When we aren’t burning fuel as we should it be it is very easy then to store it as fat and become overweight. And that is what is happening to us. As we continue to downgrade our metabolic motors from an absence of enough muscle building and maintaining activity they become sluggish. Fat storing hormones pile the excess fuel (fat) on our bodies spoiling our appearance, damaging our mental and emotional wellbeing and threatening our health.

Yet we tend to think of our overweight plight as simply eating too much food so we immediately think of going on some sort of diet. As many as 50 percent of us are on a diet at any one time so you would think that most of us should be slim and trim but this is not so. The numbers of overweight people are skyrocketing and don’t look like coming down anytime soon no matter how many diets we go on.

The reason this is so is because a diet (the restriction of food) does not address the root cause of the overweight problem – lack of toned calorie burning muscle tissue. Muscle tissue is where glucose is burned for energy and when they are un-toned and weak they cannot take up the glucose as they have no use for it.

So, it circulates around the body with nowhere to go and this is what sets the stage for those nasty killer diseases like heart disease, cancer and diabetes and dozens of their mates. They all love the unused sugar that a sedentary body has plenty of floating around.

 A diet is not the overweight solution

Yet we still obsess about our body weight and dislike the prospect of having to live in an overweight feel-bad body and we continue to think that a diet is the solution. Some people have screwed their food intake down to where it fits through the eye of a needle yet they still remain overweight.

The answer lies in our muscles. We need to get them working again, getting them strong and toned and keeping them that way. Muscles are not just for looks and play a huge role in our overall health and when they are neglected becoming overweight is just one of the consequences.  

 Many people think that exercise is some sort of low intensity, long duration activity that doesn’t require much effort but does require a lot of time (like walking). This puts many people off exercise as they simply do not have hours each week to devote to it.  People that don’t know what they are talking about say “Just go for a walk that is all you need” which is totally incorrect misleading information. Low intensity cardio type activity is not going to tone muscles and that is your ticket out of that overweight body.

Exercise away your overweight body

A program of proper strength training exercise is what is needed to work muscles directly under a load through their ranges of movement. This tones them up, gets them strong again and rebuilding strength so that fuel is burned up for energy rather than stored on an increasingly overweight body. Just 2-3 sessions are needed each week if the program is done correctly and some effort is put into each session. Rebuilding muscle tissue is not going to happen with little pink dumbbells or too easy exercises.

To fix our overweight global problem we need to put physical activity back into our lives in the way of proper exercise. It is only when we get our bodies burning more calories than we take in each day (not trying to eat less than we burn with diets) that we will reclaim those slim trim bodies that we desire to live in so much.

We have it all wrong about weight loss

The old accepted but not workable path to weight loss includes food restriction and deprivation combined with excessive amounts of repetitive low intensity activity. Most people do not enjoy these old fashioned strategies which cause mental conflict and physical suffering and that do not give us the weight loss we want anyway.

Not all, but a good percentage of people, many of them women have gained weight from a long-term hormonal balance. This can be caused from repeated dieting, not enough muscular exertion and too much ‘cardio’ type activity. For these people attempting to lose weight yet again will exacerbate the problem and make the goal of long-term weight loss close to impossible.

When the human body becomes overweight (over fat) it is in an unhealthy state with fat storing/fat burning hormones ‘out of whack’. Restricting food intake and too much of the wrong type of exercise does not fix the problem.

In fact, it makes us unhealthier as those very things work against the body causing an even more sluggish inefficient metabolism (the body’s engine). This reduces the amount of fuel (calories) we burn over the course of a day and night and this is how we get and stay overweight.

Weight loss can only happen when the body is healthy and strong

Before weight loss can happen it requires a shift both mentally and physically to take the body from an unhealthy state to better ‘metabolic fitness’ so it can burn fat for energy and not store it. This shift requires forgetting about weight loss and focusing on healing the body so it can be coaxed (not forced) into giving up its fat stores.

The journey to ‘metabolic fitness’ has some firm and fast rules such as:

Getting started on a proper strength training exercise program

Do 2-3 sessions each week with some effort put into them

Do not diet or skip meals

Eat 4-6 (or more) times per day

Make sure each meal has a protein, fat and a good carbohydrate (vegetables)

Eliminate as much processed food as possible (things in packets, boxes, frozen etc)

Get totally rid of processed sugary carbs (cereals, breads, pasta, baked goods etc)

Get plenty of good fats – coconut oil, butter, animal fats and eggs from grass fed animals

Get your butt back into the kitchen and cook your natural whole foods from scratch

Plan, shop and cook ahead

It is also important to reframe your mind about the food you eat. After all food:

Gives us energy

Makes us feel full and satiated

Energizes us throughout the day

It is really hard to overeat when you eat real food, but it is VERY easy to overeat processed foods made of flour, sugar and unhealthy fats

The chemicals in processed foods make weight loss almost impossible as they throw the delicate food regulation hormones out of balance and cause you to overeat

Use these food facts to reframe your understanding about food so you can enjoy eating real food to improve your health, balance your moods and help you with weight loss. Think 80/20 which means if you eat in a healthy way 80 per cent of the time you have the other 20 percent to party or eat anything you desire which is a strategy that you can live with for the rest of your life.

Metabolism refers to the rate at which one’s body burns fuel or calories throughout a given day. Amid the various things that manage it are your physical activity levels and the quantity and nature of the food you eat.  We can increase it to burn more fuel (calories) so we can lose or maintain our weight.

A slow metabolism is the cause of leading a sedentary lifestyle without enough physical movement.  Hence the body has minimal energy needs which cause it to store more calories as fat as it is not burning them up. This is the number one reason people are becoming increasingly overweight and going on to become obese.

A boosted metabolism will get and keep you slim

In order to burn fat efficiently you need to increase your metabolism, which does mean a proper exercise program supported by improved nutrition. Your exercise program needs to be mostly made up of strength training exercise as your muscle tone needs to be restored and rebuilt.

If you have not been very active for some time it is likely that your muscles have become weak and flabby and are no longer burning as much fuel as they should be so getting them fired up again in the priority. If you are new to structured exercise your local gym or fitness center will help you get started.

By getting the assistance you need from a fitness professional you get a guarantee of getting the results you desire and will not end up wasting your valuable time attempting to figure it out for yourself. This is their job; you should learn how to exercise properly, safely and efficiently and your program also should be altered, every couple of weeks or you will not reap the benefits of continuous results.

Proper exercise and eating right combined will boost metabolism

Just 2-3 sessions of strength training exercise each week is all you need to do for it to speed up your metabolic rate and burn more fuel to help you get into better physical shape. Improve your eating to make your results happen faster. Eat a small meal every 2-3 hours throughout the day. You might end up eating 5-8 of these meals but this is what is going to speed up your metabolism as well as your body has to process this food and that takes energy.

It is very important that each of these small meals contain a source of protein as this makes the body work even harder which is what you want to kick it back into fat burning mode. If you have not been exercising and eating poor food choices you will have effectively slowed it down so we need to make some changes if you want to get your slim trim body back.

There really is no other option in the battle against the bulge; the faster you wrap your mind around the reality that you need to make these changes, the closer you will be to resolving the issue at hand – being overweight.

Remember your excess body fat is coming at a high cost to you .- it spoils your looks for starters and threatens your mental and emotional health as you cannot feel as good as you should about yourself. So ignore the price (your effort) and keep your eye firmly on the prize (a new slim you).

But you have two choices – you listen to what you want to hear, or you listen to what you NEED to hear. And if you want fat loss you need to hear the truth. A lot of the information about fat loss is incorrect and misleading. For the last 40 odd years we have been told that to lose fat we need to diet and do hours of low intensity activity.

 Yet clearly this hasn’t worked as 50 per cent of us are on a diet at any one time and many more people do lots of easy repetitive activity and the number of overweight people now number two thirds of us and that number is climbing.

Fat loss needs proper exercise and eating right

What you haven’t been told is that to lose fat you need to exercise and eat right and that has nothing to do with dieting or ineffective exercise regimes. The very first thing you need to understand is that fat loss is best achieved by improving ‘metabolic fitness’ which means the  focus in put on the balance of the body’s fat burning/fat storing hormones. When a person becomes overweight these hormones are seriously ‘out of whack’.

The big problem in our sedentary inactive world is an almost total lack of any meaningful muscular exertion and this causes our metabolism which is our body’s engine to become less healthy. The condition of this engine determines the rate our body burns fuel and if our muscles are allowed to become weak and flabby their energy requirements are lowered and this is the number one reason we become overweight.

 A diet is only going to give you very short term fat loss

Things like dieting and low intensity exercise do nothing to fix this problem and that is why these strategies do not work 95 per cent of the time. Somehow we have to understand we need to restore the health and condition of the engine of our body for fat loss to happen. To try and make it happen before this health is achieved means the fat loss is very short lived if it happens at all.

When we add a restrictive food diet and hours of useless exercise we work against the body causing more damage and making our metabolism even more sluggish. For years people have been told they only need to do some ‘cardio’ type activity for fat loss but this is not going to tone muscles and restore the health of the metabolism and increase the metabolic rate.

There is only one type of exercise that will do this and that is proper strength training exercise with some effort put into it. Little pink dumbbells and silly little exercises are not going to cut it when it comes to rebuilding and re-toning weakened muscles.

 But the good news is very little proper exercise is needed for fat loss to happen. Just a couple of sessions each week of maybe 30-40 minutes done correctly are all that is needed.  Sure, at the start you will not be able to work intensely but as each week passes you will be able to put a little more effort into your sessions and the results will happen quicker than you can imagine.

What exactly is it you need to think about? Is it that you will get stronger and fitter, lose a few pounds, disease proof your body, improve mental and emotional health or make every aspect of your life so much better?

An exercise program is not really optional

Often we have a great idea, a thought or see a need (like an exercise program) and we think we should get started and go for it. We see something in our life that we feel needs changing or improving – like fitness or losing weight and we think and then we think some more.

But the problem is we keep on thinking and do nothing. Most often we talk ourselves right out of our great idea (our exercise program). We come up with plenty of reasons (excuses) why we can’t do it, all the ways the timing is not right, all the things holding us back or how we may inconvenience other people.

Rather than focusing on the benefits of taking action we focus on the hurdles, the obstacles or the way we may have to alter our routine or our life to fit this exercise program in and how inconvenient that will be. This then gives us more reasons (those excuses again) NOT to follow our great idea than to risk taking a chance.

Our exercise program is still waiting to be started

Or another common thread is that we only think about this idea of an exercise program for a little bit, maybe for a day or so. It could flash through our mind that we can no longer fit certain clothes and have started wearing looser clothing that hides (or we think it does) our growing waistline or bulges. One day becomes another and another and soon the week/month has passed and the idea of getting started on that exercise program has just faded away into the sunset.

It does not mean that the idea was not a good one or that it wasn’t necessary. No. It just means you let it wither and die. Who knows how it might have been had you actually got started on that exercise program. You might have more energy now, you may have lost some weight and be back fitting your clothes, you might be looking and feeling so much better that you are so glad you did get started and will never look back. But you won’t have any of this as you didn’t act.

So as you let yourself get away without discipline in your life it extends way beyond an exercise program. It can extend into important things connected with family or career with valuable opportunities being squandered.

Just the act of performing your exercise program a couple of times each week will give you that much needed discipline in your life. None of us can get away with a no proper exercise lifestyle and a diet of unhealthy foods forever. There will be price to pay somewhere down the track with the consequences of poor health or even a shortened life.

But it is never too late to make a change and get started on your exercise program so you can reap the many benefits. You will be delighted how good you will feel just taking action and leaving the ‘thinking’ bit behind. A strong, fit slim healthy body is not going to happen without that action and as you get better at it, it will continue on for the rest of your life. Remember action equals results which equal on-going motivation, so, once the ball is rolling you will be unstoppable and you will never regret getting yourself started.

If you have hit this plateau your body will no longer respond to the stresses you are putting on it from dumb dieting and the wrong types of exercise. If you have pushed your body to this point not only are you continuing to mess up your metabolism, you are risking your overall health and speeding up the aging process as well. I think you will agree that none of these things are going to do much to contribute to the slim, strong, healthy body that you desire.

It is totally crazy that millions of people are continually dieting and many are reducing food intake well below starvation levels. The World Health Organization states that a starvation diet is any diet less than 1800 calories a day for women and 2200 for men. Yet almost every diet starts a person off dieting on well below this level.

Dieting is great for a short while

Yes, it works great for a few weeks, the weight falls off and dieting is the ‘bee’s knees’ but suddenly the brakes go on as the body quickly slows the metabolism as the ancient ‘survival mode’ is triggered. The body will hang on to its fat stores desperately from this point on as it believes that a real famine is looming.

Many people when they get to this point restrict calories even more with more dumb dieting and add in lots of low intensity long duration exercise trying to force the body into burning fat. But guess what? It has had millions of years of practice at this sort of thing and you will not beat it when it’s in survival mode.

What is better than dieting?

Doing the opposite of dieting is what works best. Firstly get your metabolism in good health so it is burning fat at a steady rate. There is only one way to do this and that is to rebuild and re-tone your muscles with proper strength training exercise. Nothing else will do this so forget the long slow stuff as it will not boost your metabolism and rebuild your metabolic engine.

Muscle is what drives the metabolism and to work your muscles properly is paramount if fat loss is important to you. Working large muscle groups using ‘big’ exercises gets results the fastest especially when you put some effort into each session.

Next you need to support your exercise program with quality nutrition. This means ditching as much processed non- nutrient foods that are full of chemicals and will do nothing to help you lose fat. Get your butt back into the kitchen and get cooking natural fresh whole foods from scratch. Eat 4-6 meals each day each with at least 20 grams of protein at each meal and the balance vegetables.

We haven’t mentioned dieting here at all as it is the very last thing you need to do to get into better shape or lose weight. You will in fact be eating more than you think you should be but it is nutrient dense food items that will boost your metabolism so each meal is helping you become slim again – something that dumb dieting will never do for you.

It is hard to get your head around the fact that to lose excess fat you need to eat lots of healthy nutritious food (the opposite of dieting) and get your muscles back up and toned and burning more fuel. When they are toned they create more heat from metabolic action and it is this heat that will be burning more calories around the clock. Weak flabby muscles have low energy requirements so your priority is to get your strength and energy back and fix the problem up at the core.

When you make these changes to both your exercise and eating plan you will soon see the results as the fat melts away. Your energy and vitality will increase and a slim, strong body that is underneath the excess flab will emerge and delight you. It is in your power to create a feel-good body you will be happy to live your life in.

Cellulite is difficult to get rid of. Surely you have seen those creams and lotions that promise to reduce the amount of cellulite you may have in a particular area. Unfortunately, like most diets out there, these are marketing gimmicks. Large corporations and manufacturers know exactly what to say to get you to second guess what you might be currently doing or make you think you need to fix something. While there may be some active ingredients that might help reduce the appearance of cottage cheese there is no way a cream can help you to actually reduce the amount of cellulite.

How we hate cellulite

Cellulite is a fat. The only way to get rid of it is to lower your body fat percentage (this is the amount of fat to muscle you have throughout your entire body). There are only two proven ways to lose excess fat – eating right and exercise. Eating right does not equal dieting; dieting in the sense of cutting calories anywhere below 1500 a day. In fact, a healthy diet will have you consuming anywhere from 1500-2500 depending on your body type, activity level, weight, etc.

So, yes, the amount you eat is specific to you not your neighbour or best friend. What this means is that everyone on your block cannot go on a diet that calls for 500 calories a day and expect the same results. In fact, a diet with this low of a caloric intake will cause you to lose muscle and possible horde weight leaving you more prone to cellulite and excess fat when you start eating again.

This means back to eating right – you need to focus on eating the right foods – whole, natural foods. Foods like fruits and vegetables, meats and dairy products, and even nuts and grains are exactly what you should be filling your diet with. If you cut out processed and sugary foods and eat natural foods, you excess fat will begin to disappear. It won’t be noticeable – on the outside – at first, but know that it is working.

Proper exercise is what kills cellulite

The second thing one must do is work out. This does not mean run for two hours a day, rather, you need to focus on proper strength training exercise. Muscle burns fat; therefore, the more muscle you have the less fat you will have. Simply find 15-20 minutes a day to build your muscles and your body composition will begin to change for the better. You can rid your body of awful cellulite; it just takes some work and dedication. It’s time to start taking care of your body; after all, no one else is going to do it and you are well worth it.

The problem with short term diet plans and short-term exercise is that they do not work for a long-term problem. If you have become overweight it is because your lifestyle has allowed you to get that way and a short term diet not going to fix the problem. Your lifestyle is in fact supportive of your weight gain and another diet plan is not what you need.

Another diet plan is not going to cut it

Whether it is from eating the wrong types of food and too much of them or not doing enough physical activity excess body fat does not jump on you overnight.  It may have taken some years to accumulate and it is not going to come off in a month or even six months on some ‘get thin quick’ diet plan.

But the good news is that the answer to the problem lies in your lifestyle. It took a certain lifestyle to gain excess fat weight and it will take a different lifestyle to take it off and a diet plan is not part of it. It is the change in lifestyle not the diet plan that will get you success. Being in good shape is the result of what you do and do not do every day in the way of eating and activity levels and this will likely mean you will be eating more food than you would on any diet plan.

 If you fix the habits and actions that have caused the weight gain them the excess weight will come off automatically. Your new diet plan will mean making changes to the way you eat and how you exercise. Those changes may take twelve or more months to not only to implement but repeat them often enough so they become new habits. Just like your old habits that have allowed you to become overweight.

But be assured these changes are so much easier to live with than any restrictive diet plan that reduces your energy levels so you do not feel like being active anyway. If things are too difficult for you to implement and stick to you are likely to fail repeatedly and end up going back to square one time and time again.

The two things that you need to implement are step one – a proper strength training exercise program 2-3 times each week to rebuild and re-tone your muscles as this is the only way you can improve your metabolic fitness. This means that fat burning/storing hormones are in balance so body fat can be burned up for energy within the muscle cells. Weak flabby muscles have low energy requirements so get them toned up and watch the excess fat slowly but surely disappear.

Think of your new diet plan as not eating less but eating better

Next is step two – your new diet plan is one that will have you eating small meals every few hours throughout the day. Each of these meals should have a portion of protein to keep your metabolism stimulated and burning fat. The balance of the meal should be made up of vegetables. You will actually be eating way more food on this type of diet plan than you think you should be but this is to put coal on your metabolic fire and get it burning fat at the optimum rate.

Keep in mind that losing weight and improving your metabolic health is an ongoing process. Your new healthy diet plan and exercise regime is one that is made up of hundreds of tiny steps each one building upon the previous one. Each healthy meal and each workout is just one of those small steps. But before long they add up to big results.

So stop looking for that ‘get thin quick’ diets plan and start making the changes you need to make so you can lose that excess fat weight and more importantly – keep it off.  You will you look and feel so much better and this will spur you on to keep making the effort to continue making the  changes you need to make to make weight loss ‘stick’.

Overweight people

In our looks-obsessed society, many people believe that being overweight is just an appearance issue and not a deeper medical issue where it can seriously affect a person’s life. You could call the “I’m fat and it’s okay” mentality as a negative reaction to the modern fitness/weight loss/looking good movement that tends to put how one looks in front of good health. This is in fact, the opposite side of the coin but with the same result – acceptance of physical appearance becomes more important than health.

Over the last 20-30 years, the global overweight epidemic has increased to the point where two thirds of us are now in this category to one degree or another.  The idea that is growing is that this is okay has begun to get some traction. We are becoming to more readily tolerate that being overweight is an acceptable lifestyle and quality of life choice, that it is better to live a few less years and enjoy yourself than continually worry about the overweight issue.

The problem with these ideas and beliefs is that they are not based on knowledge or awareness of the health risks of being overweight, or the health benefits of doing what is necessary to return to a normal healthy weight. Any idea that being overweight is okay is a very misguided and ultimately dangerous notion that a person may hold towards their own present and future health and longevity.

Being overweight carries big risks

The health problems that originate from being overweight go way beyond the ones we usually think of, like heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Being overweight can also affect a person’s mental and emotional health and things like joint health, sleep, breathing, energy levels, how well we age and mood. Every aspect of a person’s being is compromised as the body’s chemical environment is changed so that every cell and tissue is bathed in fluids that whisper decay, degenerate, die.

Right at the heart of it all is the matter that if a person is overweight they are not getting enough muscular exertion and not doing enough muscle building and maintaining activity to burn up the fuel created from the food we eat. It is only when muscles contract forcefully, are challenged and kept strong that it triggers the activation of the hormones of ‘growth and repair’. These are the vital ones that keep us healthy and strong.

When the brain is no longer receiving messages that the body needs its strength it flicks the switch to ‘shut down’ mode so that weakened organism is removed from life as quickly as possible. In the laws of nature and the cycle of life an organism that is weak and unhealthy is no longer productive and cannot contribute to the survival of the species so it is removed to make room for those younger and stronger at the food trough.

So, you can see being overweight goes way beyond not being able to fit into your skinny jeans. It affects your entire life both present and future. We can see the effects of this all around us in our community as the overweight and unhealthy numbers continue to rise. People are being taken out well before their time and although we may question why this is happening underneath we know the reasons.

We know why there are so many of us overweight and out of shape

Not enough muscular exertion, not enough proper exercise, the wrong types of foods and too much of them are what is causing it but how easy is that to fix?

A couple of proper strength training sessions each week at the gym and ditching as much processed non-nutrient ‘so called’ foods as possible and cooking natural whole foods from scratch are the things that will get rid of the overweight problem.

It is your choice – make it the right one.

On a fat loss eating plan you will always be eating more food than you think you should. However the foods you eat are nutritionally dense, have plenty of fiber and protein but are sparse in calories.

Here are the key rules for increasing fat loss:

Rule 1: Eating enough food

For fat loss it is important to reduce calories only a hundred or two below your base level. This may mean you will be eating around 1600-1800 for women and 2200-2400 for men. If fat is not being lost, drop it a hundred calories at a time till fat burning kicks in.

Eating enough is essential to prevent the ‘starvation mode’ from being activated which will stop fat loss dead in its tracks.  As you won’t know where this is caution is needed to stay under the body’s radar system sensitive to food shortages for all of the time humans have lived on earth.

Rule 2: Eat 4-6 small meals per day

The idea here is to increase the quantity of food eaten but not to increase the calories. When your body knows there is plenty of food around it will be more likely to give up its fat stores. But if you eat the wrong types of foods and too much of them you will set your body in fat storing mode rather than fat burning mode.

When you eat your small meals you can increase the volume of the food you eat with protein rich, high fiber and water content foods that will increase your metabolism and encourage fat loss. These small meals will also quieten hunger hormones that can derail even the most serious fat loss plan

Rule 3: Each small meal must contain lean protein

Quality lean protein has many beneficial fat burning effects. Firstly, it helps the release of the fat burning hormone glucagon which directly opposes the action of insulin (fat storing hormone) and helps burn fat. Protein is also slow to digest and break down and requires the body to work hard to do it also increasing metabolism. When you increase the metabolic rate you increase heat which increases fuel (calorie) burning. 

Protein rich meals are also important for a fat loss plan because it is very satisfying and helps us stay full for longer. Blood sugar levels are also maintained to avoid drops in energy and to avoid triggering intense food cravings.

When combined with proper strength training exercise extra protein also helps build, tone and maintain muscle tissue which is the driver of the metabolism. The surest way to create food cravings, feel deprived and risk binge eating is to skimp on protein.

Rule 4: Avoid processed foods that increase hunger

The chemicals and additives in prepared, processed foods (the ones that come in packets, boxes, tins and frozen) send your metabolic hormones ‘out of whack’. Delicate appetite regulation hormones are overridden and you don’t know if you are really hungry or are just experiencing their mischief. They increase hunger because of their effect on insulin and stress hormones (fat storing hormones).

Fat loss happens in the kitchen

The only way to avoid these so called non-nutrient foods that get and keep you fat is to get yourself back into the kitchen cooking natural whole foods from scratch. Yes, you will have to plan and prepare ahead but once you get used to doing this it is no harder than eating ‘anything, anytime’ and the results will delight you as the fat loss magic happens.