Lost and Found – a Novel by Ron Rink

As you can tell from the previous articles, there is a central theme running thought them — and that is — if your body thinks you are starving yourself — either by dieting to the extreme — or exercising too much — you will lower your metabolism and a weight gain is likely. Not what you want on a good nutrition and weight loss program, right?

Today we’ll talk about some other reasons not to starve yourself.

Have you ever tried to skip breakfast and lunch — then have a long hard-working day — and you finally leave work and realize you’re exhausted? What happens next — you’re on your way home and all you can think about is how hungry you are. At this point you’ll eat most anything — and it usually results in a stop at the local fast-food place or a bag of chips or other junk food when you get home.

So, what can you do instead of starving yourself?

There are ways to learn to control your appetite and get rid of those unhealthy cravings.

1) Eat more often.

When you only eat once or twice a day the tendency is to be so hungry that you overeat. What works better is to eat several small meals during the day.

2) Eat good food — real food — not processed food.

You should try to eat food that is in its original form. Food with fewer chemicals added — food that hasn’t been processed or canned.

Some examples of foods that are NOT real …

– canned fruit or fruit juices
– canned vegetables
– anything made from processed wheat
– squishy bread
– packaged mixes
– instant potatoes
– foods containing anything artificial
– soda pop
– processed deli meats

These foods do nothing for you. They have very little nutritional value, in fact, most have none at all. They compare quite well with cardboard.

When you eat these non-foods, you will find that your hunger will be satisfied, but only for a short period of time. Your body will digest these fake-foods very quickly. Your blood-sugar levels will rise rapidly and your appetite will increase instead of decrease. You’ll find that you’re hungry again within a short time after you eat.

I have one more tip for today — and I’ll give you three more in the next article. Here’s the last one for today…

3) Eat breakfast every morning.

We’ve already talked about the disadvantages of eating too little — making your body think it’s starving — you end up being ravenous later in the day and you’ll overeat.

Start your day with a good breakfast. It will give your metabolism the boost it needs for the entire day. At breakfast eat foods that contain protein and whole grains. Stay away from the the non-foods. One that comes to mind is the bagel — they will just raise your blood sugar and you’ll want more food than you need. Have some whole grain cereal — or a nice fresh veggie omelet. You’ll feel fuller and have a lot more energy.

Here is some information about the nutritional supplements I add to my nutrition and weight loss program. These have helped me more than I would have ever imagined. I’m not kidding. Click on the links in the box below — you won’t be sorry!

Have a great day. I’ll be back soon with some more nutrition and weight loss thoughts for you.

And give the South Beach program a try. That’s what I follow and it sure has worked for me. Here’s where to go to learn more:

Shanti,

Ron
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In our last article, we talked about how eating less can slow your metabolism and trick your body into thinking you’re starving. When that happens your natural weight loss that comes from an active metabolism will diminish, plus, when your body thinks it’s starving, it will do whatever it can to eat more food. The end result? Your nutrition and weight loss program goes down the tubes and you begin to gain weight.

Another of the reasons why combining exercise with eating less will tend to cause a weight gain rather than a weight loss, is the exercise side of this question.

We’ve always believed that if we exercise hard we’ll burn a lot of calories and we’ll lose weight.

But that doesn’t seem to work. So what’s the problem?

If you burn more calories than you take in, your body gets confused again. Just like eating less puts your body into starvation mode, burning so many calories makes your brain think you’re starving — and your metabolism slows down.

Then the cycle sets in — you now feel wiped out — you’re hungry — and you don’t feel like exercising anymore. That figures because your body will fight burning more calories than absolutely necessary. So, yes, exercise will burn extra calories, but the tendency is to exercise less, eat more and burn fewer calories in the long run.

When you go for those “starvation diets” the weight you lose is only half fat — the other half is your active muscle mass. Losing muscle again lowers your metabolism since muscle cells burn more calories than fat cells. What happens then is you lose weight – then you gain it back — then you lose some again and gain it back.

It’s the well-known “yo-yo” problem we’ve all heard about. It’s the skinny-fat syndrome and it can be so disheartening to anyone working on their nutrition and weight loss goals.

In our next article we’ll take a look at some other factors that can lead to weight gain and some steps to get it under control. Be sure to check back in.

Here is some information about the nutritional supplements I add to my nutrition and weight loss program. These have helped me more than I would have ever imagined. I’m not kidding. Click on the links in the box below — you won’t be sorry!

Have a great day. I’ll be back soon with some more nutrition and weight loss thoughts for you.

And give the South Beach program a try. That’s what I follow and it sure has worked for me. Here’s where to go to learn more:

Shanti,

Ron
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In our last article we left you with the question, “How can you lose weight and keep it off?”

Before we get to the answer to that question, we need to first ask another …

“Why will eating less and exercising more make you gain weight?”

The answer is relatively simple, but not often taken seriously. The answer is that when you use a diet that requires you to eat less, you’re actually starving yourself to some degree. When your body is getting the message that it’s starving, it won’t matter how little you eat or how much you work out, you won’t reach your nutrition and weight loss goals.

One of the things that I have mentioned in these articles is the theory that if you burn off more calories than you take in, you’ll lose weight. That does make sense, doesn’t it? Calories and pounds are in direct relationship with each other. But I’m starting to get the message that this doesn’t always work the way it should.

Here are some reasons why I’m changing my tune on this.

First reason:

When you eat less food than your body needs, you are actually slowing down your metabolism. If your metabolism gets slower, you will burn off fewer calories making it harder to lose weight.

When you eat less then you need, your body thinks it’s starving and sends the “I’m starving” message to your brain. So, your brain says, “Whoa, we better shift into survival mode — and sends that message to your body which will now do whatever it can to keep you from starving to death — part of which is slowing down your metabolism.

Now, you start to feel weak, you have less energy, your body isn’t working as hard as it used to, thereby burning fewer calories — and — your appetite will increase and you will have a strong desire to eat as much as possible to avoid starvation.

Once your body hits starvation mode, you start — and keep — eating in order to “survive”. What happens is you end up gaining, not losing, weight.

In the next article we’ll cover another of the reasons why combining exercise with eating less will tend to cause a weight gain, rather than a weight loss.

Here is some information about the nutritional supplements I add to my nutrition and weight loss program. These have helped me more than I would have ever imagined. I’m not kidding. Click on the links in the box below — you won’t be sorry!

Have a great day. I’ll be back soon with some more nutrition and weight loss thoughts for you.

And give the South Beach program a try. That’s what I follow and it sure has worked for me. Here’s where to go to learn more:

Shanti,

Ron
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Yesterday, we left our writing for the day with this question …

… Clearly, something’s not working. So what — or who — is to
blame?

This was after we had left you with a long list of statistics about the serious trouble we’re in in this country with obesity and weight problems. (Read yesterday’s blog for the details.)

For the readers of this blog who are pursuing their own nutrition and weight loss program, you might be thinking, “Yeah, Ron, but that doesn’t apply to me. I’m doing all the right things.” And, you may be right — you might be. But I need to tell you that those stats do apply to you as much as they apply to me, and I work with this and write about this everyday.

Alright, back to our question, “Clearly, something’s not working. So what — or who — is to blame?”

For starters, we’re not getting good information about nutrition. As a result, too many people are eating diets that aren’t healthy and that do contribute to their weight problems.

And it goes even further than that — how many times have you tried to lose weight only to end up weighing more than you did when you started? If that’s happened to you, then you’ve obviously been misled by the information you’ve been getting.

And that’s really a sad thing. You follow what seems to be good sound advice from “experts” on how to shed pounds, and you end up packing on even more pounds.

Here’s a couple more statistics to think about until our next installment …

– Only 2 to 6 percent of all attempts at weight loss are successful. Plus, the average person will ultimately gain five pounds over and above their starting weight.

– A recent comparison of 4 different diets (Atkins, Ornish, Weight Watchers, and the Zone) published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found no significant differences between any of them. Most of the people who followed them lost insignificant pounds over the course of a year — figures like 4.5 to 6.5 pounds a year. Sure, that’s better then gaining weight, but if you’re overweight or obese, you need to do a lot better than that.

The fact is — most diets don’t work.

So, let me leave you with another question ….

… How can you lose weight and keep it off?

Stay tuned. I’ll be back with more in the next couple of days.

As always, remember to follow a good-fat — good-carb diet. And do whatever you can, within your doctors recommendations, to keep up with the exercise part of your program. The benefits are priceless.

Here is some information about the nutritional supplements I add to my nutrition and weight loss program. These have helped me more than I would have ever imagined. I’m not kidding. Click on the links in the box below — you won’t be sorry!

Have a great day. I’ll be back soon with some more nutrition and weight loss thoughts for you.

And give the South Beach Diet a try. That’s what I follow and it sure has worked for me. Here’s where to go to learn more:

Shanti,

Ron
_______________________________________________________________________________

Welcome back after the weekend. We were overwhelmed here with the workload of moving and digging out from under a pile of boxes which needed to be unpacked. This is pretty good activity for the weight loss part of a nutrition and weight loss program. When you’re eating on the run, and then being physcially active for many hours of the day, the weight drops off nicely.

However, enough of that — let’s get back to our topic that we started last week —- Obesity and being overweight.

Consider these statistics:

– One billion people in the world are obese.

– 65% of Americans are now overweight, up 18% since just 1994.

– 30% of Americans are obese, up 30% since 1994.

– Diabetes is now an epidemic in children.

– Over 40% of Americans have high cholesterol.

– 50% of Americans over 65 have high blood pressure; 28.7% of all Americans have high blood pressure.

– 5.1% of us have type 2 diabetes, a staggering 104% increase from 1980 to 2004.

– Over 100 million Americans have metabolic syndrome, a risk factor for heart disease.

– 92% of Americans are deficient in one or more essential vitamins and minerals.

Those numbers are shocking. And we’re literally spending TRILLIONS of dollars to cope with these problems:

– Americans spend $117 billion annually to treat obesity- linked diseases including heart disease, diabetes, dementia, cancer, and arthritis.

– Over $50 billion is spent on weight loss alone.

– Of the $1.9 trillion spent on healthcare, just 2% is spent on prevention.

– Since 2000 the cost of health insurance has skyrocketed 59% while wages have increased a meager 12%.

– Medicaid expenditures will balloon an estimated 8.9% a year from 2002 to 2012 with Medicare rising by 6.7% per year over the same period.

– And not surprisingly, healthcare costs have exploded by 250% since 1990, from $717 billion to $1.9 trillion in 2004.

Clearly, something’s not working. So what — or who — is to blame?

Be sure to stop back here tomorrow or the next day and we’ll continue with this article and try to come up with some answers that make sense.

As always, remember to follow a good-fat — good-carb diet. And do whatever you can, within your doctors recommendations, to keep up with the exercise part of your program. The benefits are priceless.

Here is some information about the nutritional supplements I add to my nutrition and weight loss program. These have helped me more than I would have ever imagined. I’m not kidding. Click on the links in the box below — you won’t be sorry!

Have a great day. I’ll be back soon with some more nutrition and weight loss thoughts for you.

And give the South Beach Diet a try. That’s what I follow and it sure has worked for me. Here’s where to go to learn more:

Shanti,

Ron
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