Die Diet, Die!

Diets don't work. Really. Sure you can lose weight with diets, but making your diet your primary focus (which is what diets do – hence the name), does not address the problem.

Look at it this way, if (before they were outlawed) your neighbor had tossed a Lawn Dart that inadvertently crossed your shared fence and landed directly in your noggin and you went to the doctor and his or her solution was simply to shoot your head full of Novocain and then send you home – well let's just say I am quite certain you'd never be going back to that quack again. Yet, we go back to diets over and over again, even though each time we only receive temporary fixes that don't address the real issues at hand.

Much like the doctor who treats the symptom (pain in the head) rather than the issue (there is a lawn dart sticking out of your head), we treat the symptom (weighing too much) rather than the real issue (unhealthy lifestyle and bodies that are bad fat burners) when we go to diets over and over again, only to never quite lose all the weight we needed to lose and frequently gaining much of it, if not all of it, back.

We don't need Novocain (diets) to mask the issue and when we make a particular “diet” the primary way we lose weight, that is actually what we are doing. We are probably losing some weight, but in the end we are not transforming our bodies into lean bodies – just lighter bodies.

You can not permanently become a skinny person on a diet. End of story. Diets do not produce muscle. Worse yet overweight people actually store up more fat from the calories they do eat than skinny people (I know, I know – life is very cruel). You need to change your body to that of a lean person not a lighter person. You need to be treating the real issue not the symptom.

There is only one way to do this. Exercise. Plenty of skinny people, while not over weight, are over fat...because they don't exercise. Even blessed with naturally high metabolism, they are very unhealthy because their Body Mas Index (indicator of body fatness) is high and it is always a big surprise to friends when they have heart problems. A diet will not fix that situation. Exercise will.

A diet will not fix my issue (or yours). Exercise will. And not just a walk around the block every day. While that is a good start, it is not what your body needs to build more muscles to convert yourself to a lean fat burning machine rather than the fat producing machines that we over-fat people are.

You need, at least 4 times a week, to exercise for more than 20 continuous minutes (no stopping and starting) at 65-80 percent of your maximum heart rate. Now, forget about that “65-80 percent of your maximum heart rate.” Don't forget about doing it, just don't worry about calculating it. We could learn to do it and to measure our heart rate while exercising – but where's the fun in that. Just use one of these two measures. After 12 minutes you should either be breathing deeply but not gasping for air or you should only be able to carry on limited conversations not tell stories. After you hit 20 minutes you are in the zone for turning fat marbleized muscle in to lean mean fat burning machines.

I do need to say, the RIGHT diet will help you get to your lean body faster, but it should not be your primary focus – that should be exercise.

Since my last post, I've dropped another 2 lbs. That's a total of 24 lbs in a little over 4 weeks. I had hoped for 25 in 4 weeks, but that's still pretty good!

Keep at it – you can do this! And, please, let me hear from you. What do you want to hear more about?