How to overcome real barriers to fat loss....

Today's Post: Thursday, 10-6-2011

The basics of permanent fat loss do work for the people who use them all.

Even better, even before very much of the fat comes off, they dramatically improve your health and slash your risk of deadly diseases. They also save you up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in future medical bills to treat those diseases.

And, even if you are only half way to your goal, these lifestyle upgrades will keep off the fat you did lose.

But, aren’t there are some real problems for some people with fat loss once you do the easiest and most basic things?

Indeed there are. It’s not just your imagination. These real problems are the reasons not everyone succeeds at fat loss to the degree they would like.

But these problems have solutions. And you can overcome these problems by continuing to use those that work for sure and to try those that are safe and sound promising.

1. The worst and most effective problem is when you trigger your body’s built in famine response. That one is exactly what the basics of permanent fat loss will help you avoid. You cut back on calories in ways that leave you full and no hungrier than usual. You eat the same amount of protein or more instead of way less. You burn more calories with exercise instead of trying to do it all with eating less.

Using the basics well WILL remove excess body fat and prevent your body from triggering its failsafe famine response.

2. But, what about genetics? What if I have a gene that makes it more likely for me to be fat?

That gene does exist and some people have a double dose.

If you take no effective fat loss action and have this gene or the double dose, you will be fatter than most people.

There ARE two solutions though.

a) It’s only become known recently, but your body is not created directly by your genes! You are born with more than you use. What your body is like is determined by which ones are switched to the ON position or “expressed.”

AND, the lifestyle you follow can switch whether your genes are expressed or not to ON or turn them OFF.

Following the fat loss basics well and making those lifestyle upgrades may turn these genes off or reduce their effect by turning off some of your other genes that help them make you fat.

If your lifestyle shuts them down, these genes can no longer make you fat in other words.

b) Use more force!

Just like stuck door may not open easily, more force can often do the job. After you make sure the door hasn’t any hidden locks or heavy weights in its way, hit the stuck parts of it briskly with a heavy padded mallet to break them loose. Or if scuffs are OK, just kick the door open!

Gradually increase the percent of the time you eat right from 85% to 98%. That can work. It’s most likely to work if you know the health benefits of what you add and the health harms of what you eat less of.

85% along with enough exercise may work fine for people without these genes. If you have the double dose, you may need to go to over 96% to get the same effect.

Then, once you are eating as well as you can, systematically add more exercise or more effective exercise.

There are three kinds.

Less demanding exercises like gardening or tai chi or walking done for enough more time can work well.

One woman had to use transit and got in 2 miles of walking each way to make her connections. She had only lost 20 pounds by upgrading to eating right. After a few months of this commute, she lost another 30 pounds for a total of 50!

Progressive interval cardio of some kind such as Dr Al Sears PACE program adds muscle, strengthens your heart and lungs, and best of all, it burns as many calories or even more for hours after you stop – NOT just the smaller amount of calories you spend doing the exercise. Jumping rope, alternating speeds from high moderate to quite fast on a Nordic Track, and jumping on a mini-trampoline work extremely well for this and can be done at home. They are more time efficient than many kinds of cardio also. They burn more calories and create more calorie burn after than other kinds.

Progressive strength training does the same thing! And, it’s even better for fat loss because you add more muscle that burns more calories than the fat it replaces. And this happens 24 hours a day! In addition, it helps ensure that the weight you lose on the scale is fat and NOT muscle or bone!

3. Fattening food is addictive.

There are several solutions to this.

Doing the fat loss basics well usually is enough to do the job.

If you are eating enough of fattening foods and drinking enough soft drinks to have this problem, you can permanently get rid of half to 80 % of your excess fat WITHOUT being extra hungry by just getting rid of it all!

Stop giving your money to companies that make the stuff that’s made you fat and sick -- & is keeping you fat.

Toss out what you have. Stop buying it or getting it where you eat.

That’s the first way to solve this problem. If you know that taking a sledge hammer to this addiction will make fat leave you without ANY further effort, it makes picking up the sledge hammer and bashing it a LOT easier.

Once you pass the first few days the addition is gone and the fat comes off AND you are either no hungrier OR you are even LESS hungry! This is huge!

Eliminating all this stuff give you true hunger free fat loss!

The second way to solve this problem is to learn how incredibly bad for your health the stuff these things are made out of actually is!

We now have evidence that the high fructose corn syrup, omega 6 oils, hydrogenated oils, refined grains and preservatives this stuff is made out of actively begins to cause heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and even many cancers in those who eat or drink them often. There is even some evidence they help cause Alzheimer’s disease.

Switching to health OK alternatives is another solution.

Coffee and black tea have as much caffeine or more than cola soft drinks for example. Water and water that is carbonated only with or without added ice will quench your thirst. Good quality red or white wine that you enjoy in moderation or double strength hot cocoa from unsweetened cocoa also work for some people.

Buy only applesauce that has “No Sugar added” on the label. (I lost some fat and lowered my blood sugar from a bit too high by switching from sugar added applesauce to the No sugar added kind.)

Raw nuts make a good tasting and crunchy snack if you aren’t allergic to them.

Organic apples also have a lot of crunch. If you like them, they can be a great way to go.

Raw vegetable chunks with guacamole or a hummus you like also work well.

These foods each have health BENEFITS instead of making you sick. And they block addiction to sugary junk foods and soft drinks.

The other solution for sweet treats is to make them yourself at home once a month out of real food ingredients instead of eating the pre-made stuff several times a day that is made with the bad for you ingredients you’d know better than to use at home.

Another solution that has worked for me is to ONLY indulge in the treats that I like most. I don’t indulge every time of course. But I no longer EVER indulge when the treat is something I find OK but not great.

For real sugar, the other method I’ve found to work is to keep cutting the amount in half. You may still like sugar. But each step is doable and after one or two of these steps you are no longer addicted to sugar.

For example, I used to use over three tablespoons of brown sugar on my cereal and did that seven days a week. I now only eat cereal every other day. I only add sugar about every other time. And, I now only use one or two tablespoons of sugar total each time.

Yes, I still eat the stuff and enjoy it. But I’ve reduced my sugar intake by about 90% by doing this.

I prefer to do other things than give up what I still eat. But, I enjoy the breakfasts I eat now on the days I use no sugar. So, if I try the other things and still have fat to lose, I could easily drop that last 10% too. I’d prefer not to and very well may never do it. But I’ve cut enough and done so in doable steps that an addiction to sugar no longer would prevent me from it if I were to decide to do so!

4. Stress reliably increases your appetite for sugary and fatty foods.

Everyone has days that are extra stressful.

And sometimes you can be under stress for quite a while from something you were hit with you didn’t cause.

But this one too is solvable.

There are six cures.

a) Eat health OK sugary or fatty foods! Just avoid the junky, extra fattening ones that harm your health!

It’s less fattening. It’s far less harmful to your health. And, it doesn’t send you back to the lifestyle that put on a lot of your fat in the first place!

Eat a banana. Eat some raw walnut or pecan halves. Do both!

Eat a small dark chocolate bar. Or, eat half of it.

If too much alcohol isn’t a problem for you and the time of day is appropriate, have a single glass of wine.

Eat some vegetable chunks with guacamole or a hummus you like.

b) The second cure even astounded me when I recently found out about it!

If you’ve just had a bad day and need a quick stress reliever….. Or if the everyday stress has gotten to the point you just need a quick bit of relief FAST…. Do this: Do a big arm and shoulder stretch and do a BIG yawn.

This not only wakes you up a bit, I just found out it produces some near instant stress relief too!

And, perhaps best of all, yawning is contagious. The people around you will often tend to yawn too. Then the stress relief THEY got will help reduce the amount of stress they are under too. That makes them less grouchy and less likely to add to your stress!

c) The third cure is to avoid, escape, or fix those stressful things you can control.

Become prudent, organized, and industrious and fewer things will cause you stress.

People who do things like brushing and flossing their teeth and always wearing their seat belts and never driving drunk or texting while driving and so forth have something like a quarter or less of the stress of people who don’t. Simply put, prudent and proactive people are under less stress because they avoided a lot of it!

If something bad might happen, think about how likely it is first. One worry expert found that 80 % of the things people worried about never happened!

Then if it really might happen, decide in advance how to minimize how badly it hurts you AND what you can still do if it does hurt you.

Then take action to make it less likely to happen at all if you possibly can.

d) Be nice to the people around you. Let them know when you see them doing something well. Thank them for the things they do for you. Notice people and show you are glad to see them.

Forgive them when THEY are overstressed or grouchy.

Notice what they are good at and let them know you noticed. Ask their help sometimes when you need it from someone who is good at the thing they are good at. Think of reasons why you like them. Smile at them when it’s appropriate.

Talk to people you know or work with occasionally. You don’t always need a lot of time each time. But do it regularly.

Avoid being nasty to people. If someone is actually harming you, it’s OK to be proactive in having them stop.

But if you are just angry and see no good way to change what they did or are doing or it wouldn’t be worth that much effort to do, stifle being nasty.

Forgive them and cut them some slack instead! Being nasty is like tossing gasoline on a fire. Since you’ll be under a LOT more stress if you do that, DO NOT DO IT!

It’s pretty simple really. If you treat people well, they will reduce your stress. If you treat them badly, they will ADD to your stress!

e) Do regular exercise! One of the huge benefits of all three kinds of regular exercise is that they increase your ability to tolerate stress without needing to turn to food to relieve it.

Your pulse rate is less and it goes up less under stress if you do regular exercise. You relieve stress every time you do exercise. And, intense and vigorous exercise produces near instant stress relief even to high stress while you do the exercise.

That will allow you to think better when you get stressed. And the effects of chronic stress build up far less when you get this relief most days of every week.

f) Tai Chi.

Yoga works for some people; but the stretches sometimes cause injuries; and it can take a lot of time to do. Meditation works well for some people but it almost always takes a LOT of time to do for those people. And, you get no exercise and burn no extra calories while meditating.

As little as 10 to 20 minutes a day of Tai Chi solves ALL those problems. It has a zero injury rate. It’s so effective at stress relief it has been tested as lowering high blood pressure better than effective drugs in double doses or combination! Similarly, as we posted last time it slows aging by up to 43%. And, it burns as many calories while you do it as that many minutes of walking would burn!

You do have to learn how to do Tai Chi and do it at least 10 minutes a few times a week. But doing so will often remove the food cravings you’d otherwise get from being under chronic stress.