Thursday, July 31, 2014

STARVATION MODE

STARVATION MODE







If you are overweight, I bet at some point you have put your body in starvation mode. 

Sometimes we think that the more we cut our calories, the more we will lose.  Well, you might lose in the beginning but it will just be water weight.  I know there are diets out there that have you on 500 or 800 calories a day!  They may give you weight loss short term but rarely long term.  Your body cannot function properly on so little fuel.  Imagine if you didn’t change your oil for a year.  How well do you think it would run?  How often do you think it would just stop running?  Your body is no different.

How many calories should you be eating to lose weight?  For women, you should eat 1200 to 1500 calories on average.  For men, the intake should be 1500 to 1900 calories a day.   After I had been on Skinny Fiber a few months and started limiting my carbs, I realized that some days I wasn’t even getting 1000 calories a day.   Now I pay much better attention to making sure I am at 1500 calories, especially with my jogging.

What happens when your body goes into starvation mode?
1.      Your blood pressure drops
2.      Your temperature drops
3.      Your heart rate drops
4.      Your body doesn’t just use fat for energy, it uses your muscles too.
Here is what happens when you starve yourself and go into starvation mode.   You start losing muscle instead of fat.  That is the worst!  When you start eating normally again (or overeating again) you will gain the weight back quickly and probably more than you lost!  But the worst thing is you will gain back FAT!  Even though you might not weigh more you will be fatter and look fatter.  Each time you do this exercise of starving, losing, and gaining back, you will be getting fatter and fatter every time you go through this scenario.  I know.  My body is a perfect example of this.

If you want to lose weight and keep it off for good, you have to eat.  Not overeat but eat!  You will lose more and keep it off if you eat whole foods.  Those are foods that have one ingredient:  cabbage, spinach, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, eggs, chicken, beef, ham, etc.  No fillers, no additives, no chemicals.   Our bodies weren’t meant to run on junk or process chemicals and additives.    Now, I’m not saying that you should never eat junk food or something that isn’t a whole food.  However, that should be the exception and not the rule.

The other thing you must do to lose weight and keep it off is MOVE!  It doesn’t really matter what you do for exercise but you gotta move!  Walk, jog, run, dance, do jumping jacks, do some squats, roller blade, ice skate, ride your bike.   Do something that makes your heart race and causes you to sweat!  Sweat is your friend!  I read a quote the other day that I just love:  “Sweat is your fat crying!”  What a great way to look at it when you are moving and sweating!

Most addictions require the person to abstain from whatever the addiction is.  This is what is so difficult about losing weight.  You have to eat every day.  You have to fuel your body.  Overweight people are expected to eat every day but not too much.  Can you imagine if an alcoholic or drug addict or smoker were told that it was required of them to use their drug of choice everyday but just a little bit?

This is why being overweight is so difficult.  I know how difficult it is.  I’ve been overweight for 53 years.  It’s hard losing weight.  I’ve always said I wish I could just stop eating like I stopped smoking.  It would be so much easier for me to just give up food altogether.  But I can’t.  And neither can you.

We have to make our new mantra this:  I eat to live not live to eat.  When you can do that each day, you will get to your ultimate goal and stay there.  That is the pot of gold at the end of my last weight loss journey.  It can be yours too!

copyrighted 2014
caryn cannatella

Skinny Fiber Sales:  www.caryncann.com

No comments:

Post a Comment