Have you heard the saying that a calorie is a calorie? And in order for us to lose weight all we have to do is reduce the number of calories we eat OR increase the number of calories we burn during exercise. In other words eat less and move more.
Doctors, parents, nutritionist have been yelling that at us for years. All I know is that I tried that (with some degree of success) a few times in my life. But every time I’d lose weight I wasn’t able to keep it off and I’d gain it back, in most cases more. Did I mess up on the equation? Did I not MOVE enough.
I don’t know ~ all I know is that I wouldn’t be able to keep the weight off. It always came back. Either I lost the motivation to continue the exercise or I got tired of counting calories or points. This process would leave me discouraged and really beating myself up yet again. Did I feel like the victim? Yes, because I wasn’t able to do what I was told to do to lose weight. I felt like I was a bad person. But certainly I would hope that everyone knows I didn’t choose to become obese. Nobody does.
So you can imagine my ears picked up as I’ve started reading that not all calories are the same. Your weight is affected by the source of the calories, not just the number of calories. There’s a lot of controversy going on right now about just that. People like Zoe Harcombe, who seeks to expose the flaws of this thinking, and others are pushing back. She’s got a great blog where you can read more on her efforts to fight obesity. You can also pick up her her book, The Obesity Epidemic. She said between 1972-1999 ‘We demonised fat; we eulogised carbohydrate – and epidemics of obesity and type 2 diabetes occurred. Coincidence or cause?’ Was I just raised at the wrong time of nutritional information?
Maintaining a healthy weight shouldn’t be this hard! Nobody chooses to be obese or overweight. What’s gone wrong in our bodies and minds that has created this epidemic? Could it be that something we are eating OR NOT eating is what’s eating us?
I got to thinking; how can all calories be equal? Our bodies are so complex, and seriously from what I’ve experienced over the past couple of years, pretty amazing. Wouldn’t something I ate filled with more solid nutrients be used differently than say a bowl of cereal for breakfast? Wouldn’t a good protein fuel my body better than a hamburger and fries at lunchtime? Since I’ve started my nutritional cleansing program combined with exercise, I’ve not only lost weight but I can visually see and a feel a difference in my body. As I mentioned I had started at the gym 9 months prior to starting the nutritional program, I was choosing healthy foods and following another popular program counting points. But in 9 months I only lost 12 pounds. Not bad but not what I was hoping for as I had a lot to lose to get declassified as ‘morbidly obese’ (ugh – I still hate those words).
It wasn’t until I started giving my body the solid nutrients from this program that I started to shed the fat a lot quicker, and honestly for me a lot easier than I’ve ever experienced before. I feel stronger, have more energy than I’ve had in decades, and my healthy aging today looks a lot more attractive than the alternative did. Take a look at this diagram and see the reasoning behind why this is working…
What do you think? Have we been ‘fed’ a lot of misinformation over the past 4 decades? . We all have a lot to learn and our lives are at risk in not doing so…
Leave me a comment and let me know your thoughts.