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
