Weight Loss Problems and Solutions
July 22, 2004
By Tatiana Erochenko
Have you ever asked yourself why can't our bodies regulate a proper body weight, automatically?
Really, when you stop to think about it, it's an amazing exception in our bodies' abilities to control the vital functions without our conscious involvement. You don't have to order your heart to beat faster when you start running, or your diaphragm muscle to draw more air into you lungs to get more oxygen to your tissues, right? However, it's a big problem for the most of us to control our body weight. Why is it so?
It's a big question, too. I'm going to just outline the major points and will return to every one of them later for in-depth analysis and practical conclusions.
Problem #1: Calorie Density
All nutrients come loaded with calories. The amount of nutrients we need is the same as our ancestors needed, but two things are very different now:
- We now have much more concentrated, energy-dense foods than they had;
- We can't spend as many calories as they had to.
And we as a species didn't have enough time to create a new biological mechanism to manage this controversy: we still rely on food volume to control how much we eat.
Solution outline
- Return to the natural calorie density;
- Strip the nutrients of calories.
Problem #2: Metabolic Pathways
Though it's true that we have evolved as a omnivorous species -- able to eat just about anything we can get our hands on -- it was good for us in the beginning, when there's been "feast and fast" food availability cycles. There could be good hunting periods followed by good gathering periods and our bodies are still provided with different metabolic modes for each of them: there's a fat metabolic pathway and there's a carbohydrate metabolic pathway. Rarely did they work together -- until now.
Solution outline
Employ one metabolic pathway at a time. A hint: the great success of low carb dieting is the proof of this approach's success.
Problem #3: Body Weight Set Point
Out bodies seem to have their own ideas of what weight
is good for us and these ideas are too often too different
from our minds' ideas. This is why attempting to lose
weight by increasing energy expenditure (e.g, by
exercising more) fails so often. The body just forces
us to compensate for every extra calorie spent.
Solution outline
Learn how to shift the set point into the right direction, rather than work against it. A hint: don't force your body to do anything it doesn't "want" to. Understand what it does want.
So where does it leave us food choice-wise?
Think the Mother Nature way. Shop on the periphery of your grocery store. Eat your salads and soups before meals. Never, EVER eat anything that's both high-fat and high-carb.
Source:www.infozine.com
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