Energy Zen Body Weight Solution
by Paul Scott - from
OutsideOnline
Don't Restrict
Calories
Using willpower to deny yourself food,
what the nutritionists call "restricting," will only lead you to pile on more
pounds. Judging by how long some wait to eat, obese people have extraordinary
willpower, while some of the country's more whippetlike folk are spineless when
it comes to temptation. What gives? When you restrict yourself, your body goes
for too long without an energy source, and it responds by temporarily slowing
your metabolism. When you finally do eat, your body responds viscerally,
hoarding calories and urging you to consume more calories than your body can
burn. What's more, exercising on top of restrictions will result in an even
more sluggish metabolism—anorexics who exercise actually lose weight more
slowly than those who avoid working out. Don't mess around with this powerful
internal energy shut-off mechanism: Steer clear of crash diets.
Rev Up Your
Metabolism
We're sorry to report that metabolism
naturally slows down as we age; that's why weight gain creeps up on us
beginning with college graduation. "You are losing muscle every year past 20,
and this is causing your ability to burn energy to decline," says Jim Karas,
author of The Business Plan for the Body and proprietor of Solo Sessions, a
weight-loss and exercise program in Chicago. Since muscle burns up to 25 times
more energy than fat does, its presence is essential to keeping your metabolism
humming. But not only does your body naturally lose muscle as you age, every
time you lose weight through food restriction, it comes out of muscle. When you
put the weight back on, it goes on as fat. The result is a continual decline in
metabolic efficiency. You're going to need to raise your metabolism each year
just to stay even. Like planning for retirement, now is the time to habitualize
exercise.
Lift
Weights
Your body burns nearly three-quarters
of your daily energy while you sit around twiddling your thumbs. Indeed, your
body has the potential to burn far more calories in between your daily bike
rides than on the rides themselves. The key is to raise your resting metabolic
rate (RMR), and the best way to do this is through strength training.
(Remember, muscle is the key to burning more energy.) You may loathe the gym,
but Karas advocates three 30- to 45-minute sessions of strength training per
week: "You get a 7 to 15 percent boost in basal metabolic rate from increased
lean muscle tissue," he says. "It's the one area in our metabolism we can
control."
Be Mindful when
You're Hungry
The body's energy-depletion alarm
system is a throwback to our hunter-gatherer heritage, when uncertain food
supplies necessitated slowing the engine to get through lean times. But now
that we live in hamburger-rich environments, that familiar coiling in your
stomach is weight management's greatest enemy. Why? By the time you salivate,
you're much more interested in a 700-calorie brownie than a more sensible
high-fiber food like wheat crackers. Not only that, but you'll consume more
because you've diminished your capacity to feel satisfied (see #1: "Don't
Restrict") and are more likely to make poor food choices. Once your stomach
starts telling you it's empty, be more conscious in your selection and portion
sizes. If you simply go with your gut, you'll fall victim to your body's Stone
Age agenda. Eat Often
"When it
comes to weight, all the nutritional advice, like the food pyramid, may be
barking up the wrong tree," says Dan Benardot, associate dean of research for
the College of Health and Human Sciences at Georgia State University and one of
the first nutritionists to look at how subtle energy fluctuations during the
day affect body composition. In a study of gymnasts and endurance runners,
Benardot found that the more athletes let their energy levels dip below a
certain pointin short, the hungrier they got before eating each mealthe higher
their body fat. "Frequent eating is linked with lower body-fat percentage, less
stress hormones, and less insulin response," says Benardot. "More food intake
does lead to more weight, but not in an equal fashionit depends on how it is
consumed." Don't let your fuel tank fall into the red. Benardot advises
eschewing the typical 600-, 800-, 1,000-calorie meal plan for breakfast, lunch,
and dinner. Divide your meals in half, and eat approximately every three hours.
Keep your largest meal under 800 calories.
Eat Foods That Take
Up Space
Any effective food plan has to leave you satisfied. The good
news is that studies in satietythe science of dietary satisfactionshow that we
subconsciously determine if we've eaten enough based on the volume and weight,
rather than the tastiness, nutritional content, or caloric count, of what we
eat. In a 1998 Penn State study conducted by nutritionist Barbara Rolls,
subjects eating foods of differing density until satisfaction repeatedly chose
to eat the same amount of food by weight or volume, not by calories. The group
eating a vegetable casserole ate the same amount as a group eating a
calorically denser pasta casserole. Thus, the second group ended up consuming
more calories to arrive at the same level of satisfaction. "In the past, the
approach to diet has been focused on balancing fat, carbohydrates, and
protein," says Rolls, author of The Volumetrics Weight Control Plan.
"But now we know that water and fiber, which control a food's weight and
volume, have a much bigger impact on the amount of calories you take in."
Rolls's tips: Avoid foods that are calorie-dense. These include all the usual
suspects (fats and sweets), and some not-so-obvious ones like bagels and dried
fruits. Don't cut them out completely, but know how they affect you. And
meanwhile, eat more foods with high levels of water and fiber, including raw
vegetables, whole grains, water-based soups, and whole wheat al dente
pasta.
Understand the GI
The glycemic index, or GI, was
originally developed for diabeticsit ranks foods on a scale of 100 by how
quickly a given carbohydrate is converted to blood glucose. The higher the
number, the faster the carb becomes blood sugar. Foods with a high GI rating
rush sugar into your bloodstream and initiate an excessive insulin response
wherein more carbohydrate is stored as fat, and you feel less easily satisfied
and hungrier sooner. While some nutritionists debate the usefulness of the GI,
many agree that unless you have just finished a hard workout, at which time a
high GI carbohydrate is great for recovery, high-glycemic foods are simply too
potentlike filling your Zippo with enriched uranium instead of lighter fluid.
As a general rule, when at rest, seek out foods with a GI rating below 80. The
University of Sydney's GI Web page (www.glycemicindex.com) has more information on how the
index works and includes a database listing the GIs of most foods. For staples,
pasta is fine if it is cooked al dente. Rice is okay if it is of the parboiled
(Indian, or non-sticky) variety. Be careful: Most non-whole-grain breads rank
high, as do many popular breakfast cereals. See our chart below for more
substitutes.
Separate Your Social Life from Your Stomach
In
a perfect world, meetings, gatherings with friends, and dinners out would jibe
perfectly with your new six-meals-per-day schedule. In the real world, meetings
delay lunch by hours, that nice couple next door pushes dinner back to 8
o'clock, and your favorite restaurant doesn't have a reservation until 9 p.m.
Nutritionists call what happens next the what-the-hell effect: Having decided
that we've blown our plan already, we subsequently abandon all good habits for
the remainder of the meal. "You're running up against the psychology of going
out," says Karas. "In the old days it was a treat, a time to break the rules,
and so people are still treating it as 'special time,' off the books, when in
fact we eat out more than ever." If your week includes a lot of special time,
approach meal dates as social events. Eat before you go out, and at restaurants
try sharing an entrée, since upscale establishments tend to serve large,
decadent meals, not rice and beans.
Eat a Variety of Foods (the
Truest Cliché)
Energy intake is jacked up by palatability, that
is, the tastiness of foods. Being predisposed to nosh scrumptious items like
sweets, meats, and deep-dish pizza is another attribute left over from our
Cro-Magnon days, when hoarding fats was important for species survival. But
some of the most nutritious foods taste terrible at first. In fact, studies
have shown that it is the very bitterness of phytochemicals in low-density
foods like brussels sprouts and spinach that signal their cancer-fighting
properties. The good news is that you can develop a taste for a variety of
textures and flavorsjust like you did with beer and coffeethereby consuming
less fat and calories and more nutritional variety. Every time you go to the
grocery store make a point of buying foods like vegetables, fruits, and fish
that you haven't tried before. Drawing a blank? Try spending a greater
proportion of your budget in the bright, leafy outer aisles where the whole
foods are, rather than the dark, tempting inner aisles where the processed
foods and microwave dinners hold sway.
10. Believe in the
Existential Payoffs of Balanced Energy
When it comes to energy balance, good
habits beget healthy metabolism, lean muscle mass, and less body fat. Rapid
weight loss inevitably means lost muscle tissue and subsequent metabolic
slowdown. Putting weight back on gives you a higher percentage of body fat than
when you started losing weight. For all these reasons, change is necessary, and
should be permanent. Fortunately, these ten principles are lifelong goals, not
an entrance exam, and if you can adhere to just a few of them over time, the
subject of weight will no longer be an enigma. Not only that, but by keeping
your energy supply stable throughout the day, you'll be less grouchy at four
o'clock, less susceptible to cravings, and less at the mercy of the runaway
schedule of your life. |
