Drop that Fat Now by Edwin Kakaire - HTML preview

Chapter 1

Why Do I Gain Weight?

With the rush of our everyday lives, the advancement of technology, along with the conveniences of fast food, it sure is hard to stay active and eat a healthy, balanced diet. But if you know how to do it, it can be done, even with a busy lifestyle.

In this first section of the book we are going to look at:

• All the reasons why we gain weight,
• The people we need to talk to when we decide we are ready to lose the weight,
• Why keeping yourself on a schedule actually helps you to lose the weight,
• Weight loss secrets,
• Plus many other subjects that will help you to learn how to finally take the weight off and keep it off once and for all

The Major Causes Of Weight Gain

We eat more calories than our body needs in a day, so the excess gets stored as fat. Our human bodies are designed in such a way that when in times it was harder to get food, our bodies could be prepared by having stored extra calories in times of plenty in the form of fat. Now, with the ease with which we get food, a lot of people tend to overeat, and this is a severe problem that causes a huge number of people to become overweight or obese.

• Genetics play a factor as well by setting basic parameters on the metabolic efficiency of your body. People who are overweight many times have very efficient metabolisms, meaning their body needs less calories per day than others to operate, and they store the excess calories as fat. Also you have a greater risk of being obese if one of your parents are and an even greater risk if both parents are.
• Your metabolic rate. Besides genetics, your metabolic rate depends on how active you are. It is said that every ten years past our mid-twenties we lose about 10% of our metabolic rate. This probably does not have to do completely with age, however, but instead with how active we are. The more active we are, the more muscle mass we can retain, or even build, and in turn the more fit we are because muscle tissue is metabolically active whereas fat is not. On the other hand, if we lead a basically sedentary life, we are much more likely to be able to gain weight as we lose muscle mass.
• Eating patterns. People’s eating habits make a huge difference in determining their weight. When foods high in fat or sugars are favored, this of course can cause much weight gain. Also, how you serve the food, i.e. do you put the portions on everyone’s plate or do you bring it all to the table and serve it the food family style where everyone can take as much as they want? Portion size is one of the main reasons people eat too much. Also, how have you learned to eat? If you are a fast eater, you may not even realize the cues your stomach gives you that it is full.
• Larger portion sizes. Over time, larger portions of food have become the norm, especially at many restaurants. Weight has also gone up because of this.
• Exercise or the lack thereof. Exercise is essential to a healthy lifestyle and to maintaining a healthy weight. When you exercise, especially when you include strength training in your workouts, you gain muscle mass and raise your metabolism and in turn the muscle helps to burn more fat. In turn, you will weigh less and you will look leaner and firmer because muscle takes up less space than fat. Plus, strength training helps reduce the risk of accidental injury, improves your bone density, helps with digestion and helps in lowering your blood pressure, cholesterol and triglyceride levels.

As you can see, even if your genes make it easier to gain weight than other people, diet and exercise are the two main factors that affect your health and weight. Regular exercise is essential to getting to and maintaining a healthy weight – and so is what you eat, how you eat and how much you eat.

Learn portion control. This is usually a huge factor for most people, and they do not realize how much they are actually eating. A portion of food the size of your fist is generally all that should be eaten at one time, because that is the size of your stomach as well.

Eating several small meals a day, rather than two or three big ones, will help you to be able to eat less and also not be hungry in the early days of forming this habit. Another vitally important thing is to never skip breakfast, as this sets up your metabolism for the day. If you don’t eat breakfast, your body will go into defense mode and store more fat because it will think you are starving.

Try slowing down your eating as well if you have the habit of eating fast. This way you can feel the signals from your stomach when you have had enough, before you stuff yourself full. When you have done that, you know for sure you have eaten too much. In reality, on a scale of 1-10 of fullness, we should feel right in the middle, around a 5, when we are done eating. It takes some practice, but you can learn this trick and you will feel so much better knowing you did not stuff yourself to the maximum capacity.

Another thing to watch of course is your intake of fatty and sugary foods. We all need nutrients, including healthy fats, to keep us balanced, but eating a lot of junk food and sugary drinks will attribute greatly to us gaining more weight. Processed foods don’t generally have a lot of nutrients in them, or any at all, and they are high in salt, sugar, and unhealthy fats.

In today’s busy lifestyles, we may not realize how often we are eating these foods. If you are one who is always ordering out for work, or going out to dinner as well, this is not going to keep you healthy because you do not have the control as to what is being put in your food (except special ordering at a restaurant) and it is much harder to make sure you are eating the right kinds of things and getting all of your nutrients. Going out to eat is fine every once in a while, but be sensible in what you are choosing, and you don’t have to clear your plate of the large servings you will most likely be given.

Should I Go On A Diet?

When most people think of losing weight, they think of going on a diet. Many times, this means finding some fad diet that is probably popular at the current time, and trying to follow all of its crazy rules and recipes, like lemon juice, cayenne pepper and maple syrup. But honestly, who enjoys these things? Do you like cutting out entire food groups such as carbohydrates or drinking crazy concoctions that simply do not taste very good and do not fill you up?

It is doubtful that anyone does. Yes, there are other diet plans out there that have a lot of merit to them, and if a diet is the way you want to go, then researching the different ones out there is very advisable so that you can find a reasonable, sensible diet plan that is not going to harm you or make you go crazy with hunger, causing you to fail in the end anyway.

Choosing the Right Diet Plan

When you are ready to choose your diet or eating plan, there are certain things that you must take into consideration to make sure that you are picking one that will help you to attain the weight loss goals you have and to make sure you are staying healthy. Some diets, as we mentioned, do not contain the right balance of nutrition that your body's needs, and can therefore make you sick, and won’t help you to lose weight properly.

Here are some important things to keep in mind when choosing the right diet plan:

• Realistic Expectations: You must realize that losing weight is a process and takes time. The length of time to achieve your goals depends on how much you have to lose to bet to your goal weight. You do not want to take on a crash diet plan that promises you to lose a lot of weight in a short amount of time, as that will most likely be a very unhealthy and an unsafe option for you. After the initial two or three weeks when weight loss is rapid because of water loss, after that you should be losing around 1-2 pounds a week to maintain healthy weight loss.
• The Right Nutrition: Make sure you look over any diet plans you are considering thoroughly and see what they allow or suggest for you to eat. If it has a balanced-looking diet to it with the right amounts of foods from the main food groups, you are probably looking at a plan that is safe. Any of the fad diets that cut out whole food groups, or make you starve yourself or drink strange concoctions are not safe. You also want the right amount of protein, carbohydrates, fiber and make sure you are getting no more than 30 percent of your calories from fat per day.
• The Right Fit For You…or Not? While you are researching different diet plans, make sure it is something that you think would suit you and your lifestyle. If you are a very busy person who is not home a lot, look for a plan that has convenience as well as healthy choices. If you wind up choosing a plan that you don’t stick to for whatever reason, you will wind up failing and you will then most likely go back to your old ways, but now feeling worse than when you started out.
• Calorie Level: Make sure that the plan you choose has you eating enough calories. You essentially want to cut out enough calories so that you can lose those 1-2 pounds a week. You have to weigh this all against you and your activity levels, as how many calories you need each day will vary from person to person depending on how active they are and their weight. You might want to work with a trained health professional to help you decide which is best for you.

How Diets Work

Losing weight is simple; lose more calories than you can eat.

We eat because it is a necessity. The food we consume will be processed by our body, breaking them down and only keeping what is needed while throwing out the rest. As we do our normal daily tasks our body uses calories and nutrients from our food as fuel for your body to complete all the tasks. However our body only needs a certain amount of calories to do this and this leads to all the unused calories being stored in our body as fat.

The problem with our body is there is no way to tell it to stop storing calories. All excess calories will be converted into fat no matter how much fat you have in your body already. Most of us would always eat more than we need to, taking in all those extra calories to lead us into being overweight.

“So in essence a diet is supposed to help you lose those extra calories”

A diet is an eating plan where you would control the amount of calories eaten. Eating less is not the only way to diet. Since the goal is to eat fewer calories, you can have constant food but it is low on calories. So food like fruit or vegetables are low on calories if you compare same amount with other food like meat.

When you are dieting, you will be eating less than normal. So you would feel hungrier throughout the day and feel more unsatisfied when you finish your meal. It cannot be avoided since you are after all trying to lower your calorie intake. Do not be mistaken with skipping meals or starving yourself. Those will only worsen your diet conditions.

What a good diet would include is help in suppressing the hunger, may it be psychologically or physically. Diet will always prepare you psychologically first before starting it. This is to ensure that you will be able to keep on the diet plan for the whole duration and reach your goal. Diet plans will also give you alternatives snacks that you can eat to suppress your cravings.

When you are on a diet, don't think that you will be having water and vegetables to last for the whole day. Diet actually promotes eating a balanced meal. You only want to have a lower calorie count but the rest of the nutrients shouldn't be ignored.

So when you are avoiding certain kind of foods, you would also be avoiding their nutrients. So the diet plan will show you alternative food you can take to replace the missing nutrients. Usually these foods are avoided and not forbidden completely. So you can still eat them in small portion once a while.

A good diet also contributes to your natural metabolism. Each person has his own rate of metabolism. A person with higher rate of metabolism will be able to burn more calories a day. A proper diet plan can help people with low metabolism to fully utilize them.

Like having a proper breakfast to jump start the metabolism, lunch to keep the energy going and eating less for dinner since you do not burn as much calories at night. This is to ensure that you have enough calories for the day.

Rule of Thumb

When you want to keep a diet plan, discipline is one of the most important factors. Weight loss through proper diet will take from months to years to achieve your proper weight. Diet that is extreme and promote speedy result can turn into a form of yo-yo dieting. Yo-yo dieting is a term where a person following a diet and manage to lose his weight but eventually will eat and gain more than he lose.

This happens because the diet he followed was too extreme; limiting his food intake and forbidding a lot of food category. So he cannot take all these diet thus giving in and eating more. Or it can be due to the lack of discipline after the targeted weight is achieved. This is usually the cause when you go for extreme hyper caloric diet.

So to avoid that, dieters are advised to go slow in their dieting where it will take months to see big result and where majority will quit halfway. It is not easy to change a habit you built up for years. So that is why you need a lot of discipline, willpower and determination to be able to stay on a diet.

Changing a habit is hard at first. You must stick to your diet plan daily for the first month. This will set the foundation. After 30 days it is said you have formed a new habit

No one has to diet alone. I truly encourage you to get a friend to help or even diet with you. By having someone beside you for encouragement, you can also slowly see the result in each other. It also helps to have someone to confide in when you think that the diet is not working out for you.

When you pick a diet to follow, you should consider a few diet plans that might be similar to the one that you are already doing. This is to diversify the diet. Following the same diet that you hate over and over again will have a negative effect on your willpower later on.

This might even cause you to abandon your diet. So by diversifying your diet, you will find a diet plan that you'll like and won't feel bored watching what you eat. You can cycle diet plan by weekly or monthly, making the diet eating plan fresh.

Just remember if you have broken one of your diet meals, this does not mean your whole day is ruined and you should not continue to follow your diet plan for the rest of the day. Just continue your day as if you never broken your diet in the first place. Over time this is what leads to long term weight loss/management

Industry Secrets

There are several things that the weight loss industry is not telling you – nor do they want you to know. Their business is booming thanks to all the fads, gadgets and pills out there that they are selling to people desperate to lose weight. Unfortunately, the only thing in most cases that is getting lighter is peoples’ wallets. Many of these things do not work, and only a small percentage of people buying into one of them manage to lose the weight and keep it off.

Some of These Industry Secrets Include:

• Most weight loss product ads deceive the buyer. A majority of the weight loss products you hear about on the radio and see on infomercials don’t even do what they claim to. Even so, consumers are lured into buying these products with promises like “Lose the weight and keep it off”, “Eat whatever you want” and “no diet or exercise required”. Basically, if it sounds too good to be true, it most likely is.
• Just because they say it’s “scientifically proven” or “doctor-endorsed” doesn’t mean it works. These claims are typical as well, but they never tell you anything about where the studies were made or by who so that you can check out the validity for yourself.

And what does it really mean anyway? Often these so-called health professionals have a financial interest in the product, and probably did not review the scientific evidence. If it was reviewed, they may not have even used acceptable review standards. Why would you want to risk your health on such a thing?

• Just because the government allows a product to be on the market does not mean it is safe for consumers or that it does what it claims. There is a huge misconception that the government would not allow a product on the market if it could potentially be harmful to you. People tend to think that the government has to pre-approve them first, but many times that is not the case.
• Products toted as ‘natural’ or ‘herbal’ are not guaranteed safe. People also assume that just because a product is made of natural ingredients means it must be safe as well. But until the FDA receives evidence that a product is harmful, the companies are free to put their products on the market.

Not everything you hear is true, and you shouldn’t believe it. There are plenty of products that claim to do things that they just do not, and you should steer away from products making high and lofty claims.

Don’t buy into the claims of fad diets, either. Anything that requires sudden and radical changes to your eating patterns is very difficult to sustain over time. They will send you into a quick cycle of weight loss which is always followed by a rebound period where you gain the weight back and then some in certain instances once you’re normal eating resumes. Plus, the next time you try to take the weight off, it makes it all that much more difficult. There are no health benefits to these diets, and if any one of them worked, do you really think there would be the need for new ones?

You also can not count on the money back guarantee. You have about as good of a chance on getting your money back as having the product actually do what it claims to.

There is also no quick fix or magic pill that will help you to finally lose weight. If the product is making such claims, you can just about guarantee that they won’t work..