Eat Yourself Thin, Mount Laurel, NJ Personal Trainer Spills the Beans

For the past 17 years I’ve been a personal trainer, one of the biggest issues I’ve faced with my clients is eating too little. Excessive caloric restriction will completely sabotage your well intentioned weight loss goals. Telling someone to eat more and lose weight doesn’t go over so well. It’s quite a psychological barrier to overcome.

From a logical standpoint, it makes sense that if you want to lose weight you should restrict your calories, right. Think again. Restricting your calories can be the worst thing you can do to lose weight. When you eat too few calories not only will you not lose weight you will probably gain weight. I know it doesn’t make sense, but let me break it down for you.

Eating too few calories or severely cutting your calories too quickly will bring your metabolism to a screeching hault. When you eat too few calories you send an urgent message to your brain that you are in a starvation mode. As a protective mechanism your body starts slowing down your metabolism for preservation purposes. Your body starts to see every calorie like its the last one it will ever see.

Your body’s ultimate fuel source is fat. You might be thinking great when I cut my calories back, my body will be forced to use fat as it’s primary fuel source because there won’t be anything else to use. Once again, logic can be your worst enemy. Your body doesn’t use logic. When your body triggers the starvation mode due to caloric restriction, it will hold onto your fat cells with a vengence. Your body will start using muscle and other important tissues as a primary fuel source. I know it sounds counter intuitive, but it’s totally true (I have science on my side). Your body will burn fat cells for emergency purposes, only after it has depleted available muscle will it even think of using fat as a fuel source. Then guess what? Now that you are burning muscle for a fuel source, you are losing valuable lean body mass. Less lean muscle means your metabolism slows down even further. It’s a double whammy.

All the hype created about low intensity cardio burning more fat is total junk. Low intensity cardio less than 65% of your Maximum Heart Rate does use fat as a fuel source, however it is not burning stored fat in your adipose tissue (jiggly bits) it’s using the fat in your blood stream as a fuel source. That’s a huge difference. Fat circulating in your blood stream doesn’t necessarily get turned into fat cells (adipose tissue). Don’t get me started.

So how do you know if you are eating too few calories or you are cutting your calories too quickly. Well I’m glad you asked. To accurately determine your daily caloric intake is a rather complex task. First you need to determine your Basal Metabolic Rate or (Resting Metabolic Rate RMR). It takes some really hi-tech equipment to accurately measure your RMR. Your RMR is the amount of calories your body burns each day just to exist (respiration, circulation, etc). Your age, weight, height, activity levels, job, all effect your RMR. Click here for a kool little RMR Calculator, it’s great for getting a rough guesstimate http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm .

So how do you master your metabolism and fire up your fat burning furnace ASAP?

1. You should never eat below 1200-1300 calories (EVER!!)
2. Cut your calories by 300-400 calories for 3-4 weeks. Allow your body and metabolism 4 weeks to stabilize itself before you drop anymore calories
3. Try to burn approximately 300-400 calories/day with endurance/cardiovascular exercise
4. You must strength train 3-4x/week to increase lean muscle mass therefore firing up your metabolism
5. Eat 5-6 small meals every 3-4 hours to stabilize your blood sugar levels
6. You MUST eat breakfast within 30-60 minutes of waking up. The reason you’re not hungry in the morning is because your metabolism is all screwed up. Your blood sugar levels are all over the place and your brain doesn’t know when it’s really hungry anymore. Drink a meal replacment shake if eating in the morning makes your stomach turn.
7. Aim to lose 1-2 lbs per week.
8. If you do all of these things and after 8 weeks you still don’t see any results you might have a slow metabolism (hypothroidism). Here are some other symptoms of Hypothyroidism

• Fatigue
• Weakness
• Weight gain or increased difficulty losing weight
• Coarse, dry hair
• Dry, rough pale skin
• Hair loss
• Cold intolerance (you can’t tolerate cold temperatures like those around you)
• Muscle cramps and frequent muscle aches
• Constipation
• Depression
• Irritability
• Memory loss
• Abnormal menstrual cycles
• Decreased libido

Consult with your doctor. A simple blood test will let them know. They have great drugs to get your metabolism back on track.