How to Lose Dramatic Weight
With 70% of the U.S. population now overweight and 40% obese, more people want to learn How to Lose Dramatic Weight. I have just lost 40 pounds to reach the lowest weight of my adulthood and it was a challenge but now so rewarding.
Start off with learning how the health profession would consider your weight status. The Body Mass Index calculator will tell you if you are overweight or obese. You can then select a target weight and plug it into the calculator to see where on the scale you would be.
I started at 200 pounds and am 5’11” so I was 28 on the Index with 30 being obese. I targeted a weight of 168 which was an Index of 23, normal. As I progressed I retargeted to 160 pounds which I reached after 5 months.
The Brain Does Not Help You at First
Know that the brain is against you losing weight. The more weight you carry, the more the brain tries to hold on to fat and the more actively it feeds you thoughts that you are hungry and should eat more. Overweight people have a great struggle with their brain whereas lean people have few cravings and have normal appetites and can be content eating normal portions.
In The Hungry Brain, Stephen J Guyenet Ph.D explains how the brain works against you to preserve your fat. For 99.9% of man’s history on earth he has struggled to get enough food. In Nature, high reproduction rates are tied to having enough calories to survive and raise the libido for mating.
Primitive tribes on earth today are voracious eaters, but stay lean because finding calories consumes a lot of energy and their food is simple and not calorie dense. Therein lies our major problem. The food industry provides high calorie, calorie dense foods that are convenient. You can drive through a fast food restaurant and get a 1,000 calorie sandwich that you can eat while you drive.
High calorie foods are available at the market which are then transported to our home and office. The availability of convenient high calorie foods is too great for the brain to resist. Restaurants provide calorie rich foods with fat, salt, and sugar to entice us and then offer dessert after we are no longer hungry.
Weight loss requires negative calorie consumption. Exercise helps but is not necessary. You have to rid your environment of high calorie foods and break high calorie addictions. You have to eat natural foods that mostly require preparation. You have to resist all the temptations at mouth watering high calorie convenient foods.
Foods to Avoid
Avoiding sugar, white flour, and alcohol is a good start. Avoiding these ingredients in pasta, pizza, pastries, sodas, energy drinks, desserts, and snacks becomes the starting point. Meal planning becomes an important part of the process. Tracking your consumption helps you regulate food and portion size.
As you lose weight, the metabolism will fight back. You will plateau. You will need more tools. I found that meal replacement shakes and intermittent fasting helped break through plateaus. A keto style diet with protein and fats at every meal and low carbohydrate (bad foods) is helpful. Fruits, vegetables, nuts and healthy oils are good substitutes for the average diet.
As time progresses, food cravings disappear. The more bland you can eat, the more your brain will have less interest in eating. One of the most successful researched programs had people in controlled environments drinking only a bland liquid diet. They could have as much as they wanted, but because the brain was not excited by its low calorie density, they consumed just a small fraction of their normal calories.
Bland is Your Friend
Bland is good. The brain is excited and produces dopamine when high calorie foods are consumed. It says eat more. With low calorie foods, the brain allows you to eat less and yet you have satiety. The faster you can get to bland, the faster you will lose food cravings and addictions. The faster you will lose weight.
I became fascinated with the process and found it was pretty easy after a few months. I then set a lower weight target. I enjoyed the challenge, how I felt, my reduced desire for bad foods, and my slimming waist line. As an exerciser, I had more oxygen uptake as I lost weight and as a surfer, my pop ups and surfing improved as I got lighter.
There are no bad side affects from being lighter. It is a great place to be. I graduated high school as an athlete at 175 pounds and now being at a weight of 164 pounds feels great. Once you lose the weight the second battle begins. It is just as hard to keep it off at first as it was to lose it. Your negative calorie diet has to remain your routine although you can relax a little and find the diet that maintains your weight at the same place.
Get more guidance in my book The 3 Week Plan to create a perfect start that can be continued until you reach your goals.
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