How to Lose Weight

Key points:

• Drastically reduce or eliminate carbohydrates from your diet altogether. Sugar, grain, cereal, rice, pasta, flour, fruit and starchy vegetables in excess make us fat(especially the refined, fake stuff!). 
• Saturated fat, sodium and protein are good for you, even in excess. There has been no credible scientific data to suggest they are harmful in anyway to the average consumer.
• Exercising for weight loss is not worth it. Exercise will only make you hungry. If you exercise and eat the wrong things, you will continue to have difficulty losing weight or even gain weight.
• Exercise is not going to help you lose weight, but it still has a number of amazing benefits. Resistance training accompanied by a protein dense diet and adequate rest will breed superior results. 
• Calories don’t matter. Your body will match energy-out by the amount of energy coming in. Eat too little food, you have too little energy through out the day.

Losing weight has been so frustrating for so many people for so long. How do we lose weight? Well, the answer is simple. Reduce carbohydrates in your diet (grains, sugar, candy, starch, even fruits). Our fat cells are regulated by a hormone called insulin. When blood sugar spikes, our bodies have to lower it because elevated blood sugar is dangerous. So what does our body do with the excess sugar?

Our pancreas releases insulin and insulin stores the sugar in our fat cells and in the long run makes us fat. Protein and fat (yes, saturated fat!) doesn’t cause an insulin response by our body. Therefore, eating a lot of meat, dairy and fat don’t leave the body in fat storage mode.

The less sugar and carbs we eat, the less insulin we have floating around in our system. When our insulin levels are low, the fat is released from the fat cells and our body begins burning it for energy. If we are eating a lot of sugar and carbs, our body still has high insulin levels, so our body isn’t releasing the extra energy from our fat cells!

Sugar crash? We have all heard of a mid-day crash or the “itis” after a big meal, but what causes this? Sugar, soda, breads, pasta, fruit(in high quantities), flour and grains are fast digesting. When we eat these, they digest quickly and spike our blood sugar. Our body responds by releasing insulin to store it away quickly. Insulin doesn’t allow energy to be released because its job is to store energy.  Since insulin is storing sugar in the fat cells for energy and there are high levels of insulin in our body, our fat cells don’t release the energy.

So what ends up happening is we eat carbs, our body digests them quickly, insulin stores it and we crash. We don’t have any energy being released, so our body asks us for more energy and we eat more and the same thing happens. So if you realize what’s happening, it’s scary. Our body is storing more energy than its releasing. And that is how we get fat and never see a flat belly.

To avoid gaining weight and being sick, avoid the USDA food pyramid. Eat foods high in fat and protein. Complex carbs like green leafy vegetables and thick fiber dense vegetables (asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, peppers, mushrooms, etc) are also good. Eat lots of meat, dairy and fish when you can. Butter, lard, coconut oil and the rest of those ‘bad’ fats are good for you(1)!

The Exercise Part of the Story

Now reducing carbs alone will not get you a flat belly or a 12 pack. Exercise plays an important role in the maintenance of lean body mass and helps tone the body. Your diet will be responsible for reducing body fat, but exercise will be responsible for maintaining lean body mass. Exercise alone won’t do a damn thing for weight loss, BUT, without it, aesthetically,  you’ll just be a skinny, flabby person. Nothing wrong with that if that’s what you want, but I know most people want more. Exercise is the greatest thing in the world and I think EVERYONE should be doing a form of resistance training at least twice a week. But if you’re exercising strictly for weight loss, think again.

Exercise boosts your metabolism and makes your body crave more energy (food!). So you’re basically working up an appetite when you hit the gym. What you eat afterwards is  going to decide what happens to you. Eat lots of rice, pasta, grains, bread, cereal and you get a spike in blood sugar and a huge insulin response. No weight loss.Eat tons of fat, protein and some complex carbs(veggies, limited fruit) and the body will continue to be in fat burning mode. Eat nothing after the gym and your body starves. You are not giving it the energy it needs.

So what happens? You fall asleep. When a cell phone is on low battery, the screen usually  dims automatically to save power. Our bodies have that same automatic response. Your body reduces its energy expenditure to match the energy levels coming in.  We feel tired when we are running on low fuel simply because our body is saving energy. In other words, the calories coming in effect the calories going out. Not the other way around!

The Inconvenient Truth

The answer to weight loss is really easy, but the paradigm shift is not. From growing up on Special K and low-fat milk, to Dr. Oz and Weight Watchers, we have been conditioned to believe a low-fat, high-carb diet is good. It’s the easiest thing in the world to conveniently accept that saturated fat, red meat and sodium are bad for you when the majority is against it. Doing so doesn’t mean you’re “stupid” or “gullible” or even “naive”. It just means you trust those who are suppose to figure this stuff out, to do their jobs responsibly.

Unfortunately, there is a conflict of interest. Money= survival/success and survival is the most important thing to anyone. The only problem is that when pharmaceutical companies thrive, it means there are more sick people. The public interest is to stay healthy and the pharmaceutical companies, doctors and hospitals interest is to stay in business. Our current economic paradigm is a little deranged, but that’s for a different discussion. One thing to remember is that monetary gain triumphs human value in our current economic paradigm, so we always have to keep that in mind.

Once careers are established around a certain paradigm, they are fought for. After all, their careers are on the line.

•