Four important fat loss guidelines....

Today's Post:  Friday, 8-2-2013

You might have seen the article Yahoo had today on 5 myths about weight loss.

Some of what they wrote is accurate but can be harmfully misleading if you don’t know more.  And, one of them is flat out wrong!

I skip the one about calories burned during love-making as their point is just too simplistic and under-researched.  But only very young and active people who skip eating for their love-making get a big effect comparable to how much the other 4 areas matter. 

AND they left out that becoming less fat and more fit dramatically increases how well and often you make love.  It’s a major motivator to lose fat rather than a way to do so!

But these other four things they listed  had more substance --  both the good and the likely wrong or harmful things they said.

Here, their 4 points and my comments:  (Only have time for the first one today and the other 3 will be next time.)

1.  They said that: “Setting realistic goals for weight loss will help you stick with it.”

They said this was false and that many studies found more ambitious goals led to more weight loss

This one is really dangerous even if true.  And they had no clue they should include the danger and what to do about it to be helpful instead of harmful!

a) Setting ambitious best possible case long term goals DOES work because those studies found people who did that made a much stronger effort to lose fat than people who set goals that had no real excitement to them.  They did more things.  They did each thing better.  And, when they ran into problems or reversals they tried harder instead of quitting.  Each of those is consistent with being optimistic and getting better results.

They do tend to lose more at first and because they lost more they tend to continue more often than people who don’t lose as much.

These do tend to be true particularly in the first few months.

b) BUT stopping the advice there as the Yahoo author did is extremely dangerous and potentially harmful and has caused even highly motivated people to FAIL at fat loss. That’s why I felt it urgent to write this post!

Here’s why. Most people and still far too many commercial groups and even health professionals say to cut back or limit calories every day and never eat more than that. 

And, these highly motivated people often overdo even that.

Within weeks, every one of those people has the full failsafe famine response.  Their metabolism falls and their appetite increases to the almost irresistible craving level.  Worse, even if they overeat for months, those settings stick around for months!

Given that, the fact that over 90% of the people who try it fail at fat loss, which they usually think of as dieting or temporary deprivation, is actually predictable – NOT a surprise. 

Then those who do manage to lose fat that way almost never keep it off.  The result is that the net real failure rate approaches 99%.  That’s actually a positive in a way because it means that 1% succeeded anyway despite this horribly flawed way to attempt fat loss.  (Those people kept trying other things until they found out what actually does create permanent fat loss.) 

But the horrible thing is that people who start with only the effective methods instead can lose fat relatively quickly that does NOT trigger the famine response or slow metabolism.  Close to 99% can succeed instead!

THAT is a huge point to not know and leave out.  (They simply didn’t know is my guess.)

If you do know the things that work and begin them all within 4 weeks and begin to do them all well during the next 4 weeks, know that people can and often do lose a good bit of fat and weight by the end of the 8 weeks and will have progress even other people will notice by the end of 3 and 6 months from starting. 

None of these turns on the famine response or requires you to be extra hungry every day!  In fact, some people even eat more than they did before they began!

The pictures of many people who got this kind of fast start before and after doing this are stunning after a year or so. One woman looks like an aging matron in her before picture with fat all over and a huge waist.  After about a year she looks like a model or a Hollywood starlet with a tiny waist.  She looks so much better in her after picture she is almost unrecognizable.

So big long range goals and a very strong and determined start of all the effective methods in the first few weeks DOES cause success.  But just eating too little every day and being in  constant hunger almost always causes total failure instead.  Worse, it’s horrible to live through.

c) So here’s what they left out.

First:  Some foods and drinks are harmful to eat, cause you to get and stay fat, AND make you hungrier if you eat or drink them!  It should be a no brainer, given that, to slam all eating and drinking that stuff to a total stop if you want fat loss and fast and permanent fat loss! 

Really fast and complete action on THAT produces permanent fat loss. 

But people like and are used to these things and tend to deny the reality.  Soft drinks, diet soft drinks, refined grain foods, packaged dinners and desserts and fast food and commercial baked goods are well made to taste good. And, many people spend most of their money on only these things.

The much better news is that if you believe or learn why they really are that harmful and fattening and make you hungrier, once you get over wishing it wasn’t so and get used to eating real food instead, it’s actually EASY to keep doing.  And, for people who are 40 to 300 pounds overfat from this cause can literally lose five pounds or more every month with almost no added effort once they make this switch.

Second, nonstarchy vegetables both raw and cooked with extra virgin olive oil and onions, garlic and spices can actually taste good or at least be OK and you can get used to them.  Do NOT add six at a time, add one or two a week to give your system time to get used to them.  They have very few calories and are quite filling and have dramatic health benefits.

And, most days you can also have relatively large amounts of health OK protein foods, health OK fats and oils, and some fresh fruit too.  Even some red wine is OK.

The people who learn what these foods are and do things like setting up planned meals for each upcoming week and leave out the bad stuff are astonishingly healthier and just by eating them instead of harmful and fattening junk ALL the time can be extremely effective.

But that’s about the first third of the effect you can get!

Third is the effects of even a few sessions a month of short sessions of superslow strength training and higher intensity and shorter cardio sessions.  People who do them burn calories for hours after each session and add bone and muscle. 

For people who do the first two things this actually can force fat loss and it almost always prevents losing any muscle or fat.

Even better doing these exercises empowers the people who do them within the first 2 months and makes them feel and look better and their health will be better.  These exercises literally give you some of the benefits you may have begun fat loss to get in the first few weeks even before all your extra fat comes off!

Fourth is a stunner!  You can lose something like 4 pounds every month until your extra fat is all gone on top of what you can do with the first 3 methods!

It’s partial fasting just two days a week that are not right next to each other.  Surprisingly it’s not that hard on those two days and you get used to it.  It saves you time and money on those days too which can be really nice for busy people!

Imagine having an almost guaranteed extra few pounds of fat loss besides eating right and the most effective exercise plan known.

Our upcoming commercial products will have more information to help ensure you can do this.  But a good place to start is to read the book that started me;

The FastDiet: Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, and Live Longer with the Simple Secret of Intermittent Fasting by Michael Mosley and Mimi Spencer (Feb 26, 2013)

It’s excellent!

Some of the recipes are too time consuming but you can make easier ones using similar ingredients with much faster preparation times.

Here’s what it’s just done for me: 

I have, after successfully losing the 17 pounds I'd gained back with many small strategies that I can keep doing and have been, I found I still had 20 to 24 pounds of belly fat left to lose.

Then two months ago I found this sustainable way to lose that fat which I could easily add to what I was already doing!  The result is a dramatic success!  I've been losing about 4 pounds a month ever since.  And there is good reason to believe this will continue until that fat is all gone!

I'm actually beginning to look thinner and feel light on my feet.  I was quick before for a slightly plump older guy because of my exercises.  Recently I'm just quick!

In about 4 more months, I'll be down to about 139 pounds unless I add some muscle to balance it.  THAT I'm working on!  (I haven't been that light since I was 13 or 14.)

But if you ever want to lose fat or upgrade your health measures at the doctor, just use this method.  This stuff flat out WORKS!