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DIETING Dieting is one of those things that should be completely integrated into our living style. We will look first at weight gain and why gaining
weight is so easy. Then we will look at what you can do
about weight gain (in the form of diet and exercise) to maintain a consistent
weight. What you learn here will amaze you because it is so simple! The 1,800 calories that a typical person at rest needs per day (see facts & figures on the right side) is not that hard to gain. For example, a very casual fast food meal like meat sandwiches contains calories of the order of 700 – 800. A coke or pepsi would add another 300 calories. Add to this, 3 Cream Sandwich Cookies worth 165 calories; you are very close to a day’s calorie requirement.
Deep fried foods add a lot of calories. You can see how the number of calories coming in can
easily reach 3,000, 4,000 or 5,000 per day without any effort at all. |
Your Body's Efficiency
Facts & Figures
Have you
ever wondered why, for so many people, weight gain seems to be a fact of
life? Especially for anyone older than 30 years. It's because the human body is way
too efficient! It just does not take that much energy to maintain the human
body at rest, and when exercising, the human body is amazingly frugal when it
comes to turning food into motion. At rest, the human
body burns only less than 27 calories per kilogram of body weight per day.
That means that if you weigh 70 kg, your body uses only about: 70 X 26.45 = 1,800 calories per day This is
only a rough estimate. This 1,800 calories is used to do everything you need
to stay alive:
Compare the following facts with the
above: A person running
a marathon (42 km) burns only about 2,600 calories. In other words, you burn
only about 62 calories per km when you are running. How efficient our body is !!! |
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Your
body is extremely efficient at capturing and storing excess calories. Whenever
your body finds that it has excess calories on hand, it converts them to fat
and saves them for a rainy day. It
only takes 3,800 excess calories to create half a kilogram of new fat on your
body. If you are taking in just 500 extra calories per day, then you are
gaining a kilogram of fat in just 15 days. (500 calories x 15 days = 7,500
calories/week). That’s a whopping 2kg in a month. Since it is easy to get 500
calories from just one ice cream cone or a few cookies, you can see that
weight gain is completely effortless in today's society. |
YOUR BODY V/S
MOTOR CAR It is safe to assume that a typical
car get between 7 to 17 km/L. One liter of gasoline contains about 8800
calories. This simply converts the mileage of a human being to: 8800 / 62 = 142 kms. If you put a human being on a bicycle
to increase the efficiency, a human being can get well over 500 km/L. Amazing
isn’t it !!! That level of efficiency is the main reason why it is so easy to
gain weight. |
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The Idea Behind Dieting To lose
one kilogram of fat, you have to burn off 7,500 calories or over a period of
time, you have to consume 7,500 calories less than what your body needs. There
are several ways you can create that deficit.
· You could consume fewer calories and burn extra calories by exercise. Jogging 4 km would burn about 250 calories per day, and over the course of 30 days you would burn about a kilogram of body weight. (30 days x 250 calories = 7500 calories). As you can see from these
examples, the only way to lose a kilogram of fat is to consume fewer calories
per day than your body needs and burn the extra fat. For every 7,500 calories
that you body takes from its fat reserves, you lose 1 kg of fat. You can
create the deficit either by monitoring and restricting your intake of
calories, or by exercising, or both. The idea behind most diets is simply to help you
somehow lower the number of calories that you consume each day. |
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The reason why most diets tend not to work for very long is
because they are not sustainable. A person gains weight because he or she
consumes more calories per day than needed. The diet creates a temporary
deficit. When the diet ends, the person goes back to normal eating and the
weight comes back. Building a sustainable diet and exercise plan is the key
to maintaining a consistent weight. |
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The
first step is to start counting the calories that you
consume in a day so that you become conscious of two things: ·
You need to understand exactly how many calories
you are eating on a "normal" day. ·
You need to realize where each calorie comes from.
You may need to build a calorie database in your brain so that you know,
whenever you eat something, just how many calories it is supplying. The second step is
to figure out how many calories in a day that you need. You can use the
"27 calories per kg" rule. Pick your ideal weight. Then
calculate how many calories a day you can consume to maintain that weight. The third step is
to compare the two numbers the "number of calories you need" and
"the number of calories that you take in" in a day. That is where
the extra kgs coming from. The fourth step is
to figure out how to bring the two numbers in line. What you will soon
realize is that 1,600 or 1,800 or 2,000 calories per day just isn't that
many. You have to watch and count everything you eat and drink every
day and stick to your daily limit. The fifth step is to
add exercise to the routines, so that you can raise the number of calories
you consume per day. Burning 250 or 500 calories per day on exercise can make
a big difference. |
In an
effort to reduce the number calories you take in per day, here are several
strategies that you might find effective: ·
Be conscious of every calorie you consume. ·
Eliminate all calories that come in through
drinking. In other words, drink water. The drinks; cola to orange juice to
beer can bring in lots of calories and they have absolutely no effect on your
appetite. A good example would emphasize the point above. If
you drink 300 ml of orange juice, you take in 140 calories but it does nothing
to curb your appetite. If, on the other hand, you eat an orange, three
things happen: §
You take in fewer calories §
You get to chew the orange,
which has a psychological effect. §
It fills your stomach, which
curbs your appetite. An orange actually gives you a feeling of fullness,
while orange juice does not. ·
Eliminate white sugar. It eliminates all sorts of
high-calorie foods such as Cookies, Cake, Ice cream, Cola, Candy….. ·
Similarly, try eliminating all deep fried foods
including: potato chips, cheese crisps, french fries, onion rings, donuts, fritters,
fried chicken… ·
Try to replace high-density foods with
low-density foods. A cookie is a high-density food. It contains lots of sugar
and fat. A banana on the other hand is low-density food. It takes many bites
to eat a banana, but you take in only 100 calories. Here's a good mental exercise that helps you
understand the point: Most people would not find it hard to eat a dozen cookies,
which is around 600 calories. Now imagine trying to eat six bananas at one sitting.
You would explode! But it's the same number of calories. ·
Try wearing form-fitting clothes instead of
sweats. The tight clothing acts as a subliminal reminder of what you are
trying to accomplish. |
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Exercise
Exercise
is the tool to control your weight by burning off calories. One way to make
the most of exercise is to integrate some form of exercise into your daily
routine. Here are some examples: · Try
to find some type of exercise that you enjoy and do it every day for 30
minutes, 60 minutes or more. It might be walking, riding an exercise bike
while watching TV, or working out in a gym at lunch. · Try
to fit micro-exercises into your daily life. For example, instead of taking
the elevator, take the stairs. Park farther away from stores in parking lots…. · Put a
set of weights at your desk and use them 3 or 4 times during the day as you
think or talk on the phone. · Find
an exercise partner. Exercise, for some people, is a lot easier if
there is someone to talk to. A partner will also help make exercise a
routine. ·
Try to exercise every day. It is
easier to remember to do something if you do it every day. |
Weight Loss Myths There are dozens of
weight-loss myths that either mislead people or people use as an easy excuse. ·
The myth that some kinds of calories are
different from others. A calorie is a calorie. If you consume 4,000 calories
by eating 1,000 grams of white sugar or 4,000 calories by eating 444 grams of
fat, your body doesn't care. It is still 4,000 calories. ·
The myth that low-fat foods are OK or that, you
can eat as much as you want if it is low fat. A product can have 0 grams of
fat but can still have lots of calories. Many fat-free foods replace the fat
with sugar and contain just as many or more calories as a fat-containing
product. ·
The myth that any passive device such as acupressure
rings and bracelets or soaps or belts can help. There is no way to burn
calories but to burn them. ·
The myth that you can lose so much of kilograms
in few weeks time. You cannot lose a kg of fat unless you burn off 7,500
calories. ·
The myth that something can create an enzyme-driven
fat-burning cycle. No! all these are false claims. Don’t look for shortcuts. What is true is that you have
to eat fewer calories than you burn in a day if you want to lose weight. You
simply have to find the number of calories your body burns in a day
and consume fewer calories than your body needs. It is a mental game, and there
is no way around it. |
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