Sorry.  There’s no such thing.  Let me say that again so you can stop your frantic searching — there is no secret way to losing weight.  All you have to do is eat less, way less as it turns out.

I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking, “But I already cut out eating bread with my meals” or “I already skip dessert and I STILL can’t lose weight.”  The problem is that you haven’t cut enough.

That lesson was brought home to me in an interesting way.  I’m reading a fascinating book titled, “Physics for Future Presidents: the Science Behind the Headlines,” by Richard A. Mueller.  In it, this Physics Professor takes much of the hype out of many of the issues that crowd today’s headlines.  In a very straightforward way, he tackles issues such as “dirty bombs,” terrorism, energy, climate change, and so on.

It was on his chapter on energy where he’s talking about how much energy a gallon of gasoline contains that I found, of all things, a comparison to the energy content of food.  Mueller states that “food is almost as good as gasoline” in terms of energy content.  He goes on to say that,

“If you find this high energy content implausible, watch a hummingbird.  It uses enormous energy to flap its wings just to sip a tiny amount of nectar.  Clearly the energy in the nectar must be more than enough to cover the work being done by those rapidly beatings wings that hold the bird in front of the flower.  It is.  Food is almost as good as gasoline.”

Because food has such a high energy content, it actually takes very little of it to completely nourish our bodies and fuel our daily activities.   The problem is that we’re typically greatly overloading our bodies with way more food than what we actually need.  Professor Mueller goes on to say that,

“On the downside, the enormous energy content of food is what makes it so difficult to lose weight without serious dieting.  One 12-ounce can of soda contains, typically, 150 food calories.  A person can work that off with a half hour of vigorous exercise (running, not jogging; basketball, not baseball; swimming, not golf), provide, of course, that he doesn’t reward himself with a can of soda.  The best way to lose weight is to eat less, not to exercise more.“

Make sure you pay particular attention to that last line:  “the best way to lose weight is to eat less, not to exercise more.”  It’s simple physics.  To eliminate 150 calories from your diet, you can do half an hour of hard exercise, or you can simply pass on the soda and drink water instead.

Now, to be clear, note that he didn’t say that you didn’t have to exercise at all or that exercise isn’t important or that it doesn’t help you lose weight.  He didn’t say any of these things.  All he said is that from a physics standpoint, it’s easier to lose weight by eating less than by exercising more simply because food has such a high energy content.

So let me summarize:

1. If you want to lose weight, eat less – way less. Although when you first start a diet it feels like you’re dying, your body will actually adjust after a couple of days.  Your stomach will get smaller so that small portions will be more filling and your digestive system will get more efficient since you’re not constantly overloading it anymore.  If you can make it past the first week, it really does get easier.
2. Yes, I did say “eat way less.” Just making token cuts like skipping the bread or desert isn’t enough.  Not eating bread reduces your total calorie count by what, maybe 250 calories?  Big deal.  That’s not nearly enough.  You need to cut your total caloric intake by 1/2 to 2/3.  No, this is not a typo.  Cut your meals by one half to two thirds of what you’re eating now.  Unless you make really radical changes to your diet, your body simply adjusts to not having bread or not having dessert and you end up weighing the same.  IMPORTANT NOTE:  radical changes to your diet does put a strain on your body at first so make sure you’re in good health to begin with and that you’ve discussed your plans with a healthcare provider.
3. Exercise is still important. Physical exercise still plays an important part in your weight-loss plans.  You still have to keep your metabolism rate at a high level, you still need to keep your muscles toned, and you still have to encourage your body to burn fat instead of muscle.  Exercise does all these things so it’s critical that you work in as much as you can.

How have I used this information?  Well, here’s the diet that I try to follow (notice I said “try” because honestly, I do occasionally cheat).  I try to follow the “reduced calorie” routine for as many days as I can during the week.  It doesn’t always work out that way but I try to follow it as many days as I can.  On weekends, I eat whatever I want but obviously try to keep from undoing all my progress.

My “Reduced Calorie” Diet

Breakfast:  One 8-oz Protein Shake (I use Syntha-6) with one small banana or 2-3 strawberries mixed in.  Calories:  about 150

Lunch:  One cup (about 8-oz) of soup.  I love Campbell’s Chunky Healthy Request (not the “condensed”) soups, especially the Beef Barley.  Keep in mind that most cans of soup contain 2 portions so make sure to read the label!  Calories: about 150

Dinner:  Another protein shake.  Calories:  about 150

So during the week, I try to get by on around 500 calories per day (more or less).  Am I always successful?  Of course not.  I occasionally throw in a snack in between lunch and dinner that probably adds another 100-150 calories.  The key is to make sure that your “snack” is a wise choice like a piece of fruit, some nuts, or a granola bar.  It’s critical that you stay away from sugary “empty” calories.

Again, this diet is not for everyone – and not everyone will be able to stay on it for long.  Make sure you are in good health before starting ANY diet (or exercise) plan and discuss your plans with your doctor or healthcare provider.  That being said, use your head and take things slow and easy at first.  Like I said earlier, it does get easier once you get past the first week.

Now 500-600 calories per day isn’t much, but then, I’m a little guy (5′ 10″) so don’t take the actual number of calories as gospel.  Simply take what your normal diet is and try to get buy on half.  Do that as many times as you can during the week.  If that means you do it every other day, that’s fine.  If you can only do it on Wednesdays, that’s a good start.  The point is to start.  Once you do, you’ll find that adding an additional day gets easier and before you know it, you’ll be getting by on much less food.

Make sure you keep up your exercise routine.  In fact, when you start getting hungry, go out for a brisk walk instead of reaching for the chips.  Drinking lots of water will also help to keep your stomach from grumbling.

So to sum up, “token” dieting doesn’t work since your body simply adapts to the slight changes in food intake.  The end result is that you end up weighing exactly the same.  To lose weight, you’ve got to make a radical reduction in the amount of food you eat – on the order of 1/2 to 2/3 of what you’re eating now.  Drink plenty of water, get plenty of exercise, and above all, use common sense and check with your doctor along the way.  I think you’ll be pleased with the results you start getting.

Certified Fitness Nutrition Coach and
Personal Fitness Trainer (NESTA)

P.S.  Be sure to get my latest Fitness Blueprint called “Little Things That Improve Your Health.”  This ebook is packed with loads of helpful information on how to build a better body and you can get it FREE – for a limited time.  Just click on the title to be taken to the download page.  Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: diet, weight-loss, nutrition, balanced health, fitness, muscle, protein, weight, calories

Related posts:

1. Weight Loss: Diet or Exercise?
2. Why It’s So Hard to Lose Weight
3. New Study Reveals “Secret” to Weight Loss

Mistake Number 1:  The All or Nothing Approach

Most of us think of exercise as an event, something to be planned and scheduled like a lunch meeting.  And like a lunch meeting, if something comes up or if we run late, we cancel and reschedule.  In other words, we tend to take an “all or nothing” approach to exercise – we either do it (we “made” the appointment), or we don’t (we “cancel” the appointment).

I know, I know.  It’s really hard NOT to think of exercise as an event.  You DO have to prepare for it.  You’ve got to pack your gym bag making sure you’ve got clean socks, shorts, a towel, and so on.  You’ve got to change into your exercise “uniform” and make sure your MP3 player is loaded with your latest “power song.”  You’ve got to put on the weight lifting gloves or the wrist and head bands.  Geez, there’s a lot of stuff you’ve got to do before you exercise!  You can’t just run out and, what, start running?  (Remember the scene in Forest Gump when he’s sitting on his porch and decides to just get up and run?  Yeah, I know.  We can’t do that.)

It’s easy to see why so many of us skip exercise altogether just because we can’t find a clean pair of gym socks (you know the ones, the special moisture-wicking, all natural organic fiber, $30 a pair, “makes my feet feel happy” pair).  If you put so much effort into planning to exercise, you’re much more likely to forget the whole thing if any part of the planning process goes wrong.

Another problem with seeing exercise as an event is that we want to impose a start time and an end time.  We want to look at our calendar and see “Exercise 5:30 to 6:30 pm.”  We don’t want to think about exercise until 5:30 and we don’t want to think about exercise after 6:30.  We want to treat it like a dentist appointment – something we just have to do and get over as quickly as possible.  After all, you’ve got to pack all your stuff (hassle), change into your workout clothes (hassle), exercise, then shower (hassle), change into your street clothes (hassle), and then pack up all your wet workout clothes and rush home (hassle, hassle, hassle).

Little wonder we look for reasons to skip exercising.  And take it from me (a Master Excuse Maker), perfectly legitimate excuses, I mean reasons, are not hard to find.

But exercise is not an all-or-nothing event.  Exercise can be incorporated into just about any activity and research has shown that as little as 10 minutes of exercise can provide important health benefits.  It can be as simple as taking the stairs at the office or at the mall.

Other suggestions can include:

• Look for ways to incorporate exercise into your daily activities. Walking or biking to nearby places instead of driving, for example, or actually walking the dog instead of simply letting them run out the back door.
• Break up your “all-out-hard-core-sweat-a-gallon” workout session into smaller, more frequent sessions throughout the day. Lunges or squats can be done anytime, and anywhere, and don’t require any equipment.  Dropping down behind your desk and doing 10 slow-and-easy push-ups will still strengthen your arms but won’t require your usual jacuzzi-sauna-shower after-workout ritual.
• Become more active in general. Stay on your feet when taking phone calls or when reading paperwork.  Walk down the hall to talk to a coworker instead of using the phone or email.  Use resistance bands while you’re watching TV.  In short, stay off your butt as much as possible throughout the day.
• Change your attitude. Exercise is not an event, it’s a lifestyle.  It’s something that’s just part of you, not something you plan or schedule.

Nike has the right idea – Just Do It!  Forget the all-or-nothing attitude.  If something comes up and you can’t exercise for an hour like you had planned, go ahead and exercise in whatever time you have available.  Then find 10 or 15 minutes later on and exercise some more.

If you adopt the attitude that exercise is something you do rather than something you plan, you’ll soon find yourself in great shape.

Certified Fitness Nutrition Coach and
Personal Fitness Trainer (NESTA)

P.S.  Be sure to get my latest Fitness Blueprint called “Little Things That Improve Your Health.”  This ebook is packed with loads of helpful information on how to build a better body and you can get it FREE – for a limited time.  Just click on the title to be taken to the download page.  Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: exercise, fitness, balanced health, attitude, gym, weight

Related posts:

1. Top 10 Exercise Mistakes: Number 6
2. Top 10 Exercise Mistakes: Number 2
3. Top 10 Exercise Mistakes: Number 5

This is an example of a subconscious “anchor,” an action or a piece of information that gets set by others, but that significantly influences the decisions we make.

Anchors are everywhere and can take a number of forms.  The food companies are experts at making their food products look (color), sound (sizzle), smell (aroma) and feel (texture) soooo good that your mouth instantly starts watering.  An anchor gets set that makes you suddenly stop in front of that specific food the next time you’re in the grocery store.

Now, a study to be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Consumer Research reveals that the eating habits of the people we eat with can have a significant influence on our own food intake.

Now, I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking, “Of course.  Eating with big people who eat massive quantities of food will make me want to eat massive quantities of food as well.”  However, it turns out that it’s not the “big people” you need to watch out for.  It’s the skinny ones with big appetites that you need to avoid.

All of us tend to mirror the actions of those around us, especially of the people we want to be like or who exhibit some characteristic (like being thin) that we want to have as well.  If you see a thin person grab a double helping of mashed potatoes in a buffet line, you’re subconsciously going to think, “hey, that person is thin, I want to be thin, they’re eating mashed potatoes, so I’ll have some too.”  It’s called the “I’ll-have-what-she’s-having” syndrome and it’s a perfect example of the power of anchoring.  Unfortunately, the next thing you know your jeans are fitting a little too tight.

Of course, there are plenty of positive examples of anchoring as well.  In my Cardio Class for example, there’s a 17 year old guy that’s in fantastic shape.  Whenever, we run sprints together, I can’t help but try to out run the guy.  In fact, according to my heart rate monitor, I frequently push my heart rate well above my theoretical maximum just trying to keep up with him.  Of course he always beats me, but considering that there’s a 40 year difference between our ages, I don’t feel too bad about my performance!  Although I know I’m getting sucked into a competition I can’t win, I still get some positive benefits from it.

So how do you prevent the way your own mind works from totally destroying your diet?  Here are some tips:

1.  Be aware of the anchors that are constantly trying to influence your behavior. In everything from shoes to toothpaste, “Madison Avenue” is constantly trying to get you to associate their product or service with a “gotta-have-it-now” state of mind.  See it for the sales pitch it is and then you choose how you will respond.

2.  Keep food in its proper place. The main purpose of food is to fuel your body, period.  Food is not for pleasure, or a form of escape, or something to help you cope with an unpleasant experience.  Work on any false beliefs or misconceptions you might have about food, or that involves food, because until you do, overeating will always be a part of your life.  Yes, this will be hard, especially if you belong to a culture where food is an integral part of every social event.

3.  Don’t let the group dictate your diet. Realize that your mother was right – be careful who you associate with because your friends will shape you, including your eating habits and portion sizes.  Decide on what a normal meal is for you and then stick to it, no matter who you’re with or where you go.  If you don’t normally eat dessert, don’t order one just because everybody else is getting one.

Finally, keep a close watch on your skinny friends – especially the ones with bad eating habits!

Hiram
The Balanced Health Guy
Certified Fitness Nutrition Coach and
Personal Fitness Trainer (NESTA)

[tags]fitness, health, diet, eating, skinny, fat, food, anchor, behavior, overeating, weight[tags]

Related posts:

1. Why Do We Overeat?
2. Big Fat Lies
3. Forget Dieting – Read This Book Instead

I just finished reading a great book that finally makes sense of all of the conflicting nutrition info that’s out there.  It’s called “In Defense of Food – An Eater’s Manifesto” by Michael Pollan.  You need to read this.  No seriously – you need to read this.  Period.  It’s that good.

This book is written for the layperson so there’s no technical jargon or scientific mumbo-jumbo.  In plain and simple English, Michael Pollan explains how we have gone from talking about about “food” to being overly concerned about “nutrition.”  He shows how science has attempted to divide whole foods into their separate nutritional parts in an attempt to make them “more nutritious” and as a result, have ended up making them less healthy.

So forget about dieting and read this book instead.  You’ll learn how to eat, and the weight will come off naturally.  Here’s some of what’s included in the book…

In the first section, “The Age of Nutritionism,” the author traces the early history of “food science” and explains how we’ve come to where we are today.  You’ll learn that once the powerful special interest groups like the American Dairy Association and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, to name a few, flexed their political and financial muscle, it became political suicide for any Food and Drug Administration (FDA) official to recommend eating less red meat or drinking less dairy.
However, if you broke the foods down into their nutritional components, you could get away with saying “eat less saturated fats.”  After all, there is no “Saturated Fat Association” in Washington.  Unfortunately, once you started speaking in terms of nutritional components, no one really knew what kinds of foods you were talking about – one of the main reasons we Americans like to think we’re eating right, yet somehow we keep getting fatter.

The second section deals with “The Western Diet and the Diseases of Civilization.”  You’ll read about how most of the health issues that Americans deal with are directly related to the foods we eat – and the foods we eat, of course, have become big business with hundreds of millions of dollars spend on marketing campaigns and advertising.

Some of the topics in the “Industrialization of Eating” chapter include:

• How we’ve gone from whole foods to refined foods;
• From complex foods to simple ones;
• How we’ve given up quality for quantity;
• How our diet has gone from mostly plants and leaves to mostly seeds;
• And how our society has changed from Food Culture to Food Science.

The last section is the real “meat” of the book (sorry).  Here, the author sums up everything you need to know about health and nutrition in 7 short words:  Eat Food.  Mostly Plants.  Not Too Much.

Isn’t that elegant?  Follow these short instructions and you’ll never go wrong.  Eat Food.  Mostly Plants.  Not Too Much.

The rest of the book simply fills out the details on how to do this:

1. Eat Food. Real food – not the artificial, fake stuff that masquerades as food in the supermarket.  Things that will help you identify real food include:
   • Don’t eat anything your Great Grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.
   • Don’t eat anything that won’t rot or spoil.  If it’s got that much chemical preservative in it, you don’t want it in your body.
   • Avoid food products containing ingredients that are unfamiliar, unpronounceable, more than 5 in number, or that include high-fructose corn syrup.
   • Avoid food products that make health claims.
   • Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle where most of the refined and artificial foods are.
   • Get out of the supermarket whenever possible and visit your local Farmer’s Market.
2. Mostly Plants. Ways to help you do this include:
   • Eat mostly plants, especially leaves.  The leaves tend to have a lot more vitamins and minerals than the other parts of the plant.
   • The quality of the plants is directly correlated to the quality of the soil it grows in.
   • Eat wild foods when you can.  Expand the variety of what you eat as much as possible.
3. Not Too Much.
   • Pay more, eat less.  Focus more on good, high quality foods instead of mass quantities of the cheap stuff.
   • Eat full meals instead of snacking all day long, and do all your eating at the table, not in your car or at your desk.
   • Eat slowly, and try not to eat alone.  Make a eating a social event where food is a secondary consideration, not the main event.

If you really want to improve your overall health and lose weight (or stop gaining) at the same time, all without having to worry about carbs, fats, and proteins, then get this book.  Buy from Amazon using the link at the right (I think I get a whole 50 cents if you use my affiliate link), buy it from your local Barnes and Noble, or go check it out at your local library.  However you get it, get it.  It’s that important.

Hiram
The Balanced Health Guy
Certified Fitness Nutrition Coach (NESTA)

Technorati Tags: Michael Pollan, nutrition, diet, whole food, carbs, fats, protein, nutritionism, plants, eating, health, weight, weight loss

Related posts:

1. Why It’s So Hard to Lose Weight
2. New Study Reveals “Secret” to Weight Loss
3. The REAL Secret to Losing Weight