Weight Control Summary

Phoenix Fitness Hamilton, Fitness Consultant Leslie  says “don’t diet”… There are several disadvantages of severe calorie-restricted diets, including a loss of lean body tissue, possible malnutrition, metabolic disorders and a general feeling of fatigue.  High fat diets are very dangerous because they may result in malnutrition, and also because they reduce muscle mass.  Research on high protein diets has shown that they are not effective in reducing body fat and weight.  Excessive protein in the diet may upset water balance in the body.

One well-documented change that occurs during weight loss through dieting is the sustained reduction in resting metabolic rate.  Repeated cycles of weight loss and weight gain cause the body to increase its ability to conserve energy by slowing metabolism.  This ultimately leads to a greater difficulty in losing weight on future diets, and makes it easier to regain any weight that is lost.  This is the so-called yo-yo effect.  One explanation for the yo-yo effect is that when obese people lose weight, their fat cells actually become more efficient at storing fat.  This research supports the setpoint theory and explains the great difficulty obese people encounter in keeping the weight off without regular exercise.

In conclusion, the most effective and practical way to lower the setpoint and lower body fat is through a combination of regulare exercise, eating a diet without excessive calories that is high in complex carbohydrates and low in fat and sugar, and eating frequent, smaller meals, especially before mid-afternoon.  In light of the effects of proper food management on the body’s setpoint, it is not enough to be aware of  the total number of calories you eat:  the source of those calories and time of day when they are eaten is equally improtant.   Thus, a  “diet” should not be used as a method of achieving rapid weight loss, but rather as a permanent change in eating habits to ensure peoper weight management over an entire lifetime.

I invite you to book a complimentary Nutrition Consultation with me.  Call (905) 577-0626 or book with the front desk.

Leslie Wade

Guidelines for Weight Control

Twelve Tips From Twelve Hamilton Personal Trainers

1.  If energy input exceeds energy output, the excess calories are stored as body fat (it doesn’t matter if the extra food is carbohydrate, fat or protein – all foods are converted to body fat for storage in fat tissue).

2.  Regular exercise will increase energy expenditure, and has other benefits for weight control including lowering our “setpoint” (cardiovascular exercise), increasing lean body mass (weight training), increasing fat-metabolizing enzymes (cardiovascular exercise), and increasing your body’s metabolism (cardiovascular exercise and weight training).

3.  Your metabolic rate remains elevated above resting levels 30 minutes or longer after vigorous cardiovascular exercise.  This means that you continue to burn more calories for many minutes or even hours after your workout.

4.  To improve energy balance in favor of losing weight, decrease your caloric intake and choose foods that are high in complex carbohydrates (pasts, rice, potatoes, bread, cereals) and low in fat and sugar.

5.  When a healthy, sensible diet is combined with regular exercise, close to 100 percent of the long-term weight loss will be in the form of body fat.

6. The number of fat cells is largely determined prior to adulthood which stresses the importance of being physically active in our younger years, and then maintaining a high level of activity throughout your life.

7.  When adults get fatter, as a result of overeating, they are filling or enlarging existing fat cells rather than creating new ones.

8.  Increases in body fat as we grew older are largely due to a lack of regular physical exercise.

9.  Your weight loss should be gradual: no more than 1 kilogram (2lbs) per week.   This is the safe limit to reducing your fat stores.  If you lose greater than 1 kilogram per weak, you are likely losing lean body tissue (muscle), which will lower your metabolic rate and increase the likelihood that you will regain the lost weight.

10.  It is not possible to “spot reduce”: there is no evidence that fat is burned to a greater degree from the fat stores directly over the exercising muscle groups (i.e. abdominal fat is not necessarily burned when doing crunches).  The only way to burn body fat during your workout is to exercise continuously to maintain your heart rate in our target zone (i.e. 60 – 85% of your maximum heart rate).

11.  Eat at least 3 meals per day, with the majority of the calories before mid-afternoon. frequent smaller meals are better than fewer large meals.  Snacking is fine as long as they don’t increase your over-all daily caloric intake and you snack on healthy foods.

12.  For beginner to intermediate exercisers, exercise of low intensity and long duration is more effective for burning fat than exercise of high intensity and short duration.  For more advanced exercisers, higher intensity, shorter duration cardio-training can have a tremendous fat burning effect.

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Setpoint Theory

Researchers believe that each person has an internal control mechanism in the brain that maintains their weight at a constant level or setpoint.  This weight regulating mechanism controls both the appetite and the amount of fat stored.  It is believed that this mechanism operates in a manner similar to the way a thermostat controls the temperature in your house.  The higher the setpoint, the greater the fat storage and overall body weight.

If body weight decreases (as in dieting), the setpoint recognizes the change and triggers either an increase in the person’s appetite or makes the body conserve energy to maintain the “set” weight.  The body conserves energy by lowering the metabolic rate and by improving the food (fat) storing mechanisms.  Thus, when you diet, your weight-regulating mechanism sees your caloric restriction as a form of starvation, and its natural survival response is to improve energy storage as fat, the very thing you are trying to prevent!  Even though prolonged caloric restriction may temporarily lower weight and fat, the setpoint remains unchanged.  When your eating habits return to normal the fat is quickly regained as the body strives to reach a comfortable fat level (its setpoint).  This may explain the difficulty many people have with “keeping the weight off” once they have lost it.

Research suggests that our setpoint can be improved through lifelong dedication to proper nutrition and sensible eating habits, combined with regular workouts with your Hamilton personal trainer.   Specifically a  long-term diet high in complex carbohydrates (breads, cereals, pasta and rice) seems to have a positive effect on lowering the setpoint while regular continuous cardiovascular exercise also seems to lower the setpoint.  In addition, your Hamilton personal trainer will help you to increase lean body tissue , raise your  metabolism, and increase the body’s enzymes that break down fat which will result in safe weight (fat) loss when combined with a healthy diet containing the proper amount of calories.  In contrast, a persons setpoint seems to be increased by diets that are high in fats and refined carbohydrates (sweets, cakes and candy), and diets that severely restrict caloric intake.