None of us likes to look in the mirror and see our fat rolls. We don’t like to feel them either when we zip up our jeans.
Fat, however, is much deeper than skin deep. It is not only about outward discomfort. Too much fat puts us at greater risk for pre-diabetes, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high triglycerides, gall bladder and liver disease, sleep apnea, stroke, heart attack, and joint problems.
So how do you know if your weight is too much? How do you know if your weight is putting you in the disease danger zone?
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A man at church shared about how God is working in his life as he comes clean from drugs and alcohol. He said, “It took a long time for me to get where I was and it will take time to change, but God is working on me.”
I thought, “Hmm, that sure is a good thought.”
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Genetics play a powerful role in body weight. How you’re made up can make it really easy to stay slim, or make it very difficult to stay at a healthy weight.
One reason is metabolism. This is basically the rate at which you burn calories. Someone with a high metabolism can eat a lot of calories and burn them off quickly. Someone with a slow metabolism will burn calories very slowly and will not need as many each day. Unfortunately, you inherit your metabolism.
Another reason is your fat cells. If you are over overweight (by about 25 pounds or more) your body manufactures fat cells to hold the extra fat. When you lose weight, the fat cells empty out, but they never go away. They are constantly “wanting” to fill back up.
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I’m getting ready to go on a trip for work next week. I’ll be staying in a hotel and will be in meetings all day.
So I’ve been thinking ahead and checking the area out. I want to stay on track with both my eating and exercise. I know this can be tough when traveling, but I want to do well.
For food, I’m packing protein bars, almonds, tea bags, and diet cocoa mix in my suitcase. There is a small store in the hotel where I’m hoping to get fruit and yogurt. (I’ll have a small refrigerator in my room.) This will take care of my snacks.
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I was really frustrated with my weight. Those stubborn pounds just wouldn’t come off. Then I had my physical and the doctor ordered full blood work since it had been five years since it’d been done. The results were encouraging. My numbers were “ideal” the nurse told me. It made all the exercising and food control worthwhile.
You may not be at your ideal body weight. In fact, you may be struggling with your weight right now, feeling like you’ll never reach your goal.
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I noticed on one of my client’s food logs that she often skipped breakfast or ate very little for breakfast. Then she was snacking all evening. She needed to understand that for weight loss breakfast is very important. It gets the metabolism going for the day AND it really helps prevent high hunger late in the day.
I asked her why she was skipping breakfast. “Oh, it’s just too hard to eat breakfast,” she said. “I don’t have time to make food in the morning.”
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I confess, I had way too many carbs this weekend (plus a slice of chocolate pie). My diet is usually squeaky clean so I’m feeling the effects – sluggish, tired, yucky!
We all have a bad day or two. It could be we choose junky food because we’re stressed or traveling, or maybe because we’re celebrating and eating out. In any case, we fall off course from time to time.
The key is; this has to be an occasional occurrence. Not an everyday thing!
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It’s really frustrating to get on the scale and see the number up instead of down when you know you had a really good week. You wonder, “Why is my weight up when I did so well?”
If you know you did great with your diet and you exercised consistently, then there is something else going on. There can be several reasons for this.
- Too much sodium. If you had a meal the day before with sauce or seasoning, it could have been loaded with salt. This causes your body to retain water and it takes a day or two before that goes away.
- Carbs or sugar. Things like potatoes, pasta, popcorn, sweets, etc., all cause you to retain water and weigh more. This is especially noticeable if you eat carbs or sugar the night before you weigh in.
- Bowel backup. How much waste product you have packed in your bowels can make a big difference on the scale. Make sure you are having regular bowel movements.
- Water logged. Water weighs a lot and if you drink before you weigh it’ll show, especially if you weigh later in the day and you’ve been drinking water all day. Of course, drinking water helps flush fluid out of your body, but drinking it too close to weigh-in will affect your number.
- PMS. It’s normal for a woman’s cycle to cause weight fluctuations throughout the month. Know where you are in your cycle so you won’t feel discouraged if your weight is up while PMSing.
- Plateau. Sometimes the body just takes a little time to adjust. You may hit a week or two when your weight holds steady. Just keep on course and your body will adjust.
- Diet denial. Often, when our weight isn’t coming down as we’d like, we didn’t do as well on our diet as we thought. We may have had four good days, but blew three days. No matter how good we did on our good days, those bad days will cancel them out!
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So we’re halfway through the month of January – fifteen days into the New Year. Where are you at with your weight loss resolutions? Are you going strong or have your good intentions fallen by the wayside?
If you’re going strong, good for you! You made a good plan and are sticking with it.
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Gaining weight back is a terribly disappointing setback. Ten pounds is uncomfortable, but 50 pounds or more is nearly debilitating. It makes the person feel like she’s out of control going in the wrong direction. She wants to put on the brakes, but seems unable to do so. She’s embarrassed and distressed.
Finally, she hits a breaking point. She is ready to begin again.
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The New Year is only a few days away. People all over the world will be making resolutions to make changes January 1.
It’s not surprising that losing weight and starting an exercise program are two of the all-time top ten New Year’s resolutions made. There aren’t too many people who don’t want to shed a few pounds and get into better shape.
How about you? Have you thought about what healthy changes you want to make?
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Recently a client told me, “I realized that I have been resentful toward people who can eat whatever they want and stay thin.” She felt angry because weight has been such a difficult issue for her, yet she sees others who appear to not watch their food at all and do not gain.
I totally understand. In high school I used to tell my best friend, “I just don’t understand why I am so heavy. I eat the same thing as everybody else, but they’re all skinny.” I saw my friends eating pizza and ice cream and French fries – yet they were thin. I ate all that junk too and was 190 pounds.
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This time of year is super busy for most people. Dinners, parties, and shopping make schedules tight. Then there is relationship stress of being with family, and financial stress from buying gifts. All this can lead to physical and emotional exhaustion.
Is this the right way to enjoy the Christmas season? Certainly not!
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It’s so true what Dr. Phil says: “Weight is managed, not cured.” People who continue to lose weight, or who keep the weight off, are people who do the things it takes to manage their weight.
Can you imagine what would happen if you didn’t manage your money? What if you simply spent your money without tracking it? If you wrote checks without balancing your checkbook, or never bothered to write in deposits? It would be a mess!
In simple terms, this is called having a budget. You know when money is coming in, what money is going out, and how much is left over to spend. You have to keep a close eye on your money to keep it well managed.
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When I started out, I didn’t have a lot of support. It wasn’t that my family didn’t want to be encouraging, but you have to realize how many times I’d been “on a diet” before. This was just one more time and they all shrugged their shoulders as if to say, “Uh-huh, okay, whatever.”
Over the years, we’ve all evolved into healthier people. So, even though my family isn’t as fanatical as I am, they’re pretty health conscious. So hold onto hope because you can be a great influence (it just might take a few years!).
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I see families at work taking martial arts classes together. I see dads jogging on the track with their sons, or showing them how to do pull-ups. I see moms and daughters side-by-side on the treadmills working out together. And families in the pool splashing and swimming together.
There are husbands and wives who decide to lose weight together. They go grocery shopping together, cook together, and choose restaurants with healthy options. They are each other’s greatest encouragers.
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How many people do you know who have high blood pressure, diabetes, or high cholesterol? Probably quite a few. Maybe even you are dealing with one of these conditions.
Unfortunately, these health issues are so common we’ve lost our respect for them. Someone says, “Yeah, I have high blood pressure,” as easily as if she/he was talking about the common cold.
People take medication like it was a magic potion, feeling like that’s all they need to do and they’ll be okay. They abuse their bodies by eating fried foods, sweets, and salty snacks – when they’re bodies cannot process that kind of junk. They sit at their desk, at their dinner table, and on their couch while their heart and body are weakening.
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I ran into a past client today. He had lost a lot of weight when he worked with me and got into great shape.
He told me that several months ago his wife said, “After three years, you shouldn’t need the food scale anymore.” And she put it away.
He started eating larger portions because he was no longer weighing and measuring his foods. In three months time, he put 30 pounds on.
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The day started off with the toilet overflowing into a great big mess on the bathroom floor. The plastic thingy that’s supposed to go back down after flushing so the tank can fill didn’t seal back down. The water kept running and running. Fortunately I heard it before I took the dogs for a walk or the whole house would’ve been flooded.
So I had a giant load of towels to wash besides the regular laundry. Then my boys decided fighting over their K’nex pieces before breakfast was a good way to get the day started. And my puppy ripped the stuffing out of his toy, and chewed up a pencil into shards all over the living room floor.
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A lot of people don’t realize all the emotional up and downs they’ll have on their weight loss journey. Just like losing weight is a process on the outside, adjusting to a new image is a process on the inside.
I remember when I first lost my weight. I often had “fat days” when I felt big and ugly and unattractive. It didn’t matter the size jeans I put on; I felt fat.
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I teach a first and second grade gym class and I’m always amazed by the kids. We start every class off with a warm up – 20 jumping jacks, 20 pushups, 20 run in place, and 20 crunches. Then we do sprints, frog hops (jump squats in disguise), and more sprints across the gymnasium.
They love it.
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It would be great if every day you felt totally motivated, on top of your game, and pumped up with will power. Well, you’re lucky if you get one of those days a week.
For most people, motivation waxes and wanes. Stress, busyness, and tiredness can all hack away at the strongest person’s determination. Not to mention that big fight with your spouse or “that time” of the month. (Give me chocolate!)
Motivation to eat healthy foods and do your exercise just isn’t going to be full power every day. So, what do you do when you’re low on motivation?
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I was talking with a lady recently and she said, “I want to lose 10 pounds…by tomorrow!” Don’t we all!
Oh, why does weight loss have to be a process? Why can’t we go to bed one night and wake up the next day 10 pounds lighter? Why does it have to be so much hard work? So much discipline? So much time?
The fact is; weight loss is a tough process. (If it was easy nobody would have a weight problem!)
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When I’m really stressed out or overly tired, that’s when I want to eat. The problem is, I know too much information about emotional eating. So I have this whole internal conversation with myself – while debating whether or not I’m going to keep eating.
“Lis, you know food doesn’t fix anything. You’re just going to feel worse if you eat that. So, why do you want to eat anyway? What’s going on?”
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I stopped in the middle of the store to read the sign over several times. The usually “Plus” tag on the clothing rack was replaced with a sign that said, “Extended Sizes.”
“What?” I thought. “Extended?” I guess plus was too harsh of a word so they made it softer, less offensive. Extended…like seatbelt extenders when you’re too big to use the seatbelt?
I used to be called chubby when I was a kid. Being 185 pounds at age 11 was a little more than chubby. I was a fat kid – round belly, round cheeks, roly poly. Chubby was the way nice people referred to me.
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