The Big Secret to Weight Loss
WARNING: The following information ‘The big secret to weight loss’ could be the difference between losing weight and putting it back on over time. Read on if you genuinely want to lose weight forever. The author takes no responsibility for plummeting sales of weight loss books.
It is the secret that no weight loss program or magazine wants you to know about, and rightly so, as this could mean an end to weight loss fads, diets, and wonder programs. It is a simple truth, backed by science and embedded in our evolutionary past. Are you ready for it?
Weight loss is not linear! "What does that mean" you say? You are unlikely to keep losing 1-2 kilos every week when you are losing weight. Big losses will come and go, but you simply won’t keep on losing at the same rate so at some stage your weight will plateau.
It sounds unfair but there is a good reason for it. Think about your great great great grandparents parents. You have to cast your imagination way back, before cars, takeaway shops, coffee stands, and drink machines, to a place where just getting food for energy to stay alive was the primary goal in life.
As food sources were highly competitive and hardly available, the body evolved this amazing ability to store energy consumed around the body as fat in order to be used later for energy. This was especially useful to the survival of humans in times of famine.
What does this mean for the modern day warrior with a business suit and tie? Because you no longer have to compete for food, you are probably getting it quite easily and the amount you are eating could even mean you are storing the excess on your midriff or thighs.
When you go to lose that energy, your body will try to hold on to it as long as it can. So if you start to lose weight, the body defends this weight loss by changing things like your level of hunger, the rate at which you burn energy, your metabolism, and the rate at which your body converts food into fat to keep up supplies.
If you try to lose weight, these changes come into play to act against you. It’s nature’s way of stopping you from disappearing and as a result we have the familiar ‘plateau’. This is a time when weight loss stops and what you’re doing no longer seems to be working. It can happen at the start, in the middle or at the end of a program. But one thing is for sure. If you lose enough weight over a long enough period, you’re bound to hit at least one plateau.
What to do?
Given that plateaus are so obvious, the question is what do we know about them to help people through these difficult patches? Whilst science can inform a great deal on many areas, there is little research being conducted on the plateau effect. What we do know, lead by theory and practice is embedded in the following four points.
Everyone losing weight will hit a plateau at some stage.
There are big individual differences in the timing and lengths of plateaus.
A plateau is natural and is a period of adaptation.
Change is likely to be the best weapon against plateauing.
The last point is your secret to success. Change can be brought about in a number of ways such as going to bed earlier, trying different exercise, altering the time of day you eat and so on. You need to trick your body to stay on top of this one.
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