Solutions to common fat loss problems, part 7....

Today's Post: Thursday, 1-19-2012

(Last Thursday’s post on how to eat out at restaurants and fast food places & still lose fat was part 6.)

This one could also be titled,

“What to do if your fat loss and weight loss stops or you even gain some.”

Last week Yahoo featured health writer and weight loss expert Denise Austin.

Mercifully, there are a LOT of things you can do besides what was in her article which we will include later. But because she has experience helping people lose weight, I decided to start with her 3 strategies.

(Here’s the direct reference for her article and how to find out more of her information: Denise Austin
http://www.deniseaustin.com/newsletters/push-past-your-weight-loss-plateau.aspx?xid=nl_EverydayHealthManagingDiabetes_20120111 & http://www.deniseaustin.com .)

1. Her first strategy is to be sure to check your portion sizes. If you are eating larger portions of any higher glycemic or higher calorie foods you could stop your fat loss. Conversely, if you are eating smaller portions of nonstarchy vegetables on skipping them when you didn’t before that WILL slow or stop your fat loss.

Both things happened to me. I was using a larger spoon to eat almond butter (and also eating more than one serving.) I noticed this and used one of her next steps to stop eating more than one serving & began using a smaller spoon.

Similarly, I’d been eating a serving of thawed frozen broccoli florets and dropped my portion to zero by forgetting to eat them!

I reversed this and began always having that serving of these nonstarchy vegetables. I dropped my effective portion size of the high calorie though health OK almond butter. And, I added something I’ll describe below. Instead of gaining a pound or two over a month as I had been doing, I lost a pound. And then lost another the next month.

2. Her second strategy is to keep a detailed food log for at least a week with the same purpose as the portion size check. If you are actually eating worse for fat loss and simply are unaware of it and exactly how you are doing it, you can’t fix it.

In my case, I eat the same breakfasts every day seven days a week --- though different each day with exactly the same portion sizes. And, I do the same with lunch 6 days most weeks and 5 to 7 times a week with my dinner when I come home. The variable for me was my after dinner snack. I knew the problem before I kept a log. But I started one I enter into each evening to help me be SURE to only eat one spoonful of almond butter—not more. And to be SURE I remember to have my serving of broccoli florets.

It’s working! Now, instead of messing up almost every night, I do what I want to do and need to do to keep my fat loss on track almost every night. That’s a BIG difference!

3. She also suggests increasing your exercise routine. She made a point of considering adding strength training or doing a bit more.

That’s an excellent suggestion! Not only will the added calories burned help, the added muscle will burn more calories even when you are resting. You’ll tend to lose more visible fat and inches off your measurements. And you’ll help ensure the weight you lose is all fat!

That, in fact, was my motivation for adding more strength training. I’d lost all the pounds I wanted to lose. But I’d also wanted to lose inches on my waist and only lost a fifth of what I wanted to lose!

Adding more muscle to feed without eating more will clearly cause the fat on my belly to shrink.

So, I’ve added a kettlebell session two evenings a week to my morning strength training which I’ve kept doing. And, I decided to find a safe way to squat with weight on my 3 morning leg exercise sessions I do at home.

I’ve not seen the results yet because I think I’m not yet built up to using enough weight.

But I’ve become more consistent in doing the kettlebell exercise sessions. And I can feel they are really exercising my whole upper body when I’m done plus I do get some leg exercise from using the kettlebells. When I improve a bit more, I plan to get a heavier kettlebell.

You can safely squat at home with weight if you are careful and do it correctly.

I found that you can do a partial lunge forward with one leg but slowly until the knee of your other leg just touches and then come back up while being careful to stay balanced.

I worked up to doing that 14 times with each leg.

Then I began holding my 25 pound dumbbell on the side I’m squatting with. I’m up to 10 times each leg. In a few days, I’ll be up to 14 and will buy a couple of heavier dumbbells.

These two added steps will add muscle and help ensure I lose no muscle while I lose on the scale. But my hope is that it will begin to change the way I look and shrink my waist too!

The other strategies to use follow the same design. Make more of a consistent effort to do things right each week. Correct course if you find you have slipped. And add more effort and a few or several new ways to lose fat to what you are already doing.

4. If you still have treats with sugar, keep doing it if you like. But cut how much you eat each month or week in half. This can make a BIG difference. How? I love sugar and once ate a good bit every single day. I’ve cut back that amount four times! That means I only eat about a sixteenth as much sugar as I once did.

5. Do you still eat or drink the stuff that makes you hungrier or adds calories without your body registering them and getting less hungry?

If so, make similar cut backs or decide to eliminate them totally or almost totally.

These include both regular and diet soft drinks. It includes all packaged snacks, all packaged desserts, and virtually all pastries and commercial baked goods. It includes all bread and rolls made with refined grains.

If you eat very little and only with other ingredients that support your health and eat right otherwise and exercise regularly, you can get a way with some treats that have sugar.

But this list of the foods and drinks are made out of high fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners, and cheap vegetable oils high in omega 6.

Worse even than that, it’s common they are made out of cheap vegetable oils high in omega 6 that have been hydrogenated. Research shows conclusively that stuff is heart attack starter.

These foods are almost invariably made out of 100 % refined grains. There is some evidence that people evolved not to eat ANY grains not even whole grains. And this shows up most in people who eat a lot of grains and get fat from doing so.

But with refined grains, it’s simply no contest. They crash your blood sugar up. Then your body increases insulin to get that back to normal. But high levels of insulin cause your body to store fat and prevent your body from removing any!

But it gets even worse! Then your blood sugar goes too low. You feel bad. And you begin to crave sugary foods to get your blood sugar back up. The problem is that the calories you take in then were not really needed to keep you going and healthy. And all this extra hunger causes you to take in calories that you wear as excess fat.

Then these foods have chemicals like MSG and related glutamates and others added by the company that makes them to make them taste better and be more addictive!

In short, to lose fat permanently, you want to do it without extra hunger

These foods and drinks and the STUFF they are made out of add calories without lowering your hunger or worse make you quite hungry for calories your body doesn’t need.

They are the exact opposite of the foods that help you lose fat without hunger.

Cutting them back to zero or virtually zero is one of the secrets of hunger free fat loss.

As a side benefit, it protects your heart and the rest of your health far better than taking drugs after you are already damaged!

6. Be extra strict but only every other day or even two days a week.

This has been shown to get better results than doing it every day! The reason is that you do eat fewer calories each week. But your body does NOT read this as you being in a famine. So it does not drop the anchor and stop your fat loss or reverse it.

And, getting plenty of protein every day also helps to prevent your body going into famine protection mode.

7. Try a partial fast for part of just one day a week.

Doing this for one weekday lunch each week where I only eat nonstarchy vegetables is the main way I recently resumed my fat loss.

As long as you still have less restrictive days each week and get plenty of protein all week, this too can lose fat and calories over a week without triggering your body into famine control mode.