UNDIET YOURSELF - WHY YOU SHOULD NOT RUSH YOUR WEIGHT LOSS

     
Most people want immediate results and to lose weight too fast. They take up a diet and/or an exercise program that is not only not sustainable, but also often not healthy no fun, and one that will 99% of times backfire.  An example of this is the famous Biggest Loser show where after all, all the winners gained their weight back plus more. The crash diets and unsustainable exercise regimens were not only exhausting, but also at the end decreased the contestants’ metabolic rate, which made their body hold on to every possible calorie they had worked so hard to burn. Additionally, the exercise regimen that the contestants were put on, not only beat their bodies up, but had it lasted longer, it could have probably caused long term injuries. The program was only sustainable short term and under the circumstances the contestants were while on TV. The Biggest Loser made for a great show, but definitely not for a sustainable lifestyle change. Not for a reason there has never been a reunion of the Biggest Loser.


 The show no longer airs, but there are still so many people out there with the same mindset of losing lots of weigh as fast as they can by working out "to death" and starving their bodies.  Little do they know that this method only not only sets them up for a failure, and gaining all their weight back, but can also contribute to things such as anxiety, stress, insulin resistance, being tired or fatigue, heart burn, sleeplessness, lower immunity, and of course problems with lowered muscle mass, or for women lack of period. Do you really want to lose weight like this? Do you really want to go through all that work and then go back to not only where you came from, and gaining your weight back, but also often a few extra pounds that your body will accumulate from all the metabolic adaptations that will happen in your body that will be trying to hold on to its set point weight. Especially if you have been overweighed for a while, and your body has adapted to that weight, and any attempts to lose weight, will make it work harder to keep it there.  Have you ever wondered why you have plateaued and can’t lose weight even though on only 1500 calories a day?


If you want to lose weight and keep it off, instead of killing yourself with exercise and starving "to death", you will actually need to undiet your body, and make sure that you are helping your metabolism instead if damaging it even more. You will need to start with understanding of what is going on inside of your body and how dysregulated it possibly is from yoyo dieting, or being overweight and obese for a prolonged period of time and how this might have caused changes not only in your waist, but also in your microbiome, your hormones, your cells and organs, including your brain, that make it even harder to lose weight and keep it off.  If you have chronic conditions, you will need to accept that 80% of them come from your lifestyle and your habits because even if you have the genes that can predispose you to certain conditions, you can turn down down and up by the way you live.  In other words, you will need to take a deep and honest look at yourself to understand what got you to the place are in now, for example 50 pounds heavier, in the first place. 


Everyone always assumes it is calories and eating too much of wrong foods, but it is not that simple.  You want to be able to understand WHY you eat the way you do, so you can approach the root cause of your weight gain properly and with the right for you action plan. You want to be able to understand if the extra pounds are a result of just a temporary situation that has made you gain that extra 10 pounds or is it something that is a result of something that has been going on long term? Is it Covid that has made you stay home, move less and eat more? Have you been trying to eat your worries or self-soothe? Is something missing in your life, and you are trying to fill the void with food?   Is it maybe your medications? Is it depression that made you gain weight or the other weight around and your weight has made you depressed ? Is it your hormones and your microbiome that finally as you have gotten older are catching up?  When we are young, and are organs are still young, our bodies can take a lot of “abuse”, but when we get older, and things just all of sudden start breaking down, it is often because of our lifestyle that we were once able to get away with.  


Understanding the above will help a person become more realistic about their goals and hopefully choose their wellness plan more mindfully.  Most people will blindly follow fitness trends or crash diet programs without even knowing what those do and the effect they will have on one’s body beyond weight loss.  They hear about diets that helped others lose weight and decide to take up a certain challenge themselves without any regard for their individual differences and their health, lifestyle, habits, and things such as age, physical fitness level, but also their metabolic fitness, and without any regard for the above mentions WHY. Truth is that we are all different on both the outside, but also on the inside. Our hormones our different, we have different gut bacteria, nutrient deficiencies that are all related to how our body functions and food we eat affects it more than anything else, so you will need to stop thinking in terms of food as being calories, but as a way to a better functioning body. Once your body functions better, you will lose weight naturally without worrying about weight loss and dieting. A well-functioning body craves healthy foods rather then unhealthy junk.


When you go in on your wellness journey with a mindset of repairing your body, and bringing it as close as possible to the state of homeostasis, you are setting yourself up for a long term success, and not a failure and an obsessive weight loss mindset.  You are also going to be more realistic, and will not expect change overnight. Moreover, you will even understand that it is healthier to drop weigh overtime. You will understand that change on the outside will need to go along your change on the inside. You will understand that your best bet is to probably transform step by step and not at once because the habits that contributed to your weight problem, and health issues, have been with you for years on auto-pilot, and it is impossible to break them and sustain overnight. You will also understand that your body might be dysregulated, and that it will take time to bring it to its most optimal state. You will understand that diets are not going to do that and that only fueling your body with the right foods, the right amount of exercise, sleep and finding coping mechanisms will be your best bet. Sometimes, lifestyle might not be enough, but it is the basis of any transformation and basis of health, wellness, and a sustainable weight loss, not as a means to an end, but a pleasant side effect.  

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If you understand this article and if you do not want to be another Biggest Loser, and need help with undieting yourself and your body, feel free to reach out to me for a free consultation. My take on weight loss, and any wellness journey is that it should be healthy, sustainable, and that it should even be a fun adventure you look forward to and not a dread. It should be a journey to better understanding your body, and yourself in order to function better on many different levels, and not only being slimmer.