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Nine out of every 10 individuals who lose weight gain it
back. Given this fact, it would seem that engaging in a weight
loss program is a gamble in which the odds of winning are
very slim to none. Before you become frustrated and give up,
you should realize that one out of those very ten people did
succeed. What that means is that it can be done. The trick
is knowing how they did it.
Years ago I embarked on a journey to study how individuals
who succeeded in losing weight for the long term did it. I
then researched the science behind how the body regulated
weight. I came to understand that most weight loss programs
fail because the programs are designed to disrupt the body’s
natural mechanisms. It is this disruption that creates the
battle where the individual eventually gives up.
To lose weight safely and permanently, you have to understand
a concept in body functioning called homeostasis. In simple
words, homeostasis means balance. The body always tries to
maintain a constant environment. Your weight, just like your
blood pressure or body temperature, is kept at a constant
level. This level is called your set point. If you changed
your external environment, your body will adjust to keep the
internal environment stable. That is why a person in Alaska
in the middle of the winter has the same body temperature
as when they go to Arizona in the middle of the summer.
How then can you change your weight? First by understanding
that there are certain food elements that your body needs,
carbohydrates, fats, proteins, minerals and vitamins and water.
If you deprive your body of any of these, it will start fighting
you. Second, that your weight is kept in balance mostly by
the effects of two opposing hormones, glucagon, that causes
fat breakdown and insulin that causes fat buildup. You lose
weight safely and permanently by giving your body all the
essential food nutrients (not by dieting) and by shifting
the balance in favor of glucagon over insulin. You achieve
this by adjusting the foods that affect the production of
these hormones. This eliminates cravings and constant hunger.
Also when you decrease the amount of food you eat, as in dieting,
your body also decreases the amount of calories it burns to
try and maintain the balance. This is why you must increase
your activity level to maintain your body’s rate of burning
calories.
Most weight loss plans fail because they do not take the powerful
effect of homeostasis into account when the program was designed.
When you are told, for example to avoid carbohydrates or fats,
your body, through homeostasis, will create cravings for those
foods and that’s what causes that uneasiness that lead the
individual to eventually give up on the program.
The good news, again is that by shifting the balance in a
gradual fashion without trying to completely disrupt it, you
can obtain safe and permanent weight loss.
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