What exactly ARE you losing when you lose weight quick?

You know all those fabulous lose weight quick plans?  The ones that promise you a path to bliss and wellness? The ones your inner wisdom tells you sounds like a con and yet the marketing makes it sound oh so easy?  Ever stopped to ask yourself what your body thinks and how your biology reacts? And what would you do differently if you 'knew' that far from helping you, it would upset your bodies in-built regulatory system so that your body became a better fat storing container?  

Of course that will never stop them selling you their latest 'quick weight loss' pills. They apparently just melts away your fat while you're sleeping. Yeah sure!  

Don't expect the weight loss industry to put your health before their profits - that just isn't going to happen! It's up to you to follow health tips that are going to bring you health and wellness for life.

When you are living an active and healthy lifestyle no matter what your size, your body will automatically adjust to carry the percentage of fat that is right for is.  At the same time your basal metabolic rate (the rate at which your body consumes energy for basic bodily functions such as breathing, standing etc...) will increase and any weight your body needs to lose will come off naturally.  And if your body weight does come down it will be slowly and not fast like these lose weight quick plans where it comes off fast and comes back on just as fast with some interest.  

Of course the marketing guru's will be out peddling their fat burning products that can raise your metabolic rate temporarily - but:

  • how safe are they -what toxins do they put in your body that, if you knew about them you wouldn't want them?
  • how expensive are they -remember, every time you open your wallet the billion dollar diet industry rubs their grubby paws together.  You don't need to buy fat burners, you already have your own.
  • do they even work - You have your own internal fat burners if you just live healthy eating and an active lifestyle.

The beauty of being body-wise and trusting the remarkable regulatory processes your body has, is that acting your own internal fat burners through raising your basal metabolic rate WILL mean that you are able to burn calories faster even when you're sleeping because muscle uses more calories to stay alive whether you're awake or sleeping! Talk about sleeping, it has an important impact on your body too.

Lose weight quick - water weight loss

Let's examine what happens on the average lose weight quick scheme. The first thing that happens is water weight loss. And, when our focus is just getting thin instead of getting healthy ... this is where we get so easily conned.

On the scale water weight loss looks impressive and it's enough to fool us. Because our focus is thin, we think: "This lose weight quick diet is fantastic, look how fast I've dropped 10 pounds." 

So why am I not one weeny bit excited when you e.mail me thrilled with this weight loss? (I admit, I would have been in my yo-yo dieting years). Remember firstly that there are loads of weight loss advice myths out there - and according to science overweight people live the longest.

But that aside, you only have to pick up a bucket of water to know how heavy it is which looks great according to the scale. What's vastly more important though is the story behind this quick weight loss that you can't see on the scale. 

You only need a 2-3% water weight loss to slow down your metabolism. Although you weigh less, you still haven't succeeded in losing fat because your body has held onto it's fat supplies. That's what it does the moment it senses deprivation.

So while you may look lighter on the scale, that mostly water weight loss, really means that your body now has a higher percentage body fat that before you started your lose weight quick diet. 

The higher your percentage body fat, the slower your basal metabolic rate, the fewer calories you burn and more efficiently your body stores food as fat.

After water weight loss comes Muscle Loss

These fabulous 'help me lose weight fast diets' also shoot your efforts to lose fat in another way. 

After your water weight loss comes muscle loss. Your body is still holding onto it's fat because it thinks you're trying to starve it and it's helping you survive. But... once again, on a scale, muscle loss looks impressive. Here's why? Muscle weighs three times what fat does on a scale.

Again - I'm not even vaguely excited at your ability to lose weight quickly because now, having spent almost 2 decades looking at obesity research, I know what I didn't know in my weight cycling days: muscle uses lots of energy (burns lots of calories) to stay alive. 

The higher our percentage muscle, the higher our basal metabolism and the more calories we use. The less muscle we have, the slower our basal metabolic rate.

Having now lost muscle, in addition to our water weight loss, we have once again upped our percentage body fat relative to what it was when we first started our quick weight loss plan and we've slowed our metabolism and are now less healthy than we were before. You see, when it comes to our body composition, it's not weight per se that is the health ogre barring very high and low weight extremes (you can be healthy at any size) - it's living an active healthy lifestyle.

But even more than that, when you understand the mind body connection how self-loving we feel may have a much bigger say on our health than our size or our shape.

Where that quick weight loss product really fails you

Now here's the real cherry on the top. (Wait for this one - this is where things start to really get interesting). 

So, on the scale, lose weight fast diets look fabulous. You're getting compliments and your clothes are loser, you're winning the weight war - right? Wrong! I'm sorry to have to disillusion you.  Diet's can't and don't work in the long term. What you need is to get body-wise and that way you can reach your natural size (and that may not be what weight watchers or anything else seems to think you should weigh) without miracles cures that con you into thinking they 'work' when they are what is causing your problems.

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