If I see another "Do this super easy thing without changing your habits and you will lose 10 lb in 30 minutes" I will scream. I think it is unethical, a money grab and just plain wrong.
It is playing with the emotions and insecurities of women who are already down on themselves.
On the other hand it is also capitalizing on our desire for quick and easy fixes. Everything these days have to be effortless and instant.
Well, weight loss is not that.
Anything drastic will throw the body for a loop for a short bit until it figures it out and mounts a defense. So you might think that the crazy thing you did worked and it's your fault that something went wrong.
The body is a super smart self preserving machine. You mess with it, it will mess right back and some. So why not just realize that the basic principles have not changed and will never change since you have to work with body systems that pretty much stayed the same for centuries.
It is calories in and calories out. Simple. You have to expand more calories than what you put in.
The nutrition component plays out in two ways to super simplify things:
1) eating good food to reduce your chemical (junk) intake
2) eating good food to reduce sugar (high calorie, zero nutrition content) foods
1) You know to stay away from highly processed foods. There are a few reasons why: they are manufactured to be addictive. There is a whole industry that specializes on figuring out how to make users into super users, how to make you eating one to "I bet you can't eat just one" or drink just one soda. (This topic I write about in a whole separate post.) These foods can barely be called foods as they are manufactured in a lab. Processed foods also contain ingredients that are not good for you; preservatives, additives to keep the food a pretty colour, softer, bubblier and cheaper to produce.
2) Most people can easily figure out how much calories they need to consume in a day. Do you want to blow it on a single burger or a couple of slices of pizza? Those are all delicious but they all translate into a calorie bomb. If you want to stay within your daily calorie limit, you are done for the day.
The body really doesn't care in what shape or form it receives sugar. It could be candy, bread, pasta, sweet fruit or a beer. Once it replenished your body's carb requirements, the rest gets converted to fat and goes into storage.
The solution is to eat foods that will fill you up but doesn't give you a high dose of sugar. That is where veggies and quality proteins and fat come in. You heard to shop the perimeter of the grocery store. That's were the unprocessed food lives.
Also, fat is not the enemy as long as you know the ones to reach for. They just make food taste so much better. Cold pressed olive oil (extra virgin unfortunately became meaningless), nuts (without flavour coating) and nut butters, avocado, coconut oil and the fat that is in lean cut meats. Of course this is not licence to deep fry your pork chop in coconut oil. I'm talking about adding a teaspoon or so, or eating a handful of nuts, not the entire bag.
If you make this change, your will feel more energetic and I guarantee you will drop a couple of pounds.
For sanity's sake follow the 80/20 rule that applies to everything. Follow these rules 80% of the time and if your daughter bakes cupcakes, have one. If you want a glass of wine with sunday's dinner, enjoy it. As long as it stays 20% and a licence to go flying off the cliff.
Ok, you got this. Than how does exercise fit into this picture.
First of all, nutrition and sleep come before anything else. You can't out exercise a bad diet, and if you are exhausted, your body will want you to eat carbs, your will power will be non existent on top of having zero energy to get through the day.
You need, in fact you have to exercise to keep aging and natural atrophy at bay. Muscle mass starts to decrease, bone density goes down as we age but with exercise this can be counteracted. Exercise alone will determine if you can get out of bed or off the toilet when you are 70 or if you will be in a home and has to be helped by a caretaker. What do you want your quality of life to be?
Using weights, even if it is your body weight is super important for women especially. It keeps bones healthy and strong. Don't buy into the bullshit of weights making you bulky. Unless you work with hundreds of pounds daily, you take steroids and you are on a highly regimented diet, that is impossible to happen.
The other reason you exercise is to rev up your metabolism and burn more calories. When you have lean muscle mass, even when you sit, you burn more calories that those without. So when you want to lose fat, you want to replace that with lean muscle to burn extra calories that will help you to be in a calorie deficit.
And that's it! Very basically explained.
