Newsflash! Remembering the science of weight loss...

Well i was back at uni today for my first day of lectures and tutorials. And my goodness, what a learning curve!

I confess that in the last 12 months my brain has become less and less science/logic oriented and started relying too heavily on the silliness of personal experience. But today was a big wakeup call that reminded me of how i got to this lower weight, and what i have to do to keep it this way.

We had a brush up lecture on maintaining health through diet and exercise. And the lecturers again reminded me of what i was fast forgetting - that dieting makes you put on weight. I confess i've been moving into diet-zone a lot recently (which always ends up back in fat-ville, every single time!)... so i need to slow it down.

But all that above was said by one lecture slide... pictures really do speak a thousand words.

Goodness you really can't see it. But the one on the left: that shows what happens when you diet. ALL that black stuff is what you lose - but ALL that black stuff is water... WATER!!! and see that whitish stuff that drops a tiny bit at the beginning, but then forms a thick layer that never changes for the rest of the time - that is fat... and it DOESN'T CHANGE. Even worse, see the greyish stuff at the top, that shows a massive drop to a slow amount ---> bye bye Mr Muscle...

Looking at the picture on the right, look at the dark line. This is a rat that was fed a "typical" australian low-fibre, high-fat diet for a few weeks, and rapidly became obese... then, they made it eat a reduced-calorie diet, and made it lose a lot of weight in 11 days, so that it was almost back to where it started. But then, they put the rat back on the 'australian diet' again - and in 22 days, the rat had put the weight back on (plus even more!). And sure enough, they put the rat back on a reduced-calorie diet, and in 22 days (double the previous) the rat was back to its lower weight again... but when they then put the rat back on its fatty Aussie diet --> it only took 11 days for the rat to be even fatter than before --> and the weight just kept skyrocketing after that...

So that, my friends, is what "diet cycling" does to your metabolism...

So today i've gone off weight watchers and core and counting and trying to lose weight. Because i'm working my butt off to get fit and lean, and i don't want to see my poor body end up entirely fat and absolutely no muscle...! I'd rather be a size 10 with muscle and fat, than a wobbly and unhelathy size 8 who can't eat anything for fear of her weight ballloooning...

So i'm back to maintaining my weight, again, and for a long time. I think this next 10 kilograms is going to take about a year or two for me to lose. But if that be the case, so be it... At least i know at the moment i'm heavy and healthy, whereas another month of dieting and weight-loss obession could see me turn into light and flabby... I never want to go back to how i have been, and the current path of dieting that i'm following - is all too familiar... i've seen it in me before...

I'm back to trusting my instincts - core was on the right track. It was so close to being something wonderful, but i think it was still pushing too much focus on restriction... and restriction (for many, not all of us) tends to end up in us having the "on diet" "off diet" approach - which the graphs above show is not at all the best way to lose weight, but the best way to gain weight!

Oh and i learnt one other thing today --> fructose inhibits leptin production, (leptin = the satiety hormone that acts on your hypothalamus)... so whilst fructose may have a better affect on insulin than glucose, it makes you hungry and promotes fat deposition.... just thought i should point that out... so it doesn't make a good substitute for sugar --> use sugar, or nothing at all!

Doing a practical tomorrow that assesses my fitness and measure's my body fat... lets see how badly all the dieting has affected my fat/muscles levels... wish me luck!

xox Nikki