Everybody makes the decision two weeks before Spring Break (GOB’s favorite holiday on Arrested Development) to lose 20 pounds or they get gym memberships on January 1st and expect to drop three pant sizes in a week. Society, commercials, magazines, and every diet product you’ve ever seen tells you how quickly you can lose insane amounts of weight! Just buy their product and it’ll happen! Yippee!
Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it can’t happen quickly. Why? Because your body won’t let you. If you go way back to our days as cavemen, food wasn’t always as abundant as it is today (which would explain two thirds of the country being overweight). Back then food might show up one day and be gone the next. Because of this uncertainty, our bodies are conditioned to store and save as many of the nutrients from everything we eat in times of starvation. Now, our metabolism doesn’t have eyes and we can’t tell it that we’re dieting so when food gets scarce (when you try to drastically cut your calorie intake) it goes into starvation mode [cue evil music].
What is starvation mode, you ask? Your body/metabolism knows that it can get away with a certain amount of weight loss per week (about 1% of your body weight). If you drop big weight early and really cut caloric intake, your stomach thinks there’s a scarcity of food and you’re in starvation mode. Because of that, our body will hold onto every meal like it’s the last meal for a while…which sucks for two reasons:
- You’ll stop losing weight or lose it very slowly…very frustrating.
- Two, your metabolism will slow down big time. When you start to eat normally again, it will take a while for your metabolism to go back to normal, so it will hold onto more of that food than before and you’ll actually gain weight. Fail.
Remember this: if you try to kick-start a diet by starving yourself, it will work for maybe a week or two, but then the weight loss will come to a screeching halt and you’ll gain back everything you lost when you go back to eating normally. Your other option is to chop off one of your legs. There’s 50 pounds right there.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and you can’t expect to lose 50lbs in a month. Be smart in your decisions, set realistic goals, and take it one day at a time.
-Steve
