A great image, but not the KISS I’m talking about.
KISS: Keep it Slow and Simple
Success requires changes in actions and attitudes, and not all changes are simple. When you choose a plan–for a weight loss goal or any other goal–if the plan is complex, it is more likely to break down. Compare a boiled egg with a basic souffle. Each recipe uses the same ingredients (eggs) but the souffle has very specific instructions that must be precisely followed for success. If you miss a single step, the end result will not be what you want.
Weight loss is similar. Weight loss is built on the idea that the person burns more calories than they eat (Calories In/Calories Out). That’s it. There is nothing else that forces excess fat to be burned.
But there are many methods to control CI/CO. You can change eating patterns. You can increase activity. Or you can do both. But if you make it too complex, it becomes more difficult to continue.
From September 13, 2018
Choose one simple change. Just one. You will make progress. Never quit!
This is what I’m talking about.
Photos via Pixabay by Skeeze (soldier) and CJ (tortoise)
All images and videos on Pixabay are released under the Creative Commons CC0. Thus, they may be used freely for almost any purpose – even commercially and in printed format. Attribution is appreciated, but not required.
All images from LoseIt are mine, and cannot be used without permission.
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Music composed and performed by Jason Shaw, courtesy of Audionautix.com
Voiceover courtesy of Matt Young. Matt is a professional voiceover artist. If you have any need of voice-over work, for your podcast, radio spot, or whatever, you can reach Matt by a variety of methods. He is on LinkedIn. On Twitter. And Google+. Follow his Facebook page to learn how to better use social media. Matt was also my guest on MYST 54. Give his story a liste
Things can be simple. Things can be easy. Some things are both. But not weight management.
The rules of weight loss–whether it is CICO or keto, or Nutrisystem–are simple. Rules and instructions can be simple. It is the performance and follow-through that is not necessarily easy. And is even harder to continue indefinitely.
Art is simple. Apply paint to your medium and you have a piece of art. Simple. But is it easy to create a beautiful piece of art?
A snapshot of a recent day’s food diary. From Saturday, Sept 2, 2018.
I was 90 calories under budget…and the next day I had a 6-pound weight gain. Why? More than 5 grams of sodium!
All images from LoseIt are mine, and cannot be used without permission.
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Music composed and performed by Jason Shaw, courtesy of Audionautix.com
Voiceover courtesy of Matt Young. Matt is a professional voiceover artist. If you have any need of voice-over work, for your podcast, radio spot, or whatever, you can reach Matt by a variety of methods. He is on LinkedIn. On Twitter. And Google+. Follow his Facebook page to learn how to better use social media. Matt was also my guest on MYST 54. Give his story a listen!
Accountability is one key to success. Do people know what you eat? Do they know how much you eat? When those details are hidden, it is easier to apply a veneer of misleading success to an otherwise successless journey.
I have decided to post more frequent shows, and for every show, I will have a screenshot of my previous meals. Do I expect you to do the same? No, of course not. But maybe if everyone were a little more transparent with their food three things would happen:
Success would happen faster because better choices would be made more often
The consequences of poor choices would be more obvious.
We wouldn’t be as alone as we are in this weight loss journey.
As promised:
My food log from Sept 4, 2018
Oh, why did I tell you to find these show notes at MakeYourSomedayToday.com/Ozzy? Tomorrow’s food log might look even more ugly. Yesterday was a bad day for Ozzy and we chose to put him to sleep this morning. That does not justify a binge….but right now, I don’t care what I eat, or how much I eat.
All photos are my personal photos, and cannot be used without permission.
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Music composed and performed by Jason Shaw, courtesy of Audionautix.com
Voiceover courtesy of Matt Young. Matt is a professional voiceover artist. If you have any need of voice-over work, for your podcast, radio spot, or whatever, you can reach Matt by a variety of methods. He is on LinkedIn. On Twitter. And Google+. Follow his Facebook page to learn how to better use social media. Matt was also my guest on MYST 54. Give his story a listen!
Intermittent Fasting (IF)
Spoiler: I am not against the practice, but it still comes down to CICO.
Eat 100 calories an hour for 16 hours, or 200 calories an hour for 4 hours, or 800 calories an hour for 2 hours, and you will lose the same amount of weight. However, each individual person may find greater satisfaction–and more importantly, satiety–in one of those patterns when compared to the others. And for that person, one eating pattern is better than the others.
But it’s still CICO.
Long-term fasting? Unless it is religious-based, or medically required and monitored, I can’t support it.
It sets a rigid rule for the person to follow. When a person has many options (How often should I eat? What should I eat? How many calories? How much exercise? What form of exercise?) sometimes the default is to choose “none of the above” and that leads to weight loss failure.
Defining the time to eat as only between 10 am and 6 pm, that one decision helps create focus and eliminates many other options.
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Music composed and performed by Jason Shaw, courtesy of Audionautix.com
Voiceover courtesy of Matt Young. Matt is a professional voiceover artist. If you have any need of voice-over work, for your podcast, radio spot, or whatever, you can reach Matt by a variety of methods. He is on LinkedIn. On Twitter. And Google+. Follow his Facebook page to learn how to better use social media. Matt was also my guest on MYST 54. Give his story a listen!
Calories In/ Calories Out (CI/CO) works and it works for everyone. It’s just that there are two problems with assuming that CI/CO is the be-all and end-all of weight loss.
Measuring metabolic rate is much more complex than any calculator on the internet.
There are other factors that affect weight loss and fat burning (which are very different and will be talked about later.)
What some people just don’t get is that it is all CI/CO. I don’t care if you believe that you are that special someone who has a metabolism that is half of the rest of the world. Your weight is still ruled by CI/CO (you just need much less CI, because you have such a low CO.) Or it might be that you use steroids or other enhancers in your quest for muscle-building. CI/CO is still the rule (except, in this case, your CO is so high that you need more CI.)
In both situations, CI/CO is what rules your weight loss potential. But the average online metabolism calculator will likely give you a calorie budget that is wildly inaccurate, which means you will not lose weight as you think you will. It’s the equation that is faulty, not CI/CO.
And it is not the type of calories that you consume.
I don’t know how many calories you burn on a daily average, but let’s assume you burn 3250 calories a day. If you ate 5000 calories of meat (just meat, you pick the animal) you will gain weight. The excess 1750 calories of meat will cause a ½ pound (approximate) gain of fat.
If you ate 5000 calories of veggies and fruit, you’d gain approximately the same ½ pound of fat.
If you ate 5000 calories of table sugar (6.5 cups), you’d still gain approximately the same ½ pound of fat.
I’ve never seen any proof that suggests otherwise. Yes, my religion is science. Show me the data—peer-reviewed, double-blinded, control groups, and a large population tested—and I’ll believe it. Tell me your gym coach told you so, and I’ll smile politely.
But there is another factor that clouds the issue. People here talk about CI/CO and weight gain/loss when it would be much more accurate to equate CI/CO with FAT gain/loss.
Weight changes can be fat, but more commonly—and especially with large and rapid changes—that weight is mostly water. Water retention and expulsion is different from CI/CO. When you consider water weight, that brings in many other factors—and everyone out there who thinks that they are completely uncontrolled by CI/CO might be completely controlled by those factors.
Natural hormones fluctuations in bothmen and women. Hormone changes greatly influence water retention.
Stress levels (which also alter the hormone levels)
High (or low) sodium diets
Alcohol (This affects the liver, which pulls in water to dilute and break down the alcohol.)
Medications
Health conditions, especially any that involve the heart, kidneys or liver
Allergies, especially sensitivity to carbohydrates.
All of those factors change a person’s hydration status, which is another way of saying it changes their weight. More water within the tissues means more weight. But none of those change a person’s fat stores, which is what people really want to reduce.
Let’s talk briefly about carbs. It is not that carbs necessarily make you gain more fat stores, but they can make you gain weight. This is why some people say that when they stop eating carbs they are able to lose weight faster. Carb metabolism requires extra water in the biochemical process.
When you consume carbohydrates, your body converts them to glycogen, which is then stored in the muscles for energy. For every gram of glycogen stored, you gain approximately 2.7 grams of water (that is about ½ teaspoon). This water retention occurs because your kidneys hold on to sodium in response to carbohydrate consumption. Your body reacts to the higher sodium levels by storing more water to keep the sodium-blood concentration at a healthy level. Eat fewer carbs and your body excretes the extra water. But that is a WEIGHT loss, not a FAT loss, and that is where people are confused.
It’s relatively easy to drop a lot of weight fast. Eat mostly protein and fat which require less water to break down. This explains why those members of what I call the keto-cult experience rapid weight loss. Their body is dumping extra water that is no longer needed. That makes the scale move, but it is not necessarily fat loss. There are other methods to reduce the body’s water level. Both wrestlers and boxers will take specific actions to dump weight a couple days before the meet. They will drop 10-15 pounds in less than 2 days so that when they weigh in, they are in a lower weight class (and yet have all the muscle of the larger weight class.) Then after they weigh in, they try to rehydrate.
DO NOT DO THAT. THIS IS VERY UNSAFE. I AM NOT GOING TO GIVE YOU ANY IDEAS ON HOW TO DO THAT.
Let’s look at marathon runners. They are the exact opposite. What do marathoners do the night before the race? They gorge on pasta the night before the race. Pasta = carbs = more water retention for metabolism (and the sauce will be sodium-heavy, too), which will increase their running endurance. During the race, their body will use up all the stored water as the muscles work hard, and their skin sweats to keep them as cool as possible.
If people could change their mindset from “I’m going to lose weight” to “I’m going to lose fat” then maybe—slowly—the idea of CI/CO would be more accepted as the reality. But even if people have that way of thinking, most do not have the proper method of measuring fat content. Those scales that measure fat are grossly inaccurate, as they are dependent upon the correct hydration status. If a person is even a little dehydrated (as they are in the morning, when their body weight is the lowest) the sensors notice poor electrical conduction and determine the person has a high body fat percentage (fat is a poor electrical conductor.) If they get on the scale at night, when they are fully hydrated from eating and drinking all day, the scale will sense good electrical conduction, and therefore a lower body fat percentage. But the scale will also show a huge increase in weight (overall weight, not increased fat stores) and no one wants to see a number like that. If you really want to determine body fat, you can purchase calipers to measure fat stores (but that takes training and practice.)
Body Fat Caliper
Note: Image Above is found on Amazon here. The image belongs to PURENJOY, and I do not receive any compensation for sharing this link (it is not an affiliate link.)
So, what is the bottom line?
Stop worrying about weight. Focus on fat reduction through the proper consumption of food. I don’t care what you eat—carbs, protein or fats—but I do care about how much you eat. Experiment with your calorie budget. Pick a budget that you think will work for you, and eat it for a month. If you lost the weight you predicted, you are set. If you lost too much, or not enough, now you have evidence that your budget needs to go up or down. But that evidence only applies to you, and it is still a demonstration and CI/CO.
It is all CI/CO.
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Music composed and performed by Jason Shaw, courtesy of Audionautix.com
work, for your podcast, radio spot, or whatever, you can reach Matt by a variety of methods. He is on LinkedIn. On Twitter. And Google+. Follow his Facebook page to learn how to better use social media. Matt was also my guest on MYST 54. Give his story a listen!
