A good client of mine asked me to write an article about Weight watchers, how it could be bad to follow this type of diet. The problem is that every diet is good and bad; it only depends on what your motivations are. The point of the article is not to put down weight watchers or other diets available on the market, I want to clarify why you shouldn’t focus your attention on weight loss. I don’t like to qualify a diet as bad, because I applaud the fact that someone is taking a first step towards a healthier lifestyle. Like I said in a previous article, the only way to make a diet work is to stick with it. BUT a healthy diet doesn’t stop at weight loss or the way you look. It is so much more than that. Would you rather lose weight on the scale than losing bodyfat and stay at the same weight? If you are one of those who steps on the scale every morning wishing that the number would go down, and are on any type of diet, read on.
1- Using the BMI(Body mass index) as a reference
The body mass index is one of the ways for doctors to teach (in 1 or 2 minutes) someone about health and a healthy weight without taking too much time. Body mass index is defined as the individual’s body weight divided by the square of his height. The formulas universally used in medicine produce a unit of measure of kg/m2.
So let’s take my weight, I’m 195lbs and 5 feet 7 inches. On the chart I’m OBESE!!!! At 12% body fat??? I don’t think so. Now let’s take another example. The skinny fat chick. You see those girls doing cardio everyday at the gym, perfect shape and curves at all the right places. But the curves are actually well placed fat. Best examples; Paris Hilton . She is skinny, but no muscle whatsoever. However, on the graph, she could be qualified as normal (at least the weight….) or underweight. But if I would do her body fat, she would be around 18-20%, which is unhealthy for her weight. Another reason why I know she is the portrait of a skinny fat person is that she has a flat ass. 2 reasons why this would happen, very bad posture or she has a severe need of some muscle mass around that area. One of the first signs that someone has to start doing a little bit of muscle toning is flat or hanging buttocks. Have you seen her in a bathing suit? No ass and love handles = muffin top. What’s the solution? Well, love handles come from high carbohydrate intake and a lack of muscle mass. This means that there’s not enough protein intake and no physical activity, in other words, your system is eating muscle as a source of energy. That’s what the body does when he thinks he’s in starvation mode.
One of the diets that use BMI is weight watchers. Looking at someone`s BMI as the ideal weight, is very misleading to start with. Even someone fairly active could be qualified as obese. It’s no news usually that you have an excess of bodyfat but to be told that you are overweight or obese (when you’re not) , can put someone down, thinking that they have a much longer way to go then a just a couple of pounds. People need a reality check but not a slap in the face. Now imagine someone who decided to take charge and change his lifestyle. Started exercising, eat well and all, go to the first weigh in and BAM, the weight didn’t budge a pound. That is when a thorough bodyfat evaluation done by a REAL professional (not someone who took a weekend course on how to operate the weight watchers franchise….) comes in handy. When you start changing your habits, your body goes through a lot of changes like a gain of lean muscle mass, loss of bodyfat, intra and extra muscular water shifts….Someone could stay at the same weight and still be in a far better shape than they were before. Let’s say that you lose 5 pounds of fat but gain 5 pounds of lean muscle mass. If your weight is 150, it’s still going to be that, but a much healthier one. By gaining 5 pounds of lean muscle, you boosted your metabolism by 250 calories a day (every pound of muscle mass gained = 50 burned calories a day). I won’t even talk about all the positive changes that are taking places in your hormonal, digestive, cognitive and nervous system. Everybody is brainwashed on the fact that they have to lose the freakin weight and it’s the number one reason people don’t stick with ANY program. They don’t see the weight go down. So imagine the first timer who saw that the scale numbers didn’t budge despite all his effort, hard to keep the positive attitude. So what usually happens next is that they think they failed, resume their old habits OR they attack twice as hard. Ultimately leading them to eat less, exercise twice as much, which results in an unhealthy loss of muscle mass and hopefully bodyfat. The lesson will be that you have to train harder and eat less to have results, unfortunately leading to an unhealthy path. That is where the yoyo dieting shows its ugly head.
2- You don’t have to change your habits, just count the points.
Let’s take Miss Biz Ness as an example. Executive in a big Technology firm. Always has a power lunch or breakfast meeting with clients. Peer pressure made her take a chocolate soufflé as dessert for her power lunch. The problem is that she has almost spent all her points for her late supper that night. Will she be able to stay on track with her points? Let me tell you what happened in the rest of her day. Following her lunch, she’ll be back at the office for another meeting/presentation with a new client. About 30 min. into the presentation, the sugar from her dessert had done its job and suddenly a sugar drop will be inevitable. Head spinning, drop of pressure, dizziness and extreme weakness follows (3pm crash extreme case). She couldn’t remember the rest of the presentation. She had to eat something else to bring her blood sugar up. Unfortunately, if she ate something, she wouldn’t be able to eat supper and would look bad in front of the hopefully new client, so she tried to hang on but had to postpone the meeting for the following week. Sadly the firm lost the account. At night, she couldn’t resist because of the extreme hunger and a bad day at work (emotional eating) and ate a big meal consisting of forbidden foods, sweets and alcohol to sooth her mind of her problems. This is what happens in 90% of people on a DIET. Since they cheated and failed at following their plan, they will resume everything the next WEEK, not the next DAY.
3- What happens after you stop doing weight watchers?
Let’s say that for a good 3 months you changed every bad habit in your life like smoking, eat junk food and no physical activity whatsoever. In those 3 months, you’ve seen major results in your shape, weight and mental health. It’s normal that if you go back to your bad habits, everything is going to fall back the way it used too before you started your new lifestyle, no? The lesson learned here is that you can’t go back to your old habits and think you’ll still see great results. Your habits are the reason why you started a new lifestyle plan in the first place.
Another question related to that is if someone started training and gained muscle, is the muscle going to turn to fat after we stop training? The muscle does not literally turns to fat; actually, you keep your muscle mass but gain fat mass! When you start training, you kick start your metabolism telling him to burn more energy. That’s why when you start training seriously you have a bigger appetite. But when you stop working out, your metabolism and appetite doesn’t stop right away. So you continue eating as if you were training, but aren’t burning as much calories as you did before. Let’s say that before, your basal metabolic rate (amount of energy expended while at rest) was around 1800. When you add weight training it could go as high as 2700 calories, depending on your training frequency/intensity. If you want to lose fat, you would have to eat 2300 calories to make sure you didn’t burn muscle and bone mass as energy. If you suddenly stop training, you won’t stop eating. Your metabolism is still fired up but you are not burning as much calories. So you are back down to 1800 calories but still eating 2300-2400 cals. What happens is very simple; you store fat because of the excess calories.
4-You are allowed taking sweets and everything you want.
This is the catch phrase. Like any marketing strategies, this will get you in, or that’s the way you’ll go check their web site. Great for starters, this will motivate you to start and stay motivated throughout the process. But for someone who is used to weight training, higher intensity training or for people who have health problems like type 2 diabetes, cholesterol, or insulin resistance, most type of diet won’t cut it. Insulin resistance for example, simply means that your system does not produce the adequate levels of insulin for glycogen synthesis. Saying to someone who is insulin resistant that it is ok to eat a bit of sugar every day, could lead towards more complications like type 2 diabetes or cardiovascular disease. But why would you go towards sweets? Are you familiar with the saying, eating your emotions? We’ll that’s the reason why when you are in a stressful situation or when you had a terrible day, you rather eat comfort food than a big tuna salad. Eating sugar or high glycemic carbs lowers permanently the stress hormone called cortisol, which only puts a band aid on the problem. This nice comfort meal is nice on your head and might make you feel better, but it might be stored in places you will regret later on.
One thing I learned in my 15 years in the business is that the major source of weight gain in someone is due to a stress or an allergy, and usually, one leads to the other.
Stress can impair your digestion in a lot of ways. One of them is problems like hypochlorhydria and achlorhydria. It’s mostly when there is low or no gastric acid (HCI) in the stomach and in such conditions, there is greater risk of infections of the digestive tract. Usual symptoms are;
- belching or gas within one hour of a meal
- bloating and fullness shortly after eating
- loss of taste for meat
- nausea after taking supplements
- brittle fingernails
- undigested food in stool
- foul-smelling stools
- stomach pain
- bad breath
- loss of appetite
- estrogen buildup
- acne rosacea
- depression
Food Allergy is a result of improper digestion. When the food is not broken down properly, the local immune system identifies the particles as being unsafe and sends antibodies for the kill. If the gut wall is unhealthy and doesn’t block those infectious particles, they could go and lodge anywhere in the body, therefore, many symptoms are related to allergies. But those symptoms could appear only up to 3 days later, so it’s very difficult to identify the main culprit. You could train and diet all you want, if you don’t try to get rid of those bad food antigens, weight loss is not going to happen.
Each person may be hiding more complex problems. Remember that each person`s symptoms are different. I can’t stress enough the importance of the individualized evaluation, personalized diet and weight training program.
5-Weight watchers is a good path towards a healthier lifestyle, but is not made for the lazy and quick fixed people.
Mind you, this is true for all kinds of diet. I’ve seen this time and time again; people start to follow a diet and can’t commit more than a week. The thing with every change of lifestyle is that it takes time. Everybody wants to see results in a week. But unfortunately, let me tell you like it is, do you think that eating crap, going out every weekend and drinking alcohol, eating twice a day because you had no time for about 5-10 years would be easy to change? Do you think that you turn around in 1 week what you did for the last 1-2 or even 5 years? I see this every time someone comes in my office and think that they will see results in a week. When I say results, I mean 10 pounds in a week. Don’t get me wrong, it is possible. Eating all natural stuff , fresh fruits and meat, no man made food, no stress….so yes, it is possible. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again but expect different results….so don’t expect a six pack just by training but still keep the pasta and bread.
Time and stress are the main reasons people fail. Instead of preparing everything the night before, they get up and think “ok, what am I going to eat, let’s check my email in the mean time, oups, forgot I had a meeting this morning, so I’ll eat on the way there. Stop at starbucks to get super triple latte with a muffin and I’ll see for the rest of the day. “ I won’t even talk about the rest of the day. If you would prepare everything the night before, you would be able to resist the temptation of going out for lunch, you could have a great breakfast that would energize you for the rest of the day. Don’t forget that the first thing you eat in the morning will dictate how you’ll do for the rest of the day. Meaning that if you eat a fair amount of protein first thing in the morning, you speed up your metabolism by 25%, but carbs slows down your metabolism, it releases hormones to slow it down. I have the biggest results just by changing the breakfast.
Quick fixed people are persons who do not want to change their habits but think that by exercising they will burn the fat. If it could be that easy, I would have a lot less work. Everything starts with your eating habits. Think about it, if you don’t put gas in your car, impossible that the car will move. You are the car and the food is gas. Put cheap gas in your car, you’ll have problems in a matter of time, same thing with your food. The quality of your food will dictate how you’ll fell throughout the day. DO everything you have to do, eat greens, drink lots of water, eat 4-5 times a day, eat adequate amount of protein and it’s IMPOSSIBLE to have no results.
