12 Week Challenge

Hey, just noticed from my pregnancy widget on the right side there that I have less than 100 days!  Cool!  On this upcoming Monday, I will be about 12 weeks away from delivery day, since I usually get induced at 39 weeks, so planning that July 7th will be the day we get to greet this little angel.  For the next 12 weeks I am really going to focus on eating healthy.  I've been reading this book by Jonathan Ballor, and he shares something most people know, that starving doesn't work, you cannot not eat, but you have to eat so much of the good stuff and get so full on veggies and healthy foods that you won't want desserts.

Also hoping that eating clean like this will help to lower my set point, something else he talks about, and that I won't gain anymore weight.  I had my 26 week appointment yesterday, and was grateful that I only gained 3 pounds during this past month instead of 10 like I had gained the past 3 months.  I'm at 163 right now.

A friend recommended this book and lucky for me it was at the library, so I got it and have really liked what I've read so far, and things I've read as I thumbed through.  Good stuff.  From the back cover, "Jonathan Bailor spent the past decade collaborating with top doctors and researchers to analyze more than 10,000 pages of academic research related to diet, exercise and weight loss.  The end result is this very straightforward, simple and easy to read book, where Bailor bridges the gap between the academic world and the everyday world ti  dispel the myths, lies, and corporate sales hype that have fueled the current obesity epidemic."  So I'll be posting some things I learn from this book as often as I can.  Here's today's insight from page 41-42:

Eating Less does not create the need to burn body fat.  IT creates the need for the body to slow down.  Contrary to popular opinion, the boy hangs on to body fat.  instead, it burn muscle tissue, and that worsens the clog problem.  Only as a last resort, if the body has no other option, ti may also burn a bit of body fat. 

Why does the body hang on to boy fat and burn muscle?  To answer that question, let's look at it another way.  What does our fat metabolism system want more of when it thinks we are starving?  Stored energy.  What is a great source of stored energy?  Body fat.  So when our fat metabolism system thinks we are starving, does it want to get rid of or hold onto body fat?  It wants to hold on.

Next, what does our fat metabolism system want less of when we are starving?  It wants less tissue which burns a lot of calories.  What type of tissue burns a lot of calories?  Muscle tissue.  So when our fat metabolism system thinks we are starving, it gets rid of calorie hungry muscle tissue.  Studies show that up to 70% of the weight lost while eating less comes from burning muscle, no fat.  

Burning all this muscle means that starving ourselves leas to more body fat--not less--over the long term.  As soon as we stop starving ourselves, we have all the calories we used to have but need less of them, thanks to all that missing muscle and our slowed-down metabolism.Now our fat metabolism system sees eating a normal amount as overeating and creates new body fat.  In the Journal of American Medical Association, researcher G.L. Thorpe tells us that eating less does not make us lose weight, "...by selective reduction of adipose deposits (body fat), but by wasting of all body tissues...therefore, any success obtained must be maintained by chronic under-nourishment."  It is not practical or healthy to keep ourselves "chronically under-nourished," so we on't.  Instead, we yo-yo diet.  And that is hwy eating less is not an effective long term fat loss approach.

Eating Less

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Starvation Detected and Hunger Triggered

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Need to Burn Body Fat Drops 

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Muscle burned

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Need To and Ability to Burn Body Fat Drops

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Temporary Weight Loss

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We Gain All Weight Lost Back as Body Fat