When you are certified as a nutritional and wellness consultant questions about how to lose weight and to get physically fit are always welcome. Answering questions and helping others in losing weight and getting healthy was the whole point of becoming certified. But what has left me scratching my damn head a few times is when I have been approached about losing weight only to be told one of the dumbest quotes that could possibly be spewed from ones pie hole.
“I don’t do healthy”.
What????
Well Skippy, why in the hell did you even ask about losing weight if you don’t do healthy?
It’s even more ironic when this is said in a defiant tone.
If you are the type who will state “I don’t do healthy”, have you ever thought about how dumb that sounds? You are only blessed with one life, why waste quality years with habits that will only serve to make you sick in the end? If you have the attitude that it is your life to live and you will live it how you want, more power to you. If you think your unhealthy habits only affect yourself and are of no concern to anyone else, think again Sally. Your unhealthy habits will always cause you to become a burden to someone else unless you decide to check out of life early by your own hand. And even then, someone will need to handle your estate and make sure that your ass gets a proper burial or cremation. Someone will always have to pick your pieces up behind you no matter what you want to believe. It is never all on yourself when your health finally takes a dump on you.
Do not eat too much protein.
If you have a problem with proper kidney function, you might heed this advice. It is true that those who suffer kidney problems need to watch their protein intake. However, even if you are a kidney patient, your body still needs protein to help build muscle, repair tissue and to fight infection. If your kidneys are compromised, excess protein can cause waste to build up in your bloodstream.
But for once, I wish that someone who spouts this non-sense about too much protein would give a definitive answer to exactly how much protein is too much for the healthy body. And because protein comes from multiple sources, please break it down to how much is too much of each source of protein. Can I eat more soy protein than I can beef? Should I consume more or less protein from fish than from dairy sources? These are all rhetorical questions unless you can give me a difinitive answer with reference material from respectable sources.
Watch your egg intake, you don’t want high cholesterol.
This is old outdated science that really needs to die on the vine. Dietary cholesterol does not cause you to have high cholesterol. Eating too much and getting fat and out of shape is the bigger culprit to having high cholesterol.
The risk of heart disease may be more closely tied to the foods that accompany the eggs in a traditional American breakfast – such as the sodium in the bacon, sausages, and ham, and the saturated fat or oils with trans fats used to fry the eggs and the hash browns. Most people can eat up to seven eggs per week with no increase in the risk of heart disease. Some studies have shown that this level of egg consumption may actually prevent some types of strokes. (1) I personally consume between 2 to 3 dozen eggs per week, and have total cholesterol under 200 with my good cholesterol at 51, and zero indications of inflammation in my body. Despite eating this many eggs year round, by watching my caloric and macronutrient intake, while also monitoring my weight and body fat percentages, I am at no risk of heart disease per my physician and my blood labs.
Sugar is not bad for you. You just need to eat it in moderation.
Yes, I have seen this quote and many more just like it on a few weight loss social media sights. Question: If sugar is not bad for you, then why the hell would you need to eat it in moderation? Sugar is found everywhere we look in our food products. You will find it in the obvious places such as in candy and in soft drinks, but you will also find it in many processed foods from marinara sauce to peanut butter.
In the US, added sugars account for 17% of the total calorie intake for adults and up to 14% for children. Dietary guidelines call for no more than 10% of your daily calories come from sugar. Sugar is a major cause of obesity, and many chronic diseases such as diabetes.
From Healthline.org (2):
1. Consuming too much added sugar, especially from sugary beverages, increase your risk of weight gain and can lead to visceral fat accumulation.
2. Consuming too much added sugar increases heart disease risk factors such as obesity, high blood pressure and inflammation. High-sugar diets have been linked to an increased risk of dying from heart disease.
3. High-sugar diets can increase androgen secretion, oil production and inflammation, all of which can raise your risk of developing acne.
4. A high-sugar diet may lead to obesity and insulin resistance, both of which are risk factors for diabetes.
5. Too much sugar can lead to obesity, insulin resistance and inflammation, all of which are risk factors for cancer.
6. A diet rich in added sugar and processed foods may increase depression risk in both men and women.
7. Sugary foods can increase the production of AGEs (advanced glycation end products), which can accelerate skin aging and wrinkle formation.
8. Eating too much suar can accelerate the shortening of telomeres, which increase cellular aging.
9. High-sugar foods can negatively impact your energy levels by causing a spike in blood sugar followed by a crash.
10. Eating too much sugar may lead to Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease, a condition in which excessive fat builds up in the liver.
11. Consuming too much sugar may worsen cognitive decline, increase gout risk, harm your kidneys and cause cavities.
Now I ask, how can a reasonably intelligent individual still consider sugar a perfectly harmless ingredient? Drinking alcohol is pretty harmless too, right?
I do not want to lift weights because I do not want to bulk up.
The absurdity is when this statement is made by one who is already overweight or obese. Strength training is not going to bulk you up unless you want it to, and even then you are going to have to work very hard at lifting in order for it to bulk you up. If you are a female, you will have to work even harder than a man in order to bulk up as your body produces estrogen instead of testosterone.
Strength training will increase your lean muscle mass which is a desired affect as lean muscle drives your metabolism. Again, you are not going to bulk up unless you work very hard at it. When you are obese and lose weight, almost everyone will also lose lean muscle mass along with their body fat which slows your metabolism and makes it more difficult to burn off body fat. If you lose, lets say 50 pounds, and then regain that same 50 pounds without having done anything to increase your lean muscle, then at your original weight your body fat ipercentage is now going to be even higher than before. Everytime you do this yo-yo dieting while never increasing or maintaining your muscle, you are only harming your metabolism and becoming “skinny fat” at your reduced weight. Even if you are at your desired weight, when you still have a too high percentage of body fat, you are not any healthier than you were when obviously obese.
1. Strength training increases your lean muscle mass which increases your metabolism in order to more efficiently burn body fat.
2. Strength training when done right is a great cardio-vascular exercise. Doing a routine that involves compound muscle group lifts will increase your cardiovascular health. Doing little light weight dumbbell exercises that isolate single muscles are really not going to do much for a beginning lifter except give you muscle and strength imbalances which can lead to injury if you do not know what you are doing.
3. A lean muscular body is a healthy body and to most people more pleasing to the eye whether they are looking at another individual or in the mirror at their own reflection.
I look good even though I am fat. I embrace my obesity.
There are many versions of the above statements and every one of them are bullshit. I can believe that some may believe this on the surface, but deep inside, no one could be truly happy when they are obese.
1. Odds are you are not truly happy with the way you look.
2. Obesity causes all kinds of health issues over time. Do you enjoy type diabetes, heart disease, cancer, inflammation? Stay fat long enough and one of these issues will eventually affect you to see if you are truly ok with obesity. It is difficult to enjoy life when you are chronically ill.
3. Do you embrace not being able to walk through a store and having to resort to using one of their mobility scooters? It would be hard to convince most people you embrace not being able to breath when trying to walk around a store or shopping mall for a few minutes.
4. Are you comfortable when flying and you have to ask for a seat belt extender because what the airline has provided as standard issue on the seat will not buckle around you? I can just hear the great pride in your voice when you ask for these…
5. Does it bring you joy to take your kids to an amusement park, and to not be able to enjoy any of the rides with them because you either do not fit in the seats, or your health issues keep you from getting on?
6. Did you ever just binge out on some kind of junk food and then felt pride afterwards when you looked at your obese reflection in a mirror?
I am big boned and will never be petite and/or in shape.
There are many versions of this statement too. This thinking is a lame cop out unless you have a medically diagnosed ailment or injury which keeps you from getting in shape. If you are otherwise healthy, you can do something about your weight and level of fitness no matter how you are built. Everyone can watch what they consume when they learn to exercise discipline and self control. At David’s Way, we give you the tools to eat healthy and within your caloric and macronutrient needs. We also have written plenty on beginning fitness regimens that anyone can accomplish. You can enter “fitness” into our search bar and find everything we have written.
If in person you were to tell me that you were too big boned to get thinner, I would do something that you could do for yourself. First I am going to look at your wrist because that is the leanest part of your body. If your wrist is lean, this will tell the tale if you are truly big boned or not. Your wrist will be big. If your wrist is big, I would get a feel of it and see how soft it is. If your wrist would otherwise be small to normal size, you are not big boned. But even if you do have a large frame, you can still do something about your weight and level of fitness. Whether you want to believe it or not, there is always something you can do to improve your health through losing body fat and working at your lean muscle mass.
In closing, I know my points can be pretty blunt and come without sugar coating of any kind. My intent is not to be hurtful, but I do intend to be thought provoking. The truth is I want you to consider these points and then do something beneficial to help yourself to live a healthier and happier life. We expend a tremendous amount of time and resources in keeping this blog going and on the cutting edge. This is for your benefit. We owe it to our children to be healthy and positive role models for them to emulate as they grow and become adults. There is nothing sadder than seeing a 9 year old who is not only obese but also suffering adult ailments such as high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes. This happens, and you can read up on various weight loss social medias where children are having these issues. Again, we owe it to the youth to live healthy, to show them the way forward. Think of this, if a child has never learned healthy lifestyle habits, how are they going to raise their children? Is it reasonable to think that an unhealthy child who grows into an unhealthy adult is going to teach their own children how to be healthy, and to do so with any credibility? No, it’s not likely.
(1) Mayoclinic.org
(2) Healthline.org