Eating to Lose Fat

Every year thousands of diet experts flood the marketplace with diet innovations. There is always talk of something newer, better, and promising faster results. There are so many conflicting schools of thought on how to lose weight; it could provoke more fuel for debate than politics or religion.

In most cases much of it is just the same advice spun and delivered in a different order. In my research, the easiest way to understand weight loss comes from the standpoint of understanding what sugar is and the role it plays in losing weight.

All foods contain some form of sugar. There are many resources online that are known as glycemic food lists and charts. These charts list name brand foods, beverage, fast foods, produce, dairy and everything under the sun that one could possibly eat. It tells you the measure of sugar it equates to when consumed. This may not mean that the food has sugar added in it, but when it breaks down into your body it converts into a sugar. If you consume too much of foods that are high on the glycemic food list, your body will convert it into sugar and the excessive amounts get gelled into fat.

The reverse is, if you are overweight and you eat foods that are low on the glycemic index, your body will release the stores of sugar and fat. This is the process known as "releasing the grease" a term dubbed by PBS health expert Covert Bailey. When you are overweight your goal is to eat in a manner in which you can allow your body to unload your stored fat. Reality shows give the misconception that this can only be done by exercise. When it actuality it can only be done by dieting. When your body gets used to not eating foods high in sugar and carbohydrates it has to compensate by burning off what you have in storage.

Suzanne Somers noted her research with Dr. DianaSchwarzbein, MD in her book "Get Skinny on Fabulous Food". Dr.Schwarzbein explained weight loss from an endocrinology standpoint where she emphasizes in order to truly lose weight, you must eliminate breads and starches completely until you have lost your goal weight. When you re-introduce breads and starches you should ideally eat them for one serving every three days. It takes s total of 3 days to burn off the sugars from one portion of bread and starch.

In an average diet, people typically consume a bread or starch three to five times a day. We wonder why one in five people are diagnosed as pre-diabetic or with type two diabetes. I work with people who will do the coffee and donut in the morning and then they do not eat all day until dinner. They will then have meat and potato with a vegetable. They look in the mirror and they see fat and they think it's due to lack of exercise. The fat is a result of bad food combining. The starch filled donut they ate in the morning and the potato at night elevated their insulin production and the excess has accumulated into fat. If they substituted for coffee and fruit in the morning and they had the meat and vegetable in the evening, they would be eating in a manner to release excess stored fat.

Dr. Atkins had similar findings. He had printed in the back of his diet book a glycemic food chart for his readers to quickly reference. The only difference is that his diet would simulate a process called ketosis to lose weight. You would eat in a manner to frequently urinate keytones and thus it would pull off weight. The problem was his diet called for eating way too much meat. You could lose weight with eating plates full of bacon with a dozen eggs as long as you omit the hash browns and toast. You could eat five hamburgers if you throw away the bun. The consumption of too much meat under this diet created high levels of uric and lactic acid. Even though people were losing weight they felt soreness, and burning muscles, acid upset, and vulnerable to various kidneys issues and disorders. In addition, I know many people who were on the Atkins diet who would sell their first born for a bagel. Most people would become ferociously tempted to eat carbohydrates after being on this diet for awhile and then pile on weight after giving in and returning back to eat them. The diet was extreme and most people did not have a long term track record on it because it lacked the proper way to combine food to not crave carbohydrates and starches.

The proper way to combine food to lose fat is to have your serving of meat, poultry, or fish to only equal the size of the palm of your hand. Your vegetable portion should be the largest portion on your plate. If you are extremely overweight, omit starches and high carbohydrate foods until your reach your goal weight. When you reach your goal, you can maintain your weight loss by limiting your starch intake to every three days.