DID YOU KNOW

DID YOU KNOW THAT YOU CAN TRY TOO HARD TO LOSE WEIGHT?

THAT’S RIGHT! YOU CAN TRY TOO HARD.

A great number of  women I’ve worked with over the years mentioned to me that weight loss was one of their main reasons for starting an exercise program, or “trying to get fitter”. Their initial goal was to lose a few kilos because of the way they felt about their look; or how the additional weight made them feel in their body. They wanted to lose weight, & they wanted results yesterday. A lot of the women who came to see me were trying too hard.

I know that not every woman is concerned about weight loss & this article isn’t generalising about the reasons of all women who begin exercise, & whose body changes as a result.

This article is about the opposite. It’s about some aspects of the TV fitness industry & practically all of the diet industry that tells women they have to starve, or sweat, or train themselves into a coma to achieve a result.

There are several things that set your bodys’ alarm bells ringing when it comes to weight loss & the intensity you go after it. One of the biggest bell ringers are dramatic diets(I’ll write about the others in following weeks). By that I mean a change in meal plan & reduction in food intake that’s incomparable to your normal food range. Isn’t that what most advertised diets do? Let’s name a few- the high protein diet, the no protein diet, the cabbage, the juice, the eat like royalty, the cleanse & the detox to name a few. While we’re here hands up who thinks they’re toxic, or can define toxic in health terms?

If I asked a combined group of men & women to decide for themselves if they needed a detox diet to improve their health, the largest number to agree will be women. That’s very disturbing. Advertising has again created a subtle negative impact on your self image and influenced how you view your health & they make money out of it.

Our bodies are designed from genetic blueprints (as a phrase) that are tens of thousands of years old. I mean that our human processes relative to our body working with itself  for our self preservation & benefit; hasn’t changes much over the years.

What’s changed are our lifestyles, our intellectual grasp on our world, & our brain function.

Those 3 changes have made a huge difference on our daily food intake in a modern western world.  We can think a few chocolate chip cookies won’t make a difference  & we nibble them without realising it while we concentrate on the TV or computer screen, or solve a work problem-YEP! They make a difference to our store of body fat.

Our bodies developed the ability to store food energy as body fat to enable us, in the years before fast food, to survive famine by slowly using our stores of body fat.

Next week I’ll tell you about the fruit & veg’ that can help you lose weight.

Have a good week.