Book Excerpt for...To Burn or Not to Burn, FAT is the Question!
The Purpose of Diet and Exercise
Most people who diet and exercise simply want to look and feel better each day. Many have stated that if they were happy and content with the way they physically looked, they will feel better about themselves. If that’s true most people will start feeling better about themselves once they get their body to start looking more physically fit. For some people becoming a little more fit may mean dropping 20-40 pounds. Others may define more fit, as keeping their weight the same but would like to firm up their arms and legs. Still others would be happy if they could keep the weight off for more than a few months.
“To Burn or Not To Burn, Fat is the Question” was written to help people understand that healthy weight loss is not based solely on diet and exercise. Stress can be one of the main contributors to the puzzle! Stress can be triggering many hormonal responses that can work against all our dieting and exercising efforts. My goal is to share with you how constant and excessive daily stress can cause hormonal imbalance and trigger your body to work against you and negate all your dieting and exercising efforts. How we have control over our diet and exercise routine and can regulate various hormones to have a positive affect on our body.
To achieve healthy weight loss, you need to look not only at diet and exercise but also how stress affects weight loss. In particular, we need to pay attention to the hormonal responses that are triggered from stress, diet and exercise. Those hormones determine whether or not we are placing logs in our fireplace or just twigs and small branches. This is why counting calories and fat grams may not be the total answer to our weight loss problems. Just because we have a roaring fire constantly burning in our little cabin, don’t assume the source of that fire came from all the big logs we have stockpiled. That roaring fire may be the result of twigs and small braches constantly being burned. This is why most people aren’t successful at losing weight. They are constantly burning calories from carbohydrates and proteins, not fats. Therefore, be aware, if you suffer with blow blood sugar, cravings, irritability, moodiness, lightheadedness, inability to concentrate, the need to eat every few hours, there is a good chance your body is constantly burning carbohydrates not fats.
The major underlying theme of this book is to help you become healthier - not just become thinner! There are plenty of skinny unhealthy people walking around today. My goal is to help you maximize the time, energy and effort you spend dieting and exercising, while at the same time promote better health.
The three pieces of the puzzle (stress, diet and exercise), we will explore are all very important. The first topic we will discuss will be the effects stress has on our hormonal system and our body’s ability to lose weight.
Hormones help regulate our weight because they can trigger the body to burn calories from either stored body fat, lean muscle tissue or from the foods recently eaten. When your hormones are out of balance due to stress, you may be fighting a losing battle when it comes to weight loss. Constant everyday stress could trigger hormones that may override any benefits derived from a good diet and exercise routine. Stress plays a key in regulating your hormones. Are you always under lots of stress? Is your life constantly on the go? Are there other health complaints stressing your body? Do you even know where your stress is coming from? How can you tell if stress is affecting your health? Have you been failing with your weight loss goals even though you have been dieting and exercising? These are all questions you may need to answer in order to succeed in a healthy weight loss program. Maybe all the stress you have been living under has thrown your hormones so out of balance that it has attributed to your inability to lose the extra weight and keep the weight off.
Secondly, we will discuss the effects foods (diet) have on your blood sugar and how they trigger certain hormonal responses. Is what you eat and drink triggering your body to burn calories from stored body fat, lean muscle tissue or from what you just ate a few hours ago? Does your diet throw your hormones further out of balance? Can hormonal imbalances cause your body to burn more calories from carbohydrates and proteins instead of from stored body fat? Which foods are you eating? Are you choosing foods that throw your hormones further out of balance? We will explain how certain foods will either trigger your body to burn more calories from fat while other foods will trigger your body to store all those extra calories. Remember, just because you’re burning calories, doesn’t mean you’re burning calories from fat.
The final part of this book covers exercise and the type of exercise routine to follow if we want to keep burning calories from fat. We will discuss how to maximize your exercise routine in order to firm and tone the body. Are you exercising? Are you over-training? Do your workouts give you the results you want? Do your workouts trigger your body to burn calories from stored body fat or do you just burn calories? Do you train at an intensity level that is too high and counterproductive?
There are to many Americans who are overweight and not losing weight even though they are cutting calories, fats and doing some type of exercise. Maybe our hormones and the triggering effects they play on our body due to stress, diet and exercise need to be examined. Therefore, if you haven’t received the results you wanted from all your time, energy and efforts in trying to lose weight and tone up, this book will help you examine some different questions to this very puzzling issue.
Good Health vs. Good Fitness
Is good health the same as good fitness? Let’s spend a moment addressing “good fitness” and “good health.” Most people believe if you are in good physical shape then you are in good health. That’s not completely accurate! Are you in good physical shape? Are you physically fit? Can you run two miles? Can you do a dozen pushups? Can you hold your breath for a minute? Can you bend over and touch your toes? These are all questions that pertain to good fitness. If you answered “yes” to all of these questions, you probably are physically fit.
When it comes to good health however, you should be asking some different questions such as, how is your cardiovascular system functioning? How is your reproductive, respiratory, nervous and immune system functioning? Do you complain of constant fatigue, headaches, depression and heartburn? Do you suffer from constipation, bloating and gas? Are you bothered with arthritis, allergies, diabetes and osteoporosis? These are questions that pertain to good health. If you answered “yes” to some of these questions, I don’t think you can say you are experiencing good health.
As you can plainly see, good fitness is quite different than good health. Let’s not assume just because someone looks physically fit from the outside that they are also healthy on the inside. Many men and women with beautiful physiques on the outside may be plagued with fatigue, headaches, digestive difficulties, arthritis, difficulty sleeping and food cravings on the inside. I believe good fitness begins with good health.
Good health is not merely absence of disease. A better definition of good health should include the words “vigor and vitality for life.” Just because you are not diagnosed with some major type of malady such as: arthritis, diabetes, osteoporosis, MS, Lupus, Crohn’s or cancer doesn’t mean to imply you are in good health. There have been a number of patients I have helped with weight loss who have thought they were in perfect health except for a few extra pounds. However, as we began our consultation we both learned there body was giving us many signals (symptoms) that needed to be addressed.
The main point I am trying to make about losing weight and getting healthy is that there could be a catch-22. Meaning we know if we lose weight we become healthier, but for some of us who simply can’t lose weight, even though we are dieting properly could be a signal that our overall health needs improving first, in order to successfully shed those unwanted pounds. Think about it, if you’re dieting well and still unable to drop those extra pounds, that should be a hint that your body isn’t being regulated properly, it’s out of balance, something is interfering with your bodies ability to run smoothly. It may be smarter to not only concern ourselves with losing weight but we should also put a major emphasis in addressing many of the other signals (symptoms) our body is giving us.
