?Everyone knows how to lose weight and stay thin. All you have to do is burn more calories than you consume, right? Well, it’s not quite that simple, but there is a very scientific way of handling this challenge that virtually guarantees results for everyone who follows the same formula. The basis of permanent weight loss has never really changed: consume fewer calories and, at the same time, try to burn additional calories by moving your body to a greater degree than you were accustomed to moving it in the past.Unfortunately, the ability of humans to master this approach
hasn’t changed a whole lot, despite years of trying.
The result? Millions of Americans are locked in an endless struggle to control their weight and master their health. The trouble is that lurking behind the simplicity of the cardinal rule of
weight loss is a problem of far greater difficulty. You may have heard it verbalized like this: “I just can’t seem to lose weight predictably.” “I think I’ve screwed up my metabolism.”
“Professional” dieters, defined here as people who have dieted so many times they can’t count them all, resoundingly report that repeated dieting causes major roadblocks to their efforts to lose weight and stay thin. Study after study has shown that the “yo-yo” dieting effect that we in America seem to be caught up in is very taxing to the correct functioning of our Prelude to the System metabolism. Hence, our metabolic rate becomes slower and slower with each weight-loss–weight-gain cycle. But that’s not the only reason why our metabolisms may be a bit sluggish. The strength, or the “speed,” of our metabolism is usually determined by several factors, such as
·? Past dieting, especially attempts at rapid weight loss
·? Age As a matter of fact, your metabolism begins to slow in early adulthood, at a rate of 2 percent per decade.
·? Activity level Less active people generally have a slower metabolism.
·? Lack of proper physical activity Certain exercises tend to increase a person’s metabolism while others have only a slight effect on it. By making small but appropriate changes to your current level of activity, you could boost your metabolism
massively (more on this in the chapter on exercise).
·? Lack of proper meal placement during the day—every day
One notion about weight loss that’s prevalent in this country is that people can lose weight by skipping breakfast. Nothing could be further from the truth! In fact, eating a healthful breakfast actually turns up our fatburning furnace (our metabolism) and gives us far more mental and physical energy for the first half of the day.
?A full description of how and when to eat for best results will be laid out for you later in this article. Now let’s get back to your past dieting attempts. Just look at the results and note the undesirable changes that seem to occur the more times you’ve dieted. By better than a two-to-one margin over less-frequent dieters, “professional” dieters have found that:
·? Weight-loss strategies that used to be effective for them are showing far fewer results now
·? Gaining weight has become easier
·? Losing weight has become harder
·? Dieting plateaus have become more frequent
·? Weight loss is becoming increasingly hopeless The cause of all of these common complaints is the slowing of your metabolism.
?Well, now is the time to put an end to that. Now is the time to take control of your metabolism—and your life.Very few people are aware of their own “weak link,” the reason that their particular metabolism is not working at peak efficiency. Everyone who has attempted to lose weight through dieting has created one or more personal “weak links,” and these weak links are the reason why other weight-loss programs fail to get you the results you want.
Remember, you’re seeking a new level of understanding of how your metabolism works, and at the same time you’re training your metabolism to function at its optimum level.
Many overweight men and women find that trying to control their metabolic rate is nothing short of a hellish nightmare, and that’s why the word “permanent” has never been part of their weight-loss vocabulary. One recent national survey showed, for example, that 66 percent of Americans were overweight. Translated into absolute numbers, this means that at least 90
million adults take in more calories than they burn up. Another review, this one called the National Health and Nutrition
Examination Survey, showed that the number of overweight Americans increased by 8 percent between 1976 and 1988, and I’m willing to bet that the number has continued to increase in the years since 1988. The said thing is that not only are the overweight becoming more numerous, they’re also getting fatter, despite the fact that there are more “weight-loss” products, creams, pills, and potions on the market today than ever before.
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, American men now weigh nearly 9 pounds more, on average, than in 1960, and American women weigh nearly 13 pounds more, on average, than their counterparts of just a decade ago. How could this be possible? After all, in the past, people didn’t know half of what they know today about proper diet and exercise! Just as one example, back in the 1960s there was a state-of-the-art exercise machine that I like to call the Fat Vibrator. You know what I’m talking about: the machine that had a large belt that a “fitness expert” would wrap around your waist. When the machine was turned on, the belt would “vibrate” the weight right off of your body.
?Well, this sounds funny to us now, but back then people really believed that it would help them lose weight—and there are versions of that machine still on the market today! Yes, people are getting fatter, and, as a nation, we seem powerless to reverse this trend, despite our best attempts to do so. But the worst is almost surely yet to come: Though only about one in four Americans are obese, fully 80 percent of men and 70 percent of women over the age of forty are more than 10 pounds overweight. If you’re in your twenties or thirties now and are having difficulty losing weight, you can well imagine how hard it will be for you to slim down in another ten or twenty years.
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