Does anyone else get pissed when they get a common sense “proved” weight loss advice from a 40 something year old, who has never had a weight loss problem in his youth?
»Well girl, you just need to eat a little less and move a bit more,« is some sort of social mantra, everybody is repeating. The only problem is that it doesn’t seem to work for the people who need good advice the most.
Luckily I have gotten my advice for weight loss from people, that actually at least had a clue about it.
However, I soon discovered that they too, didn’t have all the answers and I also realized something much more important:
The advice from well-meaning friends and relatives can actually be really harmful for us in the long run.
I am sure many people (especially youngsters) have developed an eating disorder precisely because they got the wrong answers to their legit questions. Plus they felt weak and incompetent because they couldn’t follow this simple advice.
You are not gaining weight from eating too much
Don’t worry if you like to eat. If you are gaining fat, this is not because you eat too much food and there is absolutely nothing wrong with you.
The issue is just that you don’t know some simple rules of metabolism of different foods. Your body is merely a reflection of the fact, that you are doing something wrong.
What is most horrific is that those common sense advices are precisely the opposite of what you should do. That is why your successes will only be temporary and non-complete if you listen to them.
If you want to show the middle finger to all those smart asses once and for all, I certainly recommend you to read this through.
After years of experimenting and changing my body and bodies of other people from weak and sick into healthier and stronger versions, I discovered the 5 most harmful common sense weight loss advices.
Those advices come from two groups of people. A) People that are naturally skinny despite the fact that they eat same crap as you (these are quite rare).
Option B) the people who are doing something right but they are completely unaware of it. These can’t help you because usually what they think is most important for weight loss, is usually the least important.
I had to discover the weight loss secrets by a thorough study and understanding. I always knew biscuits and chocolate are not health foods but I just couldn’t seem to say no to them.
Gradually I have picked enough pieces of evidence, that I could compose and live by the child like instructions for health living. I still laugh by the thought that I needed 7 years of study, just to do something so simple and efficient that anybody can do it with ease.
Even though I wasn’t listening to the advice I’m going to talk about today, I believed in them, whenever my knowledge was too poor for me to help a client progress. Only after I gained sufficient knowledge from several experts in this field, I saw how harmful those statements are.
Each of them deserves an individual explanation, therefore I will describe you their main weaknesses in the next four weeks. Make sure not to miss them so subscribe to my newsletter and follow my posts on Facebook and Instagram.
So these are the five worst advices you can get, if you complain to somebody that you gained weight but you don’t know what to do:
1. Eat less, move more
2. Eat everything in moderation and listen to your body – everybody is different
3. When you want to lose weight you just have to fix your head
4. Decrease stress, love yourself and weight loss will come naturally
5. Eat homemade and home grown food and you will be fine
Eat less, move more
Whenever I hear this advice I seriously get an allergic reaction. I am sure that this sentence has caused at least half of the anorexic and bulimic issues with young adults.
The advice kind of implies that you stuff too much food into your gut then you actually should.
A lot of people actually think that is true. I asked my father the other day, why he thinks I lost all that excess weight. At first he didn’t know what to say. Then I asked him: “Dad, do you think I did that by eating less food!?” He said yes… Dad, I sure hope you read this and stop this destructive thinking
My dad is not the only one. A lot of times people who don’t live with me, ask if I even eat anything because I am that tiny. I weigh 48 kilos with 155 cm which is totally normal. And by the way, if this was 50 years ago, nobody would say I was thin, since every woman would look like me. However today, the person with a normal body like mine is unfortunately more of an exception then a rule.
Luckily my mom often sees I probably eat twice as much as she does in one meal. That is why thankfully I don’t have to deal with my parents worrying I malnourish myself.
And don’t worry, I don’t throw up either.
I was taught not to throw away good food so I was never particularly interested in throwing food out from the wrong hole.
Body is like a furnace – some woods get burned slower than others
I came to the realization that for weight loss and health, it is not so important how much we eat, but what we eat.
I had to learn that our furnace (body and the gut) burns different woods in different ways. Some woods (such as fats and protein – animal products, nuts and seeds) need a long time to burn and produce heat.
On the other hand, we can fill up our furnace with another type of fuel that gets used for energy quickly and does not stay in the furnace long (plant based foods that consist mainly of carbs).
That second type of wood won’t stay in the furnace for long even if you top it up several times per day.
This way, you will avoid the issues of having to remove the remaining of first type of wood out of your furnace with extreme measures (liposuction, diuretics, obsessive exercise etc.). Plus, if you mainly choose to burn the second type of wood, you won’t have to deal with issues of excess (overweight body, diabetes, cholesterol etc.).
While we are more than happy to use slow burning wood in our actual furnace, the body is a different kind of machine.
If we throw inside a lot of what burns very slowly, this type of fuel will stay in our body as a reserve (fat tissue) or the body will have to eject it by using its own filtering devices (liver, intestine and kidneys). If we will put too much of those slow burning woods into our body, we will have to deal with consequences of overly burdening our filtering organs (gall stones, kidney stones, indigestion, GERD, hemerroids etc.).
Do we really have to eat less and move more?
Since I already answered, how exercise is a minor contributor to health and weight loss, let’s just thoroughly review the thesis that says we should eat less food.
The capacity of every human stomach is about 2.5 liters. Plus we have something else in our stomach. As Dr. Doug Lisle, that has helped many people reach permanent weight loss says, we have special sensors in our stomach. Those sensors evaluate calories, weight and the overall value of food for our body.
Therefor the stomach should report to our brain when we are full and we should stop eating. So we should stop eating when our stomach has received enough food in terms of quantity and calories.
The needs for calories vary among people because our metabolisms differ according to our age, sex, weight and muscle mass and physical activity. Before you get afraid I am going to start teaching you some difficult math on how to count your calories let me calm you down. I certainly don’t plan to do something so utterly useless.
When we eat food we were designed for, our stomach knows exactly when we’ve had enough. Moreover, if we eat the food we were designed for, it is virtually impossible to stuff more then 500 calories into our stomach in one meal. The right food also makes us feel full for longer because it has lots of fiber that control the blood sugar levels in normal ranges.
The process of evaluating calorie density starts with your eyes. The smell of foods we were made for draw us towards them. When we see red strawberries or smell a baked potato, something in us moves. We start to salivate. You all know that feeling.
You all also know the feeling of fullness after you eat an apple and a piece of bread or a big plate of bean strew. Once you’ve had enough you simply stop eating.
Nature has equipped us perfectly in order to ensure our survival. We can estimate the calorie density of natural foods like pros. Once we’ve had enough of that food, the brain immediately receive signal that we can stop eating.
Let’s eat until we are full
So biologically we are designed to eat until we are comfortably full and we shouldn’t get fat from that. Have you ever seen a fat animal in the wild, where they are eating as much as they can? I have never seen a fat deer in the woods.
What I have seen are fat people.
Through years of studies of relevant literature and through observations of human behavior when it comes to food, I have learned a lot.
So what is our main issue with food?
I have discovered one of the main puzzles just recently. As Dr. Doug Lisle said in his numerous lectures, people’s sensors for calories tend to make mistakes, when people eat the foods they weren’t originally designed for.
Most of the times problems start when people consume foods that are very calorically dense. These are the foods that contain zero fiber and a lot of fats (these are all animal foods and new-age man made foods such as chocolate and oils). Most people’s calorie sensors in the stomac can’t properly evaluate the amount of calories in very concentrated foods. Therefor most people start to systematically overeat and they gain weight.
The second issue with those foods is also the fact that people have a valuable ability to cram on some foods, even after they had filled up their stomach capacity.
Food we can never say no to
Do you know the saying: “There is always room for dessert!”?
I’m guessing that is an international saying since all people, no matter how full they are, always seem to find room for a piece of cake. On the other hand they couldn’t possibly eat another piece of carrot or potato.
Also, some people who love meat or greasy potato chips have told me that once they start eating, they literally can’t stop. That is why they stop stuffing themselves until the point they literally feel sick and hurt. They don’t stop because the brain told them to, but because their stomach is screaming of pain.
What is the difference? Why we can’t have more potatoes and fruits but the chocolate is still tempting?
A lot of people think, the issues of overeating are caused by sugar, but the truth couldn’t be further away from that.
One of the main reasons for our obsessive eating of some foods is the fat they contain.
And if that’s not enough, some of the foods people get sort of addicted to, contain substances that cause the opiate effects after consumption. These are the chocolate, meats and eggs and cheese. This topic will require a whole other blog, however if you want a more thorough explanation, you can read it in Dr. Neil Barnard’s book by the name Breaking the food seduction.
Now let’s have a look at the common denominator of all the cakes, chocolate, cheeses and meats.
The fat.
Fat has more than one time more calories than carbohydrates and protein. It has 9 kcal per gram while they have only 4. In reality that doesn’t even matter for your practical weight loss program. All you need to understand is that you must eliminate high fat foods from your daily diet, even if your body will crave to have them.
Even though people hate fats (when our hands get filthy with fat, we wash them with soap, we also do the same to our dishes and clothes). However, why is it then calling us, when it comes to foods?
I do not know why some people prefer cheese, other meat and some chocolate. But something is certain. Fat plays a tricky game with you in which you are destined to lose if you start playing it.
Why you can’t win this battle?
Anyone that has ever experienced the seductive forces of cheese, chocolate or meat (my “drugs” were chocolate and cheese), knows he or she is doomed after the first bite. You can only save yourself by running far away from your seductive food and make sure you can’t get back to it.
The problem is in our evolution. Nature made us cram on fatty foods. It has done that to make sure we survive on various occasions, foods and circumstances. Nature also made sure, that we imediatelly evaluate, which food is more calorically dense and should therefore sustain us with calories in a better way.
At the same time, nature has made us totally rational when it comes to our food instincts.
Naturally, we would always grab the most calorically dens food that is available in our environment.
Why do we do that?
The reason for our “self-destructive” behavior is a simple battle for survival.
In times before intensive agriculture, people had to eat whatever they could find in nature. If they found broccoli, they would eat broccoli, if it was an apple, they ate an apple. And if they were fortunate enough to find nuts and figure out a way to crack them, they would feast on it for as long as they could even though nuts are way more calorically dense than apples.
Why?
WHAT to eat is more important than the questions of WHEN and HOW MUCH to eat
Since nature wanted to keep us alive, it has shaped us into creatures that can easily detect the most calorically dense foods.
It has also made us cram on those foods up to the point of becoming sickly full. We stuff our bodies with it way more than we do with calorically “poorer” foods such as fruits, vegetables and starches. That is because the body stores fats much more easily then carbs.
Once our tongue feels the fat, our brain transfers that information into the word: SURVIVAL! Then they create a need for consuming those foods in quantities that are as big as they can be.
You see the sugars are not that tempting. They are used in the body as instant fuels for muscle and brain. The body is very inefficient with turning sugars into fats. It takes a lot of energy and effort for a body to turn one substance into something completely different. In this case, this means turning sugars into fats.
However, turning fat into fat is ridiculously easy and the body does that almost instantly: From your lips to your hips – the fat you eat is the fat you wear. It is that simple.
In translate that means that you can eat as much fruits and vegetables and starches as you like, and you will receive your weight loss none the less. On the other hand the fats you will put on your plate in the shape of fish, meat, dairy, eggs, oils and processed foods, will go almost straight to fats in your body.
Because of those rules upon which your body operates, you are destined for failure in the long run if you regularly include high fat foods into your diet.
I am sure you bought a bag of pistachios once and ended up eating the whole bag and then suffering with stomach pain.
Your brain literally goes crazy when they get something so calorically dense and also salty inside the body. This is because they estimate these are the best foods to get a lot of calories with in the shortest possible time.
The brain thinks: »Hurray, let’s cram all this and we will certainly collect enough energy to stay alive and for a few days more and get a chance to reproduce our species. «
They may not say exactly that, but they certainly don’t allow you to leave the table until you have eaten half a glass of Nutella your mom bot just yesterday for potential guests.
Brain instincts don’t understand we have plenty of food and we won’t run out of it.
Our instincts have evolved after millions of years. Therefor these couple of centuries of agriculture revolution won’t change them.
The brain plays the same game every day and it follows one simple rule: “Find the most calorically dense food you can get in your given environment that will give me and my master the most energy for the least possible effort.”
The issue is we are literally bombarded with easily consumable calorically dense foods nowadays. Salami and cheese are waiting for us in the fridge we have biscuits and cracked nuts in the drawer and Nutella on the top shelf.
Trust me, you can’t win this war. Even if you can resist the temptation on the first few days, there will come a moment when you will be just a bit stressed and you will forget about all your promise. Your instinct will win your reasoning. At that point you will jump on all of those foods you have been avoiding and then you will hate yourself for it.
You will hate you low will power, your ugly cellulite and the belly that is running out of your jeans.
The main issue of thise time is not too much food per se, but excess of foods that used to be an exception in the diet and a lucky strike or they didn’t even exist. Today they are the center of our meal plans.
Calorically dense “food” is an exception in nature not a rule
I am sure that cows in nature didn’t politely ask a human to come drink milk that was produced for her freshly born babies. I am also convinced that wild pigs didn’t just come to people and ask them with their pretty gentle eyes: “Please cut my throat, I wish to be your food.”
For the same reasons, birds did not lay eggs for people to eat them. They did that to make sure their newborn birds would have something to eat for the first few days. Egg whites and yolks were their foods!
And of course, you couldn’t find Nutella on the nearest tree or in the ground could you?
Nature hasn’t given us 2.5 liter big stomach to fill it up with calorically dense foods multiple times per day, every day. These foods were a matter of lucky strike and prevention of starving. Also, you weren’t designed to eat foods a man made in his desire to get and keep the regular consumers.
You got this stomach to fill it up with foods you were designed to eat and that could feed you enough to continue your species, but not so much you could become fat and sick.
However, once we took the ruling of this planet and its inhabitants in our own hands, and we went from ordinary cooking to laboratory experimenting, we set ourselves for disaster. We would get diseases of mistaken feeding that none of the wild living animals have.
We have become as sick and fat as we could possibly be.
But instead of doing one simple thing – eating the food we were designed for – we started to measure our food, counting calories and limiting the carbs. We also started blaming the stress for our dietary issues. Come on people, just remove from your plate whatever is not your food and you will be fine. The food we eat today was never supposed to exist or it was caught only after hours or days of hunting by a big group of men. Let’s just stop the stupidity, okay?
Exit the game of “cutting back”
It is about time you realize, that you cannot eat less food then your stomach capacities unless you surgically remove a part of your stomach! Therefor you will not be able to eat more than a few bites of food and you will get your weight loss.
But what a cost that will be… You should know the surgeon will probably not warn you too thoroughly about the side effects of cutting out part of your body. He probably thinks having surgery will do you more harm than your obesity.
Do not be naive. You have a stomach this big for a reason. You need an amount of food big enough so you can get all the nutrients to nourish your body with it.
If you eat less food, I am sure you will have to face several malnourishment issues later on. You will also have excess skin due to the weight loss that came as a result of eating way too little calories. And I didn’t even mention the possible side effects of the stomach operation. Choose a smarter way is all I can tell you.
I also have a message for those who limit their meals, count calories or obsessivelly limit their intake of starchy vegetables and stuff themselves with chicken and green veggies.
Do you see yourself like this in the long run? Stepping on scales every week and counting calories for every bite of food you eat?
Do you want to spend all your life exercising like a maniac not because you enjoy the view on top of a mountain or a tennis match with your partner, but only because you wish to remain lean?
Can you call this a life? Constantly evaluating if you ate enough protein and if you didn’t by chance eat one piece of potato too much?
I do hope you say goodbye to this type of life as soon as possible and choose a better way!
Get in total control without any control
My life has changed completely, after I realized that I can eat as much as I want, if only I eat the food my body was designed for.
Since then, food is no longer the source of stress for me. It becomes stress only when I come into situations where I am surrounded by plates of what other people call food. I call those foods what they really are: anti food, animal corps and animal excretions and therefor there is little for me to eat. Since these are pretty common events (family gatherings and celebrations), I came to realize that the only way for me to avoid the bigger harm of those foods are two decisions one needs to make:
1) Remove from your home and places you get food from all the anti foods and animal products
Sadly people are, as I said before, powerless when we battle the war with rules of evolution. Therefor we must not allow ourselves to keep the foods that make us cram in our homes or working environment.
Elimination is way easier and more efficient then personal growth or meditation.
Even alcoholics know that the first step towards healing their addiction is total elimination of alcohol from their lives. They also know they have to end hangouts with their buddies in the bar where they used to drink.
Fortunately food seduction is not the same as drug addiction. However it can cause equal damage. Families fall apart, people die or get sick children have to give up their lives to take care of their sick yet still relatively young parents. Therefor we must see food seduction with the same seriousness as we would see alcohol abuse.
And don’t worry. After only one or a few months after you have started exclusively eating only the foods you were designed for, you will be able to comfortably hang out with your friends again and look at the foods that you used to be their slave.
After a certain period of time, these foods will be less appealing to you, or not even a bit, especially after you learned how to prepare your new foods in delicious ways.
1) Only let the good food into your life
Any more discussion on this topic is useless because I have thoroughly described you, which the foods we were meant to eat are.
Time for new rules – eat until comfortably full and exercise as much as you feel like
What is most important for you to understand is the following.
If you have a weight loss problem that was caused by certain type of food, you will not resolve this issue by eating smaller portions of this food or by replacing it with a different version of the same kind of foods (switching from pork to chicken for example)
The only way for you to permanently resolve all the food related issues will be to stop eating all foods your ancestors had on the menu due only to lucky coincidences. If you will intentionally leave some of this food in your menu, you will only tease yourself with it. Soon a little will become more, and more will become too much. Instead it will be much easier for you if you simply turn the record completely. Start enjoying the foods that will help you thrive, not just survive.
At the same time, you are more then welcome to join my FREE 21 day starch challenge, to which you can apply through my website and by joining a closed Facebook group. In this group are the people who adopted the same philosophy of eating the foods we were made for. We share amongst ourselves ideas for meals, questions about eating and cooking and questions about healthy living in general.
That was all from me and I sincerely hope you punch the next person who will tell you to eat less and workout more if you want to have some weight loss. If you are a more peaceful person them me at least tell them not to talk nonsense when they don’t have a clue.
Since next week we are going to analyze another silly weight loss advice that is in today’s time worth less than a chicken in a battery farm, make sure you subscribe for my news!
Good luck guys, we sure need it these days!
Lucky Shelly
