Why Regular Diet isn’t Enough to Burn Fat

You can cut down the amount of fat and sugar gradually but your body will adjust itself to be more efficient at conserving energy. I learned this lesson years back from a Nutritionist teaching a minor subject on our Health Ed. The lesson didn’t sink in until a few years after I studied Human Physiology and Biochemistry as part of my course’s minor subjects.

There’s no magic to weight loss. Decrease your intake, cut down on unnecessary calories and gradually increase your activity. Those fancy devices promising of fast and effortless weight loss may work to some degree but not economical.

If your body is used to having a large amount of calories consumed, it stores those calories in the form of fat for future use. The problem comes when you have a sedentary lifestyle where you have less reasons to use those stored energy so it ends up being piled up in your body. Going on a diet will work for a few weeks provided you have the discipline to cut back on excess carbs. But eventually your body will just readjust its metabolism to accommodate the new routine.

It will find a way to store fat for future use. It accomplishes this by decreasing your energy expenditure and divert the energy in storage form. It’s a complicated series of processes that just makes your body become more efficient at using energy so there’s more of it saved up. That’s why some people will noticeably see their diet methods becoming less efficient.

Nothing a good exercise can’t supplement. Your body will be redistributing that energy towards accommodating the increase in activity. And it’s not just light exercise, it’s exercise done gradually over weeks until sweating becomes a daily norm. This is the most cheapest solution to losing weight naturally. No pills, fancy devices ordered online, and no special diets.

Other than being economical, it’s free, healthy, and just requires a great amount of self discipline on your part to get results overtime, unless you’re suffering from a medical condition that makes it difficult to lose weight.

So why resort to several paragraphs just to tell people to get into shape by complementing diet with and with exercise? I think it lies mostly on putting some rationale behind what we do. Most are just contented with the simplified explanation that overeating will make you fat and exercising will make you lose fat. People will go to the most expensive, and even questionably safe route to achieve a slimmer body.

If you don’t think people are not that stupid and desperate about losing weight, the Victorian Tapeworm Diet existed. It’s more enticing to subscribe to pills that can slim you down without putting in the work because we are just built lazy and opt for instant gratification even when know we’re being irrational at times.

It’s not going to hurt you to seek consult from a fitness instructor and get a weight loss program that suits you. You might even be saving some money from health care costs compared to converting your body into a guinea pig for these fad diets.

Link to one of the books that helped me come up with this post. There’s plenty of trivia under the chapter where it discusses the Liver as this organ is also closely discussed in Biochemistry. Having some good foundation on these subjects help a lot when covering topics about general health. Guyton and Hall discusses physiology in simple terms that made it one of my student friendly books during med school.

Posted with STEMGeeks