We find ourselves surrounded by so many weight loss "secrets", but most of these diet pills imply they can do it all for you. There are drinks that will "help" you lose weight, doctors with "secret weight loss formulas", and a massive number of fad diets that promise all kinds of wonderful weight loss effects. With all this, there's no way I can blame you if you are confused about who's telling you the truth.
Then there's the biggest question of all.
Is there really such a thing as a weight loss "secret"?
You can only call something a "secret" if no one knows about it. Far from being a secret, he "truth" about weight loss has been known for a long time.
Just look at the labels of most diet pills, drinks, meal substitutes,
diet books, and other weight loss products, and you will
notice that they often have one thing in common. Again and again, they
have statements that say something to the effect of "...when used with
exercise and proper nutrition."
The secret is, that most, if not all of these diet products, at best only ASSIST in what nature can do almost perfectly well without their help!
The basic biology and physics of weight gain and weight loss has been
known and documented for years! Even if your math wasn't too good in
school, the weight loss equation is a simple one.
Take in more calories than you burn...you gain weight.
Burn more calories than you take in...you lose weight.
The problem, and it's not a secret, is that we are human!
SO WHAT'S
WRONG WITH BEING HUMAN, BUD!
There is nothing wrong with BEING human. Sometimes I even talk
to one. I have a couple of human friends, one lives next door (I
think), and I would even let my daughter marry one. The problem is that
each human is, as Sister Mary Fides used to drum into our teenage
(Human) skulls, unique. This means that if I show you the perfect
weight loss program and it works like a charm for you, your next-door
neighbor might have a problem making that exact program work for her or him.
WHY WOULD A
WEIGHT LOSS PROGRAM WORK FOR ONE PERSON AND NOT ANOTHER?
As Shakespeare has Cassius say in Julius Caesar, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves...!"
Now, I am NOT saying that it is YOUR FAULT, per se, but the difficulty
of making one magic solution, the perfect weight loss program, lies in
the very uniqueness that makes us so human.
One person inherits some genes that tend to make them fatter than
others. Another person would have been a lot smaller, but they were
raised in a home where a type of cooking or lifestyle was common that
encouraged them to grow fatter. Someone else may experience some severe
emotional ups and downs that contribute to poor eating habits that
cause them to gain weight.
Nature also designed some chemical changes in our bodies to meet
certain needs, and we have, over millennia, changed OUR natural
surroundings so that these changes now work against us rather than
serving us. And, if any one of those factors isn't enough, most people
who are overweight have more than one of these things going
on, and some of them actually increase the affect of other contributing
factors!
We also have other differences that make it difficult to create a
one-size-fits-all weight loss program.
Your brother-in-law loves to work out with weights, but that bores you
to tears. Your neighbor has a Bowflex and you think it is great, but
you travel a lot and can't figure out how to take a Bowflex with you!
Your cousin lost a lot of weight on a certain diet, but your metabolism
is different, and you didn't really lose any weight when you tried it.
In fact, you tried diet after diet and GAINED weight! By the
way, it is sometimes common to gain weight when you try a lot of
different diets. It's slightly complicated to go into here, but often
when you go on a diet and then come back off of it, your body has
learned to get by on fewer calories. Once you go back to eating like
you used to, it now has extra calories to store as fat. Remember our
equations up above?
Many people want the "lose 30 pounds in 30 days"
promise to be true. They have been so upset over their weight for so
long that they want to believe that almost any claim is true, no matter
how silly it seems, or how dangerous to their health it actually is!
CAN'T I
JUST CUT BACK ON THE CALORIES?
Probably, you (and I) could certainly stand to cut some of the calories
from our daily diet. However, there is a point at which the body resets
some internal bells and whistles, and we may actually begin to gain
weight. Also, cutting out food means cutting out the nutritional
elements our body needs to be healthy.
WELL, I
CAN'T JUST SPEND MY DAY EXERCISING FROM DAWN TO DUSK!
Hey! That was the other side of the equation, wasn't it? Well, you're
absolutely correct, and I would begin to worry about you if you did.
You don't have to go to that extreme. There is a solution.
WHAT?
YOU'LL SIGN ON AS MY PERSONAL TRAINER?
Nope! I'm too lazy for that, but YOU can sign on as your personal
trainer.
That is, you can do a little experimentation, find some activities you
like and begin doing one or more of them on a regular basis...three or
four times a week, let's say. You could garden, ride a bike, play with
the kids or grandkids, take a walk, do some yoga, try weight lifting...the
list goes on. You don't have to do all of them every day, and if you
find one you really like, you can do it several times a week if you
want. One thing to remember, of course, is that you should ease into
any program and only increase it once you are sure that you are fine at
the level you are at...and then, increase it gradually.
I've known of some champion bodybuilders who started out lifting just
the barbell with no weights on it at all, and I know of runners who
started out by walking to the mailbox and back. In the army, I used to
run six miles or more, but when I started running, I barely got a block
down the road before I had to drop back to walking.
Start making some small changes to your diet as well. I am using the
word "diet" in this case to mean the things you eat, not some
particular diet. Start popping a multivitamin every day. You may find
that helps make you feel a tiny bit more energetic. Cut out sugar. As
much as I don't like artificial sweeteners, they are probably going to
be better for you than sugar. If, like me, you worry about the effects
of artificial sweeteners, try stevia. My wife and I have been using it
for some time. It took a little getting used to, but I have noticed a
definite decrease in heartburn and carb cravings.
Educate yourself about nutrition and exercise.
You don't have to take a college course. If you are reading this
online, you can go to webmd.com or mayoclinic.com/ and get a lot of
great health, fitness, and weight loss information. A great
ebook that you can download is Tom Venuto's, "Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle".
Read food labels, and start thinking about what you are putting in your
mouth. Most of us can look at some foods and realize that they might
not be good for us, at least not in large quantities, so cut you
portion sizes. Don't know what a portion size is? Look on the label!
Stay away from prepackaged foods, junk food, fast food, or learn enough
about them to make intelligent choices.
SET SOME
REAL GOALS FOR YOURSELF
This is where I'm supposed to tell you to decide to lose X number of
pounds in Y number of days, right? Wrong. This is where I tell you to
start setting some performance goals about how you are going to try to
live. I say "try" because you WILL slip from time to time, and there
will be times you will just have to make do in a situation and eat that
Big Mac, darn it! Go ahead, make the sacrifice and eat it, but then get
back on the wagon. Don't worry about a Big Mac or a single bowl of ice
cream or even a binge after you catch him/her cheating on you. The
occasional dietary sin will not send you plunging back into fat
hell...unless you let it.
ON THAT
NOTE....
Grow up, take charge, and quit looking around for someone or something
to blame. Oh, maybe there are a lot of reasons why you got fat, and
maybe they are reasons that you had no control over, but the point is
that losing weight is going to happen today and tomorrow, and it is
going to depend on the future choices you make, not on what the past
has done to you. My father, who was a good man otherwise, was an
alcoholic. I cannot let that change who I am going to be today or
tomorrow, unless I use it as an incentive to be better because of it.
ABOUT THE
AUTHOR:
Donovan Baldwin is a 65-year-old amateur
bodybuilder, freelance writer, certified optician, and Internet
marketer currently living in the Atlanta, Georgia area. A University Of
West Florida alumnus (1973) with a BA in accounting, he has been a
member of Mensa and has held several managerial and supervisory
positions throughout his career. After retiring from the U. S. Army in
1995, with 21 years of service, he became interested in Internet
marketing and developed various online businesses. He has been writing
poetry, articles, and essays for over 40 years, and now frequently
publishes original articles on his own websites and for use by other
webmasters.
He has an online store of various health products which can be found at http://nodiet4me.com/health_products/.
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P. S. If you want to learn about why Diets Don't Work, please click here.
If you want to learn how to burn fat, a great book to read is Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle by Tom Venuto
Web Page Copyright 2024 by Donovan Baldwin
The Real Weight Loss Secret
Page Updated October 17, 2024
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