or low calorie is marketing from a company that knows nothing about nutrition. Kraft may say that it is based off of there research from there food scientist but remember that there food scientist work for them, so it is already skewed. Any company that is really good does not have to market how great they are. That is not just with food, that is with any company. When was the last time you saw a Ferrari commercial marketing there year end sale? When was the last time apples were on tv with a health marketing campaign? However, coke, nature valley, Kashi, Cheerios, and more have marketing daily about how great they are. Foods such as vegetables that do not have food labels are the best for you because they do not have any “crap” in them that the company needs to tell you about. When you go shopping again, stay away form food that is trying to tell you how healthy it is.
6.) “May” - lower cholesterol, etc
This is similar to #5. Just like in politics, you can skew any data to make you look good and make someone else look bad. Cheerios for example has a big marketing campaign for lowering cholesterol. This comes from Cheerios having a small amount of Vitamin E in it and they use that for there marketing. This is not just with Cheerios, this is with most companies that try to market there food as healthy. Look at “diet soda” for example. It’s “diet” because it does not have many calories but if it dos not have calories, then what is is? That means it is full of chemicals and harmful additives.
7.) Short term success = short term results
This title says it all. So many people want the quick fix which is normally and I understand it. However, short term success usually results in short term results. You may lose the weight fairly quickly but it will not stay off for very long. There is no magic number liking only losing two pounds a week for example. You can lose ten pounds a week if you want. It is how you lose the weight. If you are stressing over what you are doing to lose weight or if you are making very unrealistic changes in order to lose weight, then it may not last.
How to be successful in weight loss
1.) Real people eat real food for real results.
2.) Don’t believe the hype. Eat food that does not have to market how great it is for you.
3.) Eat when you’re hungry and eat when you’re full. Don't listen to what adds tell you about eating, listen to your body and if you’re hungry then eat until you’re satisfied. Just eat based off of #1 and #2.
The Seven Deadly Sins of Weight Loss
Mitchel Black, CPT, NC
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