Fat Burning Basics
If you’re overweight, you are not a bad person. You’re simply overweight. But it’s important
to lose the extra pounds so you’ll look good, feel healthier and develop a sense of pride
and self-esteem. Once you’ve lost the fat, you’ll need to maintain your weight.
In this booklet, you’ll discover how to lose 10 pounds a month – a nice, safe loss of about
two or two-and-a-half pounds a week – painlessly. You’ll feel satisfied and more energetic
than in the past without feeling deprived.
Most Americans pack on those extra pounds by eating the wrong things. Changing these
poor eating habits is the key to long-term success. Knowledge – along with the right food –
is the key.
When humans lived in caves, they didn’t know anything about preserving and storing food.
They spent all their waking time and energy hunting and gathering food. When they had it,
they gobbled it down fast. Instead of storing food in pantries or cupboards, they stored
energy in their bodies in the form of fat to burn during periods when there was little or
nothing to eat.
Each year, it was absolutely vital for them to put on a good layer of fat during the warm
sprint and summer months. That was the only way they could guarantee their survival
during the lean and mean winter months.
And since women bore the young, they needed more energy to sustain themselves and
their babies, and that meant they were usually heavier.
Even though we no longer live in caves, we have inherited and maintained this basic
mechanism for fat storage from our hunting and gathering ancestors.
Each one of us is born with a certain number of fat cells. How many of these fat cells you
possess depends on genetics. If you have a lot of fat cells, maybe your ancestors were the
biggest people in the tribe, which was a good thing because they had the best chances of
survival.
You can never get rid of fat cells, but – unfortunately – you can add to them. Depending
upon what you eat, your body will manufacture new far cells. And like those you were born
with, they never go away.
That doesn’t mean you’re doomed to be fat once you put on extra pounds. It is possible to
shrink fat cells. That’s what happens when you lose weight. You burn up the fat stored in
those big fat cells. Think of them as balloons. Burning off the fat inside them has the save
effect as letting the air out of a balloon.
A good weight loss program requires a certain amount of intake restriction – the
consumption of fewer calories. You burn off the fat by eating less fat and becoming more
active.
you eat, so that you ingest less fat and still get the vitamins, minerals, trace elements,
protein, fat and carbohydrates your body needs to thrive.
Extremely low-calorie diets may help you shed pounds quickly, but they’ll lead to failure in
the long run.
That’s because humans are genetically protected against starvation. During food
shortages, our bodies slow down our metabolisms and burn less energy so we can stay
alive.
A part of our brain called the hypothalamus keeps us on an even weight keep by creating a
“set point.” That’s the weight where we feel comfortable. The hypothalamus determines
this point based on the level of consumption it’s used to. It seeks to keep our weight
constant, even if that point is over what it should be.
When we drastically cut back our food intake, the brain thinks the body is starving, and in
an effort to preserve life, it slows the metabolism. Soon the pounds stop coming off.
Consequently, we grow hungry and uncomfortable and then eat more. And then the diet
fails.
How can you compensate for this metabolic slow-down? The answer is that you have to
change the nutritional composition of the foods you eat. You will have to cut down on total
calories – that’s absolutely basic to weight loss. More important, however, is reducing the
percentage of total calories you are getting from fat.
That’s how you’ll avoid starvation panic in your system. At the same time, you reduce the
amount of fat in your food, replacing it with safe, low calorie, nutrient-rich plant foods. This
will convince your brain that your body is getting all the nutrition it needs.
In fact, you’ll be able to eat more food and feel more satisfied while consuming fewer
calories and fats.
Plant foods break down slowly in your stomach, making you feel full longer, and they are
rich in vitamins, minerals, trace elements, carbohydrates and protein for energy and
muscle-building. This allows your body to burn off its excess stored fat.
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