It may surprise you to learn that I now eat about six times every day rather than three. So instead of an eating plan that contains three large meals separated by 4 or 5 hour intervals: -my meal schedule involves smaller meals, of about half the size, eaten every 2 or 3 hours.
This is in direct contrast to the dieting approach which suggests that the best way to lose weight is to skip one of your meals so as to lower the total calorie intake. Or the other approach which would have you reduce the amount of food you eat for each of these three daily meals.
The trouble with these " dieting" approaches is that by cutting down on your total calorie intake you are sending a message to your body that food is scarce, when in fact this is not the case at all. The truth is that most of us are only ever a few minutes walking distance from great reservoirs of food, whether it be your own refrigerator or the local supermarket. Food is not scarce at all!
But when your body does get the message that food is scarce it responds according to a set of survival instructions that were programmed into our genes over the two million year course of our evolution. For most of that time food was in short supply and we had to work hard to ensure that we did not go hungry.
On the occasions when food was in good supply it made sense from an evolutionary point of view to store any left over calories as body fat, so that when the lean times arrived again ( as they always did) there would be an energy reserve for the body to draw from.
Moreover, when food in the environment is scarce it makes sense for the body to burn food reserves more slowly, so as to conserve its store of energy for as long as possible. In other words, your metabolism drops when you starve yourself - you burn fat more slowly, and you pack it on whenever you get a chance to eat. This is the exact opposite of your intentions if your goal is to lose weight. So every day that you eliminate to be plaguing you so frequently right now.
Losing Weight in Canada
Tuesday 27 November 2012
Hormones and Weight Loss
Most people think that getting control over our body weight is mainly a matter of learning to watch the number of calories that we consume, so as to ensure that we take in no more than we need to fuel our body's energy expenditure. After all, excess body fat is the result of taking in more energy than we need to get by.
There is a certain amount of truth to this balancing of the calorie scales. But energy intake is only part of the story of body weight regulation, elements of which remain entirely hidden from most people for their entire lives. The number one secret that most people never appreciate about their unwanted pounds of excess body fat is that it is almost always the result of a prolonged state of hormonal imbalance within the body.
Most of us appreciate the idea that hormones control our daily levels of sexual desire, and that the ability with which we are able to gain muscle is strongly influenced by the levels of certain muscle building hormones - such as the such as the steroids which athletes are prone to abuse for increased performance.
What we tend not to appreciate so much is that the everyday balance of other hormones in our bodies determine the rate at which we are able to store and shed body fat.
On the other hand you may have some awareness that when the thyroid gland is not working properly we can suffer an increase in body weight. People who have a hard time losing weight are apt to suspect that they are suffering from hypothyroidism, in which the thyroid hormones T3 and T4 ( which play a big part in controlling the overall rate at which food is burned to produce energy) are not produced in the quantities needed to stimulate sufficient energy production. So the net effect is your bodyimmune disfunctions.
In addition to affecting only a very small percentage of the population, none of these factors you have much control over, so it is best to seek the advice of a medical practitioner when it comes to diagnosis of thyroid problems and the treatment of it.
But besides the level of thyroid hormones in your body, there are other hormones which also play an important part in the determination of your metabolic rate. These other hormones, which respond to diet and exercise, are much more under your direct control, and can result in weight gain when they become unbalanced in your body, even when your must be rebalanced to burn fat rather than store it.
There is a certain amount of truth to this balancing of the calorie scales. But energy intake is only part of the story of body weight regulation, elements of which remain entirely hidden from most people for their entire lives. The number one secret that most people never appreciate about their unwanted pounds of excess body fat is that it is almost always the result of a prolonged state of hormonal imbalance within the body.
Most of us appreciate the idea that hormones control our daily levels of sexual desire, and that the ability with which we are able to gain muscle is strongly influenced by the levels of certain muscle building hormones - such as the such as the steroids which athletes are prone to abuse for increased performance.
What we tend not to appreciate so much is that the everyday balance of other hormones in our bodies determine the rate at which we are able to store and shed body fat.
On the other hand you may have some awareness that when the thyroid gland is not working properly we can suffer an increase in body weight. People who have a hard time losing weight are apt to suspect that they are suffering from hypothyroidism, in which the thyroid hormones T3 and T4 ( which play a big part in controlling the overall rate at which food is burned to produce energy) are not produced in the quantities needed to stimulate sufficient energy production. So the net effect is your bodyimmune disfunctions.
But besides the level of thyroid hormones in your body, there are other hormones which also play an important part in the determination of your metabolic rate. These other hormones, which respond to diet and exercise, are much more under your direct control, and can result in weight gain when they become unbalanced in your body, even when your must be rebalanced to burn fat rather than store it.
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