Losing Fat

You hear a lot about gaining weight in the gym, but what if you have fat to lose?

We know a few things about fat:

Visceral fat is fat inside your body, attached to your organs. This kind of fat is difficult to see and can lead to metabolic disease and other problems. People with higher body fat percentages are more likely to have excess visceral fat, particularly if they have a larger waist circumference. Men, women after menopause, sedentary people, those who eat diets high in processed foods, sugar, refined carbohydrates, and trans fats, older people in general, and people with chronic stress.

Belly and bottom fat will reduce the length of your life. Many people with this kind of fat develop metabolic disease, also called insulin resistance. People who are insulin resistant need to work with their doctor to manage insulin and should generally not eat carbohydrates. People who have diabetes should eat no carbohydrates.

All diets work in the short run. Researchers at Stanford have shown that almost any kind of reasonable diet will help you lose 10-20 pounds in 6-12 months. Don’t believe stories of people who lost 50-100 pounds in 12 months. They aren’t done yet.

Almost all diets fail in the long run. Very few people keep the weight off. The same studies also showed that almost no one keeps the weight off – it comes back (sometimes more) within the next 12 months. It’s incredibly hard to keep off. Two reasons for this: 1) you don’t actually lose fat cells. When you lose weight your fat cells get smaller, but they don’t disappear. When you gain weight, your body creates new fat cells, but they pretty much stay with you forever. 2) Your body wants the weight back. Your pituitary is used to pumping out hormones to keep your system balanced. If you gain weight slowly over decades, you’ve trained your pituitary gland. It doesn’t change quickly in response to a loss of fat. So you need to dedicate more time and effort to the second year than the first, it takes increasing amounts of exercise and even more attention to sticking to a strict diet just to hold the weight loss you accomplished early.

The longer you have had extra weight, the harder it is to keep off. Most people gain 1-2 pounds per year for 20-30 years. If you think you’ll lose all that in two years and keep it off, especially while trying to build muscle, you’re living in the check-out aisle at the grocery store where all the magazines are.

The only way to lose weight and keep it off is slowly and steadily. That’s why I have a five-year program, because losing weight in the first year is just the very beginning. In fact, I’d prefer you don’t lose more than a few pounds in the first year, just so we can set up your routines and schedule to support meaningful weight loss and weight gain in years 2-5.

If you understand that you’re not going to be ready for this later, the time is now, book your first session with me and let’s get going.