The Weight-Loss Lie
Are Americans living a $35 billion dollar
lie?
Meal
plan examples
Click Here
Did
you know that the American public spends an average of $35 Billion dollars
per year on a certain item that is doomed to failure from the beginning
and not one congressman or senator is calling for an investigation to look
into it. What is this item? A new stealth bomber? Six thousand dollar
toilet for a missile frigate? No, not even close. How about welfare or
farm subsidies? You're not even warm. The answer is much simpler than you
might think:
Weight Loss.
It is widely estimated that we spend
approximately $35 billion per year on weight loss programs, products, and
potions and you know what? They don’t work! It is not
even that they don’t work, They can’t work! The typical
weight loss program that you pick up at the checkout isle of your local
grocery store or a commercial weight loss center goes against human
physiology and the way our bodies are designed to work. They are in a
sense physiologically incorrect.
What am I talking about? Let me explain,
the typical weight loss program is based on a steady caloric reduction
which enables the body to lose weight. Sounds good so far right? The
problem is that no one ever bothered telling us what we were actually
losing. Fat? Not entirely, when you decrease your caloric intake to or
below your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), daily caloric requirement needed to
maintain lean mass while only conducting involuntary activity (heart
beating, lungs breathing, etc..), your body has to get by on less energy
yet still do the same amount of work. It becomes even more counter
productive when "voluntary activity" (exercise) is added yet caloric intake
is still at BMR. When forced into this situation the body simply begins to
"lighten the load." This means the body perceives that it is about to go
into a state of caloric (energy) deprivation which prompts the body to
begin rid itself of whatever material that most consumes calories. This
material just so happens to be our lean muscle.
So what is weight loss then? Well it is
actually a combination of lean muscle and fat loss, not just fat loss as
most people believe. Still doesn’t sound that bad? Let’s take this a step
further then. When you begin to reduce your lean muscle mass, you are also
damaging your metabolic rate (i.e., metabolism). Our body’s ability to burn
up or a use calories for energy is directly dependant upon the
amount of lean mass we have. What most people do not realize is
that our lean mass is actually our calorie burning machinery. Calories,
specifically fat, are burned in our muscle:
Lower it and you lower
your ability to burn calories! What we have done at this point is
we have lowered the amount of calories we can now consume/burn on a daily
basis. This means if we consume any excess calories above our daily BMR
needs, we are very likely going to store the surplus as fat. When this
happens it then becomes necessary to live off of 1,000 calories or less
for the rest of our lives if we wish to keep our weight
down due to the muscle loss. Just ask Oprah about her "Opti-fast Diet"
experience.
It has been calculated that up until the
1940-50's the average American woman took in 3,000 to 5,000 calories per
day. Today the average American woman takes in less than 1,500 calories
per day and is on some type of weight loss program. Today one out of every
three people in the United States is considered obese. In the 1970's one
out of every four people was. As we become a society more and more
dependant upon appetite suppressants and commercial weight loss centers,
we have also become largely a more unhealthy society due to incorrect
dieting practices. Only when a person has embarked on a program that
includes identifying the proper amount of daily food intake (based on body
statistics and goals), the proper amount of aerobic (fat burning)
exercise, the appropriate amount of diet augmentation (food supplements),
and the proper amount of resistance training needed will they be able to
truly alter their body’s appearance and maintain that appearance. Until
then, do your best to avoid those good marketing/bad science weight loss
programs in your checkout isle.
©1996 by John Serpa
Nutrition and Fitness Director-Gold’s Gym, Santa Barbara, CA
CFT-NASM, Nutrition Consultant
Back to top
