5 Pounds Is 5 Pounds Any Way You Can Get It. NO!!

Yesterday I was sitting in Dr. E's waiting room and couldn't help but to hear a conversation a lady was having on her phone. She was probably in her late 40's or early 50's and wasn't obese or large by any extent, however, I can see where she might want to lose 10 pounds or so. Some things she said...

"I know. I try and I try and nothing happens."

"The scale just won't move."

"Well, 5 pounds is 5 pounds however you can get it, right?"

"I barely eat anything and am not losing weight!"

It took all the restraint I had in my body to not knock the phone out of her hand and shake her! But I realized it isn't her fault that she is uninformed about how to go about losing weight and considered handing her my business card.

Let's look at the statements she made and my responses.

"I know. I try and I try and nothing happens." What exactly do you try? How long do you stick with a plan before you call it quits? Do you weigh yourself every day and panic? Do you go by how your clothes fit?


"The scale just won't move." Again, how long are you giving to the process? And what are you doing for exercise? How are your clothes fitting? What are your measurements doing? The scale is not the be all and end all!

"Well, 5 pounds is 5 pounds however you can get it, right?" Hell NO! I know in the Devil wears Prada we all learned we are just one stomach flu away from our goal weight, but really! If I lose 5 pounds, I want it to be squishy fat going away, not tight muscle! Sick people are skinny skinny and look like shit because they have lost all their muscle. Skinny fat people look good in clothes, but terrible naked because they have no muscle to hold the skin taut. I'm not saying we all need to beef up like bodybuilders, but 5 pounds IS NOT 5 pounds.

"I barely eat anything and am not losing weight!" Oh my gawd this is when I really wanted to shake her! What does this mean anyway?? Seriously, if you are on Survivor or Naked and Afraid, then yeah, you are barely eating anything and you will lose serious pounds. However, in cushy USA, our Western Diet means there is NO WAY you are "barely eating anything" for any significant stretch of time. Yes, you may eat 700-1000 calories for 3-4 days, but then you go out to eat and have a glass of wine and easily consume 3000 calories in one day. And those salads that people order that think are low-cal can have more more calories and fat than a burger! Don't believe me? Go to Zaxby's nutrition page and look at the salads. And those numbers are without dressing!

You know what happens in your body when you eat like that? It becomes very conditioned to feast or famine and becomes a storage machine. It realizes that there may be days you don't feed it, so it's going to store every single excess calorie it gets. A ballpark basal metabolic rate estimator is to say you need 10 calories for every pound you weigh to keep you exactly as you are while lying in bed resting. So if you weigh 150 and eat 1500 calories a day and do nothing but lay in bed,  your body needs that 1500 to keep it running. Add in daily activity and that number can jump up a lot.

Of course, if you want to lose weight you think, "OH! I'll just eat 1000 and then my body will go down to 100 pounds! Bingo!" But it doesn't work that way. Your body wants to stay exactly where it is and will fight you every step of the way. If you eat significantly under your BMR (adjusted for daily activity) YOU WILL NOT SEE A CHANGE IN YOUR BODY!

I'm sorry if this is ranting and rambly, but every single person that I have worked with has been significantly under eating for their body and thus was seeing no results from their diet or gym time. The trick to success is to spend some time fueling your body 100%, then gently back down. Your body wants to fight you, so you have to work with it.

So to the lady at Dr. E's, I'm sorry I didn't offer to help you. You just don't know.

Stay Strong Y'all!

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