Today we will discuss the difference between fat loss and weight loss roadblocks.
There are many roadblocks to fat loss for Americans and the list grows longer every day! It is now wonder that we are an obese society with more than half of our population suffering from pre-diabetes or Type II Diabetes right now. With Diabetes and many other diseases emanating from our obesity, sedentary lifestyles and diets full of carb and devoid of nutrition, we must attack this problem now. It is only getting worse and until we recognize the causes and counteract them, we are doomed to a very sick society.
Today we will discuss the difference between fat loss and weight loss, roadblocks to permanent fat loss, genetic programming of obesity, how to modify the control of your genes and treatment plans that work for my patients.
I do a body composition test on all of my new patients and then follow up with another body composition test 4 months later, even if my patients aren’t coming in for weight loss, I talk to them about the state of their body composition and what they need to do to be healthy. Let me start out by telling you that if you have removed the mirrors from your house to help your denial of your obesity, put them back. Ignoring a problem only makes it worse. My INBODY machine measures a person’s weight, her lbs. of fat, lbs. of muscle, % body fat, amount of retained fluid, and internal omental fat that is the highest risk for heart disease.
The INBODY print out that my patients go home with outlines the amount of fat they should lose and muscle they should gain to be healthy. I use this to explain that muscle burns calories and weighs more than fat for the same volume of tissue. The more fat you have and the less muscle you possess the worse your health is. It is fat and not weight that is a roadblock that prevents you from being healthy and long-lived. One of the reasons that I offer testosterone as the foundation of my treatment plan is because with age and poor lifestyle, we replace muscle with fat and never get it back even if we exercise as we age. It takes T to build muscle and after age 40 we have low T and therefore need to replace it to build muscle. Muscle mass burns calories, and it takes testosterone to optimally burn calories. Many of my patients on T Pellets, diet and aerobic exercise + weight training doesn’t lose weight in the first 4 months after initiation of T pellets, but they lose fat and gain muscle. This sets them up for losing total weight as time goes on, and not lose muscle! I have to re-educate patients every day who believe that losing weight is the goal, when losing fat, and gaining muscle is the only way to sustain your healthy body composition.
So here are a few quick facts:
- BMI is a poor way to judge obesity—Height and weight in the BMI computation does not judge good or poor health. It makes people with a lot of healthy muscle and low-fat look like they are unhealthy, and this method of judging health makes the skinny fat folks with low muscle mass and high fat look healthy! The only people it works for are the government agencies and insurance agencies that can compute a BMI easily—it’s an easy math problem! Easy is not necessarily accurate, and the BMI is misleading. It should be thrown out!
- If you have a lot of belly fat inside your abdomen (beer gut, or apple shape) you ARE at risk for heart disease and diabetes. The only exercise that helps this problem is aerobic exercise that makes you sweat at least 6 hours a week! PS It only works with a low carb diet!
- You can’t get healthy by either eating a low carb fresh diet, OR exercising, or just taking a diet pill, OR taking supplements….You must do all of it and keep it up the rest of your life! (except for the diet pills).
- You can overcome your genetics! There are genes that cause people who possess them to be hungry all the time, or to be obese, or to get Type II Diabetes, but the study of Epigenetics tells us that a healthy lifestyle can turn these genes off! Your family history is not the excuse you can use to allow you to be unhealthy and fat!
- The last and most important truism is that whatever you did when you were 20 years old DOES NOT work when you are 40! Your metabolism and hormone levels were different when you were young and believe it or not, your self-control over your eating and drinking of alcohol was better when you were young. Please don’t use that excuse for being sick and fat! EG. Starving yourself for a week will only lose muscle when your 40 and you will gain it all back and more after your fast is over!
So, our environment of advertising food at every commercial break and larger and larger plates, portions, cars to fit larger people and larger Barcaloungers is only fooling you. The government in the US advises us about being healthy without a medical degree…they just want you to buy what we are growing. Grains and corn…which make us fat! The BMI is an easy thing to calculate so the government goes for ease over truth, and tells you to look to only your BMI and if you are 25 or less you are healthy even if you don’t’ have a muscle in your body…..Sitting at a computer like I am now, only causes you to lose muscle and gain fat…that is what Covid’s working from home did to us…we don’t even walk to work anymore and most of my patients gained at least 15 lbs. over last year!
So, you have to struggle against advertising brainwashing you, the government we pay our taxes to telling us what is good for us while it only advises us what is good for the economy as a whole, and the misinformation that weight and not fat is the enemy.
My treatment plan is this:
1 Every day make an appointment with yourself to exercise for an hour, both aerobics and weight training.
- ONLY eat fresh or frozen veggies and fruit with lean meat, eggs and very little carbohydrate.
- Get mirrors back in your house and look at yourself every day
- Weigh yourself once a week and measure your waistline once a week
- If you can’t eat right, then write down everything you put in your mouth and you have to share it with someone you trust so you stay honest. Figure out what carbohydrates are your problem and don’t buy them.
- Turn off the TV and any other form of communication that brainwashes you to eat what commercials tell you to.
- Treat your type 2 diabetes to reverse it and get your body and metabolism back to normal.
- Replace your Testosterone and thyroid to normal healthy young levels with a doctor who is interested in making you healthier.
Best of luck. It isn’t easy, but if it was. This would not be an issue for any of us!
This Health cast was written and presented by Dr. Kathy Maupin, M.D., Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Expert and Author. www.BioBalanceHealth.com (314) 993-0963
