4 Facts On How To Lose Weight Fast
By Cassandra Forsythe-Pribanic, PhD, RD
1 – It’s harder to lose weight when you’re over 45 than when you are younger TRUE
Yes, as the clock ticks ahead each day, your ability to lose fat and build muscle becomes more difficult (if only we could stay 17 our whole lives…).
With advanced age, comes hormonal alterations that cause increased fat storage and decreased muscle growth.
We also have to battle elevated free radical damage, due to both environmental and chemical stress, that promotes depressed metabolic activity in addition to joint pain and excess muscle soreness, making exercise harder and less enjoyable.
Finally, as we age, our lifestyles become much more sedentary and full of roadblocks to healthy eating and consistent exercise.
But, with all this said, you can lose fat and weight as long as you stay committed and find ways to exercise and eat well all the time no matter what barrier comes in your way. As the popular saying goes: When the going gets tough, you must get tougher! Don’t give up and the positive results will come.
2- Sugar-free foods are best for weight loss FALSE
Hopefully in this day and age, people have figured out that sugar-free labeled foods are not helpful for weight loss. In fact, recent studies show that people who consistently consume some artificial sweeteners have higher body fat levels and more problems with their body weight than people who do not use these chemicals.
Artificial sweeteners may still be registered by the brain as a sweet food, which elicits a sweet response in the body; this may lead to greater hunger later in the day and more fat storage for certain people.
If your goal is to lose fat and curb your sweet tooth, then your best bet is to eliminate all foods with a sweet taste (other than natural fruit), and your body will look and feel better, while eliminating sweet cravings that cause you to crave bad foods.
3 – Counting calories will help you lose weight and keep it off FALSE
Although caloric balance is important for weight loss, physically counting calories puts a stress on us that eventually leads to greater weight problems down the road.
Known as cognitive dietary restraint, people that put their body through this stress of counting every calorie, weighing every food portion, and analyzing every meal, cause damage to their metabolisms and normal hormonal balance, which lands them with more body fat than less.
The smarter way to lose weight and body fat long term is to learn what healthy foods to eat all the time and allow yourself to eat some foods you know are bad, but not go overboard.
4 – You can’t gain muscle and lose fat while dieting FALSE
It is actually very possible to gain muscle while losing fat in a weight loss situation. Scientists from University of Connecticut conducted a 12-week weight loss study where men either consumed a low-fat or low-carbohydrate diet while they weight trained 3 days per week. During this time, several of the men following the low-carbohydrate diet gained muscle and lost fat while decreasing their body weight, as seen by DEXA evaluations (the gold standard of body composition evaluation).
The key thing to losing fat and increasing body muscle while losing weight, is that you must add resistance-training exercise to maintain and build muscle.
Then you have to eat a diet rich in complete proteins, healthy essential fats, and fibrous carbohydrates, so that you’re providing your body with the building blocks for muscle and the energy to burn fat.
You can still look good and look even better while losing weight, but your diet and type of training must be right for your body.
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