Although genetics and aging play contributing roles in some people, for most people they are not in and of themselves important factors in being overweight, as I explain below. Rather, there are five main factors that cause people to become metabolically challenged and make it difficult for them to lose weight even when they faithfully follow a weight-loss diet. These "fat factors" all influence metabolism. They are:
- Yo-yo dieting. Losing and gaining significant amounts of weight (thirty pounds or more) again and again.
- Crash dieting. Going on a drastically low-calorie diet.
- Sedentary lifestyle. Getting too little exercise.
- Garbage in. Overeating the wrong kinds of foods with too much sugar, fat, and synthetic chemicals, and too few nutrients.
- Chronic stress. Being on constant alert from physical and emotional pressures.
- Hormone Imbalance. Why you cannot blame your genes.
Dieting
As mentioned above, your body sees crash dieting as an emergency situation called "starvation" It causes you to burn protein before fat, as fat is more valuable for protecting the body, so when you gain the weight back, it is mostly in the form of fat leaving you with a higher proportion of fat to muscle than before you began the diet. The loss-gain pattern of yo-yo dieting similarly shifts your body composition. As you repeatedly diet and gain and lose, your body fat goes up while your muscle mass goes down or stays the same. Even if it's the same thirty-five pounds you have been bouncing around since the dawn of time, you may have noticed that each time you gain it back, you are fatter. Your clothing feels tighter even though you may weigh the same as when you first started dieting. That's because fat weighs one-half what muscle does. So, for example, when you lose twenty pounds of weight as body fat, it looks like you've lost forty pounds.
This change in body composition is one of the major problems I see with a lot of my clients they have completely ignored what they are doing to their physiology and are only concentrating on the number on the scale. They are not considering whether they are losing fat or muscle, just as long as they see the scale move. Now, remember I explained that when you lose weight as body fat, it looks like you've lost about twice as much weight? Well, the opposite is true when you gain the weight back after dieting. For example, let's say a patient who is 5'5" comes to see me. Let's say she started out weighing 180 pounds. Of that, 60 pounds were fat, meaning she had 35 percent body fat. She crash dieted and lost 35 pounds, which brought her weight down to 145. However, only 18 pounds of her weight loss was fat; the other 17 pounds was a combination of lean muscle and water. When she started to eat normally again, she quickly gained back 25 pounds as body fat, plus 10 pounds of muscle and water. She gained back 7 more pounds of body fat, leaving her with 4 percent more body fat than when she started, even though she weighs the same as when she started. Her body composition has changed in that her lean body mass (muscle) went down a bit from the weight loss and her fat mass has gone up from the weight gain. The next time she dieted she had to lose even more fat to get results. This constant gaining back of body fat is what makes it so difficult to lose weight. Each time she loses and gains weight her body fat will go up even further. This scenario of gain, lose, gain more, lose less is very typical, but my program breaks that cycle.
Genetics
Your genetic heritage predisposes you to a certain body type how much fat you carry and where you carry it. Yes, here's another thing we can blame on our parents. We've all seen families where almost everyone has the same shape. Some are endowed with a lean body type, some are of medium build, and some are solid and rounded. Body type is often tied to metabolic rate, with thin types having a higher metabolism and more cushioned types having a slower metabolism. Interestingly, there is an impressive amount of evidence indicating that people who have inherited the body type that tends to store excess fat around their waists are at higher risk for serious diseases such as heart disease and diabetes, conditions that run in families.
Gender
Whether you are a man or woman also influences your body composition. Nature has endowed the average man with a lower fat-to-muscle ratio than the average woman. (I know, I know, I don't think this is fair, either!) For a woman in good shape, it's normal to have a body fat composition of between 18 and 25 percent. For a man in good shape, it's between 10 and 18 percent. So, because our body fat is so much higher than men's in general, we women have a slower metabolism than men, even men who are metabolically challenged. However, a fat man will have a higher fat ratio than a slim woman, and men who repeatedly diet and gain back the weight they have lost can also end up with a higher proportion of body fat and a sluggish metabolism. So, men don't escape completely and there is some fairness, after all.
When we look at studies of very overweight people, the women have approximately 40 percent body fat and the men have approximately 26 percent body fat. Both are considered to be proportionately overweight, but a woman has a higher hurdle to get over. This is why men in general have an easier time losing weight than women do, even if they are overweight. It's much more work to go from 40 percent to 25 percent than it is to go from 26 percent to 18 percent. Take, for example, the women you see in bodybuilding magazines. A 5'8" woman may weigh as much as 150 or even 160 pounds. Yet, she doesn't look overweight because she has only 10 percent body fat. Women with this much muscle must eat about 6,000 calories a day or they get too thin. Of course, this is a severe example, and I am not by any means suggesting that you should have this as your goal. I'm just highlighting the fact that her muscle mass is so high compared to her body fat that her metabolism is almost on overdrive.
It may be small consolation, but women's higher fat ratio is a survival advantage. In times of starvation, we can stay alive, nurtured by our more plentiful fat stores, for longer periods of time than men. In addition, women need a certain amount of fat to produce female reproductive hormones. Women and young girls who are very lean (such as athletes, anorectics, and extreme bodybuilders) stop menstruating and have trouble conceiving, carrying their babies to term, and breast-feeding. When we lose too much fat, fertility goes down, but it is really difficult to get down to this point, and this is why the women of some developing countries where there is famine can still have children.
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