Do you eat enough to lose weight?
It’s paradoxical, and hard to believe, but I know we’ve all been brainwashed. We’ve been led to believe that you get overweight from over-eating. But what if we have it reversed? All of my skinny friends eat like rock stars! (thin ones). They don’t binge eat, they just eat decent sized meals when they’re hungry. All my heavier friends eat like rabbits. And the research shows that the less you eat, the more you slow down your metabolism. In fact, if you chronically under-eat, you have probably damaged your metabolism to the point where you won’t lose weight unless you are really starving.
In fact, that’s what happened to me. I went on one of those “cleansing fasts” where you only had apple cider vinegar, lemon juice and maple syrup (VERY small portion) for TEN DAYS!! Everyone said that you would only be hungry for the first couple of days, and then you got a burst of energy and felt great.
That didn’t happen for me. But I am VERY disciplined and despite being painfully hungry, I only drank that disgusting combination. My hunger didn’t go away after a couple of days. And even worse is that you find yourself noticing all the food commercials on TV, all the food stores wherever you drive and all the people eating everywhere. It was like the world was conspiring to make you eat despite your best intentions. But I didn’t…. I stuck to that fast completely.
I had so much extra time because I didn’t have to shop, cook, eat, and then clean up from dinner. It amazed me how much time we actually spend around meals! And when you don’t eat, you really don’t have a lot of energy to do practically anything. Even my sleep was disturbed because I was dreaming about food! It’s kind of like when you really have to pee when you’re asleep, you dream about looking for a bathroom!
To end this long story about my 10 day fast – I lost 14 pounds – but that was the first time I did the “Master Cleanse”. I was THRILLED. And guess what? I went back to eating- and remember, I was a chronic dieter, so I still didn’t eat lots of food when I DID eat. I gained that weight back REALLY fast. Within a month I had regained the 14 pounds and 2 additional punishment pounds.
And what did I do? I thought, there MUST be something the matter with me- my thyroid must be screwed up…. Well, not eating gives you “functional hypothyroidism” where you don’t have the disease itself, but the symptoms!
I was disgusted, once again and stopped dieting for about six months, and then did another stupid diet, with the same kind of results, but I sure didn’t lose 14 pounds in 10 days like the first time I did that fasting! In fact, when I tried to do the Master Cleanse the second time, I lost 1/4 of a pound in 10 days!!!!!! I swear I’m telling you the truth!!
Stress Causes Dieting
Overweight people generally don’t feel too great about their body. They probably felt that way before they were overweight, and that’s why they started over-eating and then dieting. Stress makes you feel awful, and food can be a drug to make you feel better. It’s even called “comfort food”. Some people will reach for drugs or alcohol, and you know how that makes your life even worse and ends up ruining your life! Don’t reach for the food (or those other really bad things), but DO stress relief that will make you feel better.
Diets Make You Gain Weight
this is me when I started dieting
this is me when I started dieting
I starved myself my entire life, to the point where it was difficult to eat a full meal. I started dieting when I was a size 10- yes, like those crazies I mentioned above who want to be thinner (and richer). Look what it did for Whitney Houston!
Here’s the fact that the Diet Industry either doesn’t want you to know, or hasn’t figured out: Under-eating, avoiding certain foods, and dieting is depriving yourself is a mindset that attracts overweight. It’s the way the Law Of Attraction works! It’s been proven by BRAIN science as well! This is a overweight mindset. It’s stressful to your body, and to your mind. Once you’re stressed, your body shifts into fat storage mode, and your diet is doomed to failure!
In over 80{5b8e831512cf0c284f7edae7fc403e9a09e5b1736c5b1d60e4451a29dc064ebe} of cases, people are stressed, and they may use “comfort food” as a drug of choice to treat the stress. So are they overweight because they ate the food, or are they gaining weight because they are STRESSED?
Ta Da: STRESS is the cause of overeating; over-eating is the symptom of stress.
Most women I talk to under-eat chronically, and that is the reason that they can’t lose weight. Their metabolisms have slowed down, their hair is thin, (outer third of their eyebrow is thin or gone), have cold body temperature, don’t sleep well, and a host of other problems. The good news is: #1- you can EASILY self-diagnose a slow metabolism yourself; AND you can re-set your metabolism.
In fact, a good friend of mine who saved me from dieting is Matt Stone from 180º Health (on Facebook). I heard him talking about how diets and under-eating are actually the thing that makes you gain weight – and it was like a lightbulb went on over my head. My life suddenly came into focus and I KNEW, BEYOND a scintilla of a doubt, that he was right!
If you are young enough, his premise is that you have to start RE-FEEDING yourself to slowly teach you body that you’re not starving. You should eat all the food that you fear, and gain some weight, and then your body will naturally start losing the excess weight. Now I don’t recommend this for us older crowd. We may have done so much damage to our metabolism that this flip to fast metabolism is not going to happen; and you’ll just end up gaining weight, and not losing it. But it’s certainly worth your investigation and reading his books. He’s a funny guy, but he does have a potty mouth- so if that offends you, either don’t read it, or just laugh a lot.
And when you are ready to really manage your stress and NOT use food, and want to talk about my Stop Emotional Eating program, start by taking the evaluation and a no-cost last strategy session to see if this program is right for you. What have you got to lose?