“Things sweet the taste prove in digestion sour”                                                      William Shakespeare
 “I’ve dieted successfully…hundreds of times!” Sound familiar? Keep going…
The war on fat produces many casualties: It’s either feast or famine!  You know…you become caught in that cycle of repeated weight gain and weight loss; and then never seem to lose body fat. In fact, this unsuccessful dieting regimen at times actually increases body fat!   How? Read on…
Despite the wealth of information available concerning weight loss– from friends, relatives, newspapers, magazines, and commercial products, much of it concerns watching what you eat, rather than how you eat. And surprisingly little of that information is effective in producing the desired outcome. However, take a few useful facts into the battle and you have a slim chance! 1) You are what you eat… Eating carbs makes you fat. Your body converts dietary sugar found in carbohydrates into body fat very easily. The reason for this involves your body’s historical genetic makeup. A long time ago, before the advent of the “health club”, cholesterol and dieting, there was wide-spread famine. People did not live long enough to die from obesity-related diseases (and you thought you had problems?). Everything was fast-food– all you could eat. And contained huge quantities of animal fat and carbohydrates high on the “glycemic index” (that is, foods that can quickly raise your blood sugar due to the amount of contained glucose).  A bulging belly was testament to one’s ability to store energy, ready to be called into action during times of danger or famine. Those with a gut that could store fat survived longer. Hence, this bio- chemical quality was “selected” through generations, which means your body became really skilled at storing fat. Today, attempts at maintaining long-term deprivation diets meet with failure due to the availability of forbidden foods…and successful advertising. Despite your best intentions to eat healthy veggies and avoid lots of carbs, we too often fall victim to temptation and take a bite from that forbidden cake or mound of pasta (sort of a variation on the Garden of Eden). Suddenly, your body will induce “famine mode.” In effect, anticipating lean times ahead, it tucks that piece of cake away in your belly bank account as if it were the last day on earth.
2) Very-low calorie diets have very-low track records. When attempting to lose weight and get in shape, forget cut calories and think, redistribute them. Although, logically, calorie reduction and weight loss seem like a marriage made in heaven, there’s trouble in paradise.  Actually, it’s an interesting paradox: When cutting calories, your metabolism reacts to this would-be starvation problem by slowing down.  A slower metabolism burns less fat.  As a result, you accomplish the opposite effect, weight loss is minimized. To make matters worse, having taken this measure, you now are likely very hungry. But as soon as you resume eating higher calorie foods (because maintaining a very-low calorie diet for an extended time period is next to impossible), your body, still reacting to the threat of famine, will begin storing fat again. The result is that too often one who attempts dieting with a low-calorie regime may actually discover an increase in body fat and reduction in lean mass, after returning to higher calorie foods. A possible solution to this dilemma involves taking the calories you already consume and redistributing them throughout the day by changing how you eat. For example, eating early is recommended as the body is more efficient at storing fat after six o’clock at night. Eating smaller portions more frequently helps, too. The production of insulin in the body facilitates fat storage. Eating less, more often stabilizes insulin at lower levels in the bloodstream reducing the likelihood of storing fat.
3) Run your body’s engine…slowly. Exercise, aerobically, at a slow, steady rate– especially before dinner– to increase it’s “fuel efficiency.”
4) Keep a lid on it. Reduce the stressors in your life– including those related to weight loss. Regarding the latter, avoid making judgments about your SELF. To accomplish this, try on a new, interesting belief: People work perfectly! If a behavior does not produce the desired outcome, change it! In contrast, believing YOU are bad for having failed to diet or engage in other weight reduction strategies is counterproductive. It also may lead to a tragic irony: This belief is likely accompanied by stress, causing your body to increase it’s adrenaline production so you will be equipped with the energy necessary to keep worrying. But this energy comes from fat cell stores being released into your bloodstream, courtesy of the adrenaline. Faced with a sudden onslaught of energy- producing fat, your body produces another hormone, cortisol, to “mop-up” the spill. And this is accomplished by redistributing that fat to be stored…to the belly!