Yesterday I talked a little bit about how reducing your caloric intake too drastically can actually sabotage your weight loss. Just in case you didn’t believe me, I’d like to give you an example of how it screwed me up.
For the last two months of my pregnancy with my son I had to spend every day in the hospital. I needed surgery but it was too risky when I was pregnant, so I had to stay in the hospital until I had my baby. During that entire time, I was on Morphine for pain every day which made me extremely nauseous. Even though the nurses gave me Gravol each time to help, I would still throw up almost every time I ate.
Needless to say, I was losing weight. I actually lost almost a pound a day even though I was in the last stages of pregnancy when I was supposed to be gaining a pound a week. The problem was, the weight I was losing wasn’t fat, it was muscle. I wasn’t happy about that, but there was really nothing I could do about it. I tried hard to eat but I was just too sick.
When I had visitors, they liked to comment on how I looked like a bag of bones with a tiny bump in my tummy. After I finally got home with my new baby, I was pretty skinny. My sister in law even called me a bitch for looking so good after just having a baby.
The trouble though is that I still had a high percentage of body fat. Most of the weight that I had lost in the hospital was muscle. I was flabby. I was a skinny fat person. My sister in law didn’t see all the flab and rolls squeezed into my jeans.
Because my health was in the toilet my metabolism was too. So when I got home and was able to eat again, my weight climbed faster than you can say ‘look at that fat ass!’ My body assumed that I wouldn’t eat again for a long time or that I would vomit, so it stored all those calories as fat to prepare for a long period of time without nutrition as it was used to.
Now that I look back at pictures of myself from that time, I feel like I looked like a beached whale. I had no endurance, I couldn’t fit into any of my clothes, I couldn’t eat a single morsel of food without gaining weight and I generally just felt like crap.
So you see…starving yourself isn’t the answer, whether it’s intentional or not. When it is time to eat again, you’ll just gain all the weight back that you’ve lost (and probably more). And the weight that you have lost is most likely muscle and not fat. Not to mention that it’s just not healthy. It doesn’t matter if you’re deliberately not eating, or if you’re sick in the hospital…you’re still not getting the nutrition your body needs.
I know this isn’t something you want to hear, but you really shouldn’t lose more than 2 lbs a week unless you have a large amount of body fat to lose in the first place. For most people, it’s extremely hard if not impossible to lose more than 2 lbs of body fat without losing some muscle mass as well.
If you don’t believe me, you’ll find everything you need to know in this book, Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle by Tom Venuto. He’ll show you exactly how to burn fat without losing any lean body mass. He’ll also show you how to gain muscle, but you have to realize that you can’t do both at the same time unless you’re a ‘genetic freak’ as he adoringly calls them. Very few people can actually lose body fat and gain muscle simultaneously, and chances are if you’re reading this blog you aren’t one of them. Sorry. I’m not either, so don’t worry.
The reason why I encourage you to read this book is because I don’t want you to end up like me. I lost weight in an extremely unhealthy way. I felt good about myself for a few short weeks, but then the pounds started coming back faster and faster. I even gained a few extra pounds after that for interest. Losing them was harder than it should have been because my metabolism was toast, but with Burn the Fat, I was able to do it. I want you to have the same success I’ve had. I want you to know how good it feels to put on a pair of jeans you haven’t worn since high school! I want you to get the same compliments I’ve been getting. I want you to be healthy and happy.
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