It’s Obvious – Don’t Be Oblivious

Starving doesn’t work.

dontstarveIt is the reason behind the yo-yo effect and will make you fatter proportionately in the long run. Even short term, starvation diets are a high risk for all kinds of nasty medical issues including heart attack, stroke and aneurism.

Forget the pills, regardless of their appealing pitch, they all do basically the same thing, artifically stimulate your body into burning energy. Unfortunately, since most people who take diet pills are also not eating enough they end up burning their lean tissue. Mostly due to the amount of refined sugar and carbohydrate in their diet.

Try not to get confused here… Calories In Vs Calories Out is a vast oversimplification since all calories are not created equal. However, it remains true that you can’t eat 5000 calories a day and lose weight unless you are in the Tour De France. The biggest problems most people encounter are impatience and hunger. Some people are legitimately hungry and can’t help but eat. They are not eating enough protein. Some people are just frustrated that they can’t lose 41 lbs in a week like they do on the Biggest Loser so they give up. It comes down to education.

Treat your body like a cabin with a wood burning stove. You have a big pile of logs (your fat butt) that you want to get rid of, some smaller kindling and sticks (whole food) and a container of gasoline (sugar) to keep you warm. I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to figure out what each of these things do, and which you should use to get the best fire going but I will spell it out for you anyway. If you consistently use the gasoline to power the fire, you will have big flare ups, lots of heat for a few minutes and then nothing. So you add more gas, but there is no consistent source of heat. It is frustrating and the pile of logs that you have been saving for years is still untouched. Even if you try to use the logs with the gas, it doesn’t burn long enough to ignite the large logs. So common sense tells you that burning the big logs will be better, since you have plenty, they burn really well and last a long time. Problem is, how to get them lit. Well, the answer is the kindling. If you use the kindling to keep the fire going when it gets low and use the logs to keep the fire going for the long term then you will have success. The key here is to use the kindling to fuel the logs to warm the cabin. Gas is dangerous to play with and sooner or later you will burn down your cabin if you keep using it. To address the starting point of this post, would it make any sense to let the fire go out completely by starving it of fuel? How about to let it go so long without fuel that it is almost out so you panic and throw gas on it again with logs and kindling and choke it to death?

Losing weight is not rocket science but it takes patience. If you gained 50lbs in 2 weeks then sure, expecting to lose it that way would be reasonable. However, even with hard work, your goal should be to lose 2-3lbs a week at most. Use that to calculate your time to your goal weight and then stick to your guns. Not sure what to eat? Here is a revelation, eat things with ONE INGREDIENT! Meat, fish, fruit, vegetables. Don’t take my word for it, try it for a couple of weeks and see how it goes.

If you are looking for answers, they are right in front of you. Refined foods are garbage and garbage in equals garbage out.

By the way, sugar isn’t the only sugar. Check out the Glycemic loads of some of these foods and you will see, sugar is often the wrongly accused.

Instead of starving yourself, have some chicken and do some reading.

Round 4 Day 14 – The Last 2 and Officially Paleo

I did Shoulders and Arms last night with Tony. I actually skipped the last section because I was feeling a bit off. Maybe it is the change in my diet, not having the sugar and processed grains really means a weird effect on your energy levels. I have done this before, prior to my wedding in 2007 I spent the whole summer off wheat and actually toyed for a while with completely raw food. However, I am many things, not least of which is a meat eater. I am not sorry, I won’t apologise for it and I refuse to be strong-armed by the passive aggressive vegan idiots who say meat is murder and whatever other amusing catch phrases they have come up with. Dog on a plate? , are you having a laugh? They eat dog in Korea. It’s all a matter of perspective and the fact is that without the meat eating public, there wouldn’t be enough food to go around, especially if the Organic wannabes have their way and get rid of the food industry giants that are keeping us all alive. But I digress.
My menu of choice then is Paleo. For the last 4 days in fact I have been completely grain free and apart from the usual headache and lethargy that accompanies any major change in diet it hasn’t been bad. When I went on the brown rice diet in 07 to isolate what it was that was making me so sick I found the same. About a week of feeling horrible and then almost as if coming out of a cocoon I felt awesome. I also found out that I have an intolerance for both wheat and naturopaths. So I quit both and have been more aware of my issues ever since. I am not going to sugar coat things here, it is VERY hard to get off grains especially if you are going all out and basically just eat fruit, veg and protein. It seems like everything you see is grain based and that is very true. But if you can start off and then work at finding things you can eat, you really can make it work and I can’t even begin to explain how good you will feel off that white processed powder, er, flour. Sadly I have other issues. I am almost completely intolerant of the nightshade family that includes peppers, potato and tomatoes. Potato isn’t too bad but if I eat a little raw tomato my acid reflux becomes so bad it almost incapacitates me. Peppers make me fart but happily hot sauce of which I am a HUGE fan doesn’t seem to have the same effect. So for now I am off potato too. Believe me, this couldn’t be harder but I think in a month when I look back, I will at least have more information about my body and how it reacts than I do now.

Today is my Crossfit workout and I haven’t decided what yet. If I can’t decide I think it may be Fran again this time with dumbells to take the strain off my wrists.