The sad fact of the matter is, that most people will put any weight they have lost back on. This can be seen by celebrities such as Vanessa Felts, who lost a shit load of weight, got loads of media attention, then put it all back on. Why? The clue is in the word ‘attention’.
Losing weight feels good, we talk about it to the point of obsession when we are ‘being good’ and like to update our facebook feeds with how fast we can now run a mile or how much weight we have lost this week.
When we first start losing the weight, we, like celebrities, get a lot of attention, praise and compliments. It is brilliant to hear comments from acquaintances saying how good we look, asking about our progress and telling us how jealous we are. We wear their compliments in all their shiny (and slim) gloss and it motivates us to keep going because we adore all the favorable looks and attention we are getting.
This inevitably stops, you eventually stop being the person who lost 2 stone and once again become part of the furniture, the chat around the water-cooler becomes about a scandalous affair or, heaven forbid, another weight loss champion. This makes you lose one of the main motivations for being slim in the first place – attention. This of course makes your will power decline to the point of binge eating.
I digress – I, at this stage in my life, am reading a lot about how to be healthy and how to lose excess body fat – This means I am on a lot of websites that offer advice on how to do it. I read an article today that inspired me to get out my pen (Microsoft word) and start up my blog again.
The website article in question was entitled ‘4 Reasons You Don't Have The Body You Want’ and can be found, in full, here: Livestrong.com
Have a read – go on.
Back? Right, this is one of the most badly researched and plain wrong articles I have ever read.
‘Bad relationships lead to stress, and there are few things worse for your body composition than stress.’First of all, what about burgers?
There is absolutely no evidence that stress directly causes weight gain. There is one thing that makes you fat, or put on weight, and that is eating more calories than you spend. Stress only has correlations with weight gain, not a causal relationship.
Now that is not to say that stress can cause eating more calories than you expend. It is true that if you are stressed, you may drink more alcohol to cope, or you may comfort eat to relieve the stress a bit. You may be too stressed to go to the gym, thus reducing your calorie expenditure. But, as per the article, stress does not make the body hold on to fat.
It gets worse.
‘Environmental toxins -pollution, cigarette smoke, cosmetics, metal tooth fillings, prescription drugs, and mercury in fish – are stored in fat cells, and have the potential to wreak havoc on your body.
Since your body is smart, and prioritizes survival over ripped abs, it refuses to use these fat cells for fuel. Doing so would release these toxins into general circulation. Essentially, you are holding onto these fat cells so the toxins don't make you ill.’
OK, number 1. Stored in fat cells? Fat cells are made up of triglycerides and lipase (If I can remember my GCSE Science lessons) They do not store toxins from cigarette smoke. They do not store metal fillings. This is scare mongering and it could, if widely read, lead to fat people making the excuse of ‘ah, I’m fat because I have too much mercury in my body from tuna that my fat cells are too scared to ‘let out’ in case they kill me. Which brings me to my next point.
Fat cells are not conscious – they do not think along the lines of ‘Oh, the body needs energy, quick, lets break down some glycogen into simple glucose molecules, or wait, this cell has some stored Paracetamol. Better not, it may poison the body.’ Doesn’t happen and is absurd to think it does.
Finally – If cigarette smoke, cosmetics, metal tooth fillings (so bizarre) and Paracetamols are so toxic, why do we need fat cells to protect us? They are already in our body. I have an image of the fat cells, a bit like sheriffs rounding up all the toxins from these things we put in our body, and locking them up in little fat prison cells (excuse the pun). And keeping them there forever, as they are scared of what will happen to us. Then the prisons get full so we put on weight, as we must keep them locked up. Preposterous.
So how do we get rid of these unwanted guests, become less toxic, and drop that last chunk of stubborn body fat? You could take measures ranging from infrared saunas, detoxifying foot baths, chelation therapy, all the way to liver and GI tract detoxifying diets. These methods can help you remove metals and toxins from your system.Infrared Saunas, Foot baths, Chelation Therapy. This from one the most reputable fitness websites there is. Chelation therapy is a detoxification of metal therapy that is used to treat lead poisoning, or arsenic ingestion. It was also used to try to prevent mercury poisoning causing autism in children (all unproven by the way).
‘The efficacy, safety, and much of the theory behind these alternative practices are disputed by the medical community. In 2001, researchers at the university of Calgary reported that cardiac patients receiving chelation therapy fared no better than those who received placebo treatment.’*
There are also side effects to this therapy, and to be fair, most of them are better than lead poisoning symptoms but if there is nothing wrong with you it is unnecessary and will cause pain. This is irresponsible and dangerous to be putting on a reputable website that people trust to help them become healthier. Its wrong!
Ill save you all some time and money. Eat less and exercise more!
P.S. The way around the point at the beginning about keeping the motivation when everyone stops complimenting you and giving you attention is to keep a photo of how you used to look, and do it for that person.
*Knudtson ML, Wyse DG, Galbraith PD, et al. (2002). "Chelation therapy for ischemic heart disease: a randomized controlled trial". JAMA 287 (4): 481–6.
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