I know that I am not fat.
I know I am curvy, that I have hips, breasts and an hourglass figure.
I know I have a pooch, ample thighs, and generous arms.
But I also know, that at 130 lb, 5ft tall, 34-28-36, I am overweight.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
My thoughts on the science of losing weight. (part 1?)
Losing weight is hard, but the science behind it isnt. Its math, easy math at that, even though I hate math even I can do this type.
Losing weight at its base, no matter which fad diet you follow or excercise type you do, is just burning more than you take in, but still taking in enough to function healthily and build muscle.
It comes down to calories, which most of us dont really understand anyway. Most of us think that calories are something in our food, and that they make us fat. That isnt the case at all, calories, like time or inches, are an arbitrary unit of measurement. One calorie is the energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water through 1 °C (now usually defined as 4.1868 joules). That being said, one pound of fat is 3,500 calories.
What that means is that food gives your body fuel, which raises your core temperature which in turn is the action of burning calories at work. So you see, calories aren't the devil. Sure, we need to take in less of them so that burning enough of them is do-able, however if we don't take in enough though we don't have the energy our body needs to function properly. And if we REALLY don't take in enough then we send our body into "starvation mode" in which our body saves everything, so that we don't end calories in excess at ALL.
That means, simply enough, that you need to burn 3,500 more calories than you take in, in order lose one pound. Some people burn calories easier than others, but losing weight isn't really easy for pretty much anyone. It is hard work, a combination of eating appropriate amounts, and making the calories that you do consume count, and working hard, doing cardio and building muscle.
By eating healthy calories, instead of just whatever falls on your plate, you get the most bang for your buck. While I am not a doctor or expert, everything I know about losing weight teaches me that while you may lose weight on a super-low calorie diet, or a diet that is composed of zero carbs, or some other "fad" diet, it is not sustainable in the long run. Ideally, if you eat cleanly, and do not deprive yourself of your favorites, but rather find replacements or have your ice cream and cookies in moderation, you will be well on the road to a healthier self. By depriving yourself, you only cause yourself to binge on these unhealthy favorites in a moment of weakness. Plan your indescretions, and they won't set you back.
Like I said, I am not a doctor or even an expert in weight loss, however I have been battling my own willpower and genetics long enough to have a general knowledge of what works. Now that I have gone through the basic science behind how and why our bodies lose weight, I'll tell you what I do. And keep in mind that not only am I not a doctor or an expert, I am still figuring out just exactly how weight loss works for me best.
The big thing for me is that I absolutely never think about keeping myself healthy in terms of "diet" or "losing weight" or even just pounds. I don't put a number on happiness with my body, in fact I usually stay away from the scale as a whole. I find it depressing and as a woman especially my weight fluctuates widely with the time of month and day to day water weight. I don't "diet", because to me "diet" means I am depriving myself of something, and when I reach my ambiguous goal then I can have said thing. This is fallacious, any changes I make to my diet are not temporary or impossible to keep up with, they are permanent, a lifestyle change. And this is why I don't do weekend diets or cookie diets or atkins or anything else. Because for me, telling myself that if I eat nothing but cabbage and steak for six months doesnt work, because then when I lose the weight, I would gain it right back when I return to my regular daily diet. So any changes I make are to my lifestyle and my way of eating as a whole.
Still on the whole food thing, I keep track of what I eat. Less is not always better, and I track my calories to make sure I am in the window of getting enough but not too much. There are great calculators online for this, which is what I use, but if you are just starting out talk to a doctor, nutritionist, or even a qualified personal trainer in order to find out what number is best for you. I dont remember where, but somewhere I read that weight that is slower lost stays off longer than weight that you force off fast. I dont remember where I read that, but to me that makes sense. If i eat 1200 calories a day, I won't be losing 2 lbs a week (which, no matter what any fad diets force your body into is the maximum you should be aiming to lose per week), I will probably be losing half that or maybe even less. But because it is something I can sustain in the long term, wheras if i eat the absolute minimum possible, i'll just get frustrated and as soon as I lose ten pounds order and eat an entire large pizza...LoL.
Now that we have grazed over the idea of food (hehe, bad pun, see what i did there!?), I just want to talk quickly on the concept of exercise. In order to maximize your weight loss potential it is necessary to do both cardio and strength training. In order to drop weight cardio is the most important step, but building muscle is important for tone, as well as in its resting state, your body will burn more calories just naturally the more muscle you have. Working out is different for everyone, some people love the solitude of going to the gym and popping in earbuds and just running around a track and lifting weights. For me, and for a lot of people, that takes a level of discipline that I just don't have. Not to mention, I think its boring and I don't do well with being bored. I have to love what I am doing or else I wont do it. So what I do is I join classes, like dance or zumba or whatever interests you at your local gym. For cardio, the big important part is that you are raising your heart rate for 20-30 minutes. By raising your heart rate you raise your core temperature, which in turn burns calories, which we discussed earlier. I do dance (belly dance), aerial silks, as well as learning to hula hoop better and spin poi on my off days. Some days I do workout videos, which are easy to find on sale in half price book stores or just borrow from friends. I have to change it up, because if i try to do the same thing all the time I get bored, and we already talked about how me and boredom dont get along.
Next is strength training, which, for people losing weight is often overlooked, especially for women because we fear "getting bulky". We as women have heard everything from lifting lighter weights and doing more repetitions to simply not lifting weights as all. Just to put it frankly, that's all a load of crap. The super bulky muscular women you see on bodybuilding shows have to work their asses off to look like that, and a lot of them are on steroids or other performance enhancing substances or hormones to make their bodies bulk up. As women, our genetics work against us building muscle in the same places as men, not that its impossible, but it just wont happen unless your trying for it. So, that being said, lift those heavy weights, or if they aren't heavy, just lift some! Otherwise when all that excess weight drops off, you will be what is delicately referred to as "skinny fat", which is being your ideal size but without tone. Trust me, take it from someone who does a fair bit of strength training with heavier weights (I consider aerial silk strength training, and the weight I lift is myself), you wont accidentally get a six pack.
Your goal should be a healthier you, and not necessarily a skinnier one, though as a result of healthy lifestyle changes a healthier weight is inevitable. Understand that not all of us are built to look like Giselle Bundchen or Penelope Cruz and that in order to look like that its a full time job for most of us with average metabolisms and lifestyles. I for one am just under 5 ft, with ample thighs and bum (a trademark of my genetics) that aren't going to look like Keira Knightly's no matter how much I run or jump for it.
So that concludes my basic little rant about losing weight. I am going to put this disclaimer here once again: I am not a doctor or a health professional, please do your own research and talk to your doctor or other professional before an extreme change in diet or exercise lifestyle. I advocate a healthy way of life, both mentally and physically. If you are extremely overweight or underweight, your doctor likely has specific instructions and goals for you to follow, please listen to him/her before you listen to me, they went to school for that stuff.
:-)
I expect I will make other posts on the subject later, but for now this is a good start.
Losing weight at its base, no matter which fad diet you follow or excercise type you do, is just burning more than you take in, but still taking in enough to function healthily and build muscle.
It comes down to calories, which most of us dont really understand anyway. Most of us think that calories are something in our food, and that they make us fat. That isnt the case at all, calories, like time or inches, are an arbitrary unit of measurement. One calorie is the energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water through 1 °C (now usually defined as 4.1868 joules). That being said, one pound of fat is 3,500 calories.
What that means is that food gives your body fuel, which raises your core temperature which in turn is the action of burning calories at work. So you see, calories aren't the devil. Sure, we need to take in less of them so that burning enough of them is do-able, however if we don't take in enough though we don't have the energy our body needs to function properly. And if we REALLY don't take in enough then we send our body into "starvation mode" in which our body saves everything, so that we don't end calories in excess at ALL.
That means, simply enough, that you need to burn 3,500 more calories than you take in, in order lose one pound. Some people burn calories easier than others, but losing weight isn't really easy for pretty much anyone. It is hard work, a combination of eating appropriate amounts, and making the calories that you do consume count, and working hard, doing cardio and building muscle.
By eating healthy calories, instead of just whatever falls on your plate, you get the most bang for your buck. While I am not a doctor or expert, everything I know about losing weight teaches me that while you may lose weight on a super-low calorie diet, or a diet that is composed of zero carbs, or some other "fad" diet, it is not sustainable in the long run. Ideally, if you eat cleanly, and do not deprive yourself of your favorites, but rather find replacements or have your ice cream and cookies in moderation, you will be well on the road to a healthier self. By depriving yourself, you only cause yourself to binge on these unhealthy favorites in a moment of weakness. Plan your indescretions, and they won't set you back.
Like I said, I am not a doctor or even an expert in weight loss, however I have been battling my own willpower and genetics long enough to have a general knowledge of what works. Now that I have gone through the basic science behind how and why our bodies lose weight, I'll tell you what I do. And keep in mind that not only am I not a doctor or an expert, I am still figuring out just exactly how weight loss works for me best.
The big thing for me is that I absolutely never think about keeping myself healthy in terms of "diet" or "losing weight" or even just pounds. I don't put a number on happiness with my body, in fact I usually stay away from the scale as a whole. I find it depressing and as a woman especially my weight fluctuates widely with the time of month and day to day water weight. I don't "diet", because to me "diet" means I am depriving myself of something, and when I reach my ambiguous goal then I can have said thing. This is fallacious, any changes I make to my diet are not temporary or impossible to keep up with, they are permanent, a lifestyle change. And this is why I don't do weekend diets or cookie diets or atkins or anything else. Because for me, telling myself that if I eat nothing but cabbage and steak for six months doesnt work, because then when I lose the weight, I would gain it right back when I return to my regular daily diet. So any changes I make are to my lifestyle and my way of eating as a whole.
Still on the whole food thing, I keep track of what I eat. Less is not always better, and I track my calories to make sure I am in the window of getting enough but not too much. There are great calculators online for this, which is what I use, but if you are just starting out talk to a doctor, nutritionist, or even a qualified personal trainer in order to find out what number is best for you. I dont remember where, but somewhere I read that weight that is slower lost stays off longer than weight that you force off fast. I dont remember where I read that, but to me that makes sense. If i eat 1200 calories a day, I won't be losing 2 lbs a week (which, no matter what any fad diets force your body into is the maximum you should be aiming to lose per week), I will probably be losing half that or maybe even less. But because it is something I can sustain in the long term, wheras if i eat the absolute minimum possible, i'll just get frustrated and as soon as I lose ten pounds order and eat an entire large pizza...LoL.
Now that we have grazed over the idea of food (hehe, bad pun, see what i did there!?), I just want to talk quickly on the concept of exercise. In order to maximize your weight loss potential it is necessary to do both cardio and strength training. In order to drop weight cardio is the most important step, but building muscle is important for tone, as well as in its resting state, your body will burn more calories just naturally the more muscle you have. Working out is different for everyone, some people love the solitude of going to the gym and popping in earbuds and just running around a track and lifting weights. For me, and for a lot of people, that takes a level of discipline that I just don't have. Not to mention, I think its boring and I don't do well with being bored. I have to love what I am doing or else I wont do it. So what I do is I join classes, like dance or zumba or whatever interests you at your local gym. For cardio, the big important part is that you are raising your heart rate for 20-30 minutes. By raising your heart rate you raise your core temperature, which in turn burns calories, which we discussed earlier. I do dance (belly dance), aerial silks, as well as learning to hula hoop better and spin poi on my off days. Some days I do workout videos, which are easy to find on sale in half price book stores or just borrow from friends. I have to change it up, because if i try to do the same thing all the time I get bored, and we already talked about how me and boredom dont get along.
Next is strength training, which, for people losing weight is often overlooked, especially for women because we fear "getting bulky". We as women have heard everything from lifting lighter weights and doing more repetitions to simply not lifting weights as all. Just to put it frankly, that's all a load of crap. The super bulky muscular women you see on bodybuilding shows have to work their asses off to look like that, and a lot of them are on steroids or other performance enhancing substances or hormones to make their bodies bulk up. As women, our genetics work against us building muscle in the same places as men, not that its impossible, but it just wont happen unless your trying for it. So, that being said, lift those heavy weights, or if they aren't heavy, just lift some! Otherwise when all that excess weight drops off, you will be what is delicately referred to as "skinny fat", which is being your ideal size but without tone. Trust me, take it from someone who does a fair bit of strength training with heavier weights (I consider aerial silk strength training, and the weight I lift is myself), you wont accidentally get a six pack.
Your goal should be a healthier you, and not necessarily a skinnier one, though as a result of healthy lifestyle changes a healthier weight is inevitable. Understand that not all of us are built to look like Giselle Bundchen or Penelope Cruz and that in order to look like that its a full time job for most of us with average metabolisms and lifestyles. I for one am just under 5 ft, with ample thighs and bum (a trademark of my genetics) that aren't going to look like Keira Knightly's no matter how much I run or jump for it.
So that concludes my basic little rant about losing weight. I am going to put this disclaimer here once again: I am not a doctor or a health professional, please do your own research and talk to your doctor or other professional before an extreme change in diet or exercise lifestyle. I advocate a healthy way of life, both mentally and physically. If you are extremely overweight or underweight, your doctor likely has specific instructions and goals for you to follow, please listen to him/her before you listen to me, they went to school for that stuff.
:-)
I expect I will make other posts on the subject later, but for now this is a good start.
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