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by
Konstantin Monastyrsky
Diets fail because their promoters intentionally
obfuscate the loss of actual body fat with the loss of phantom body
weight made primarily from the reduction of food volume, body water,
and stools in the first few weeks of any restrictive diet. What comes
next is known in the trade as the “weight loss plateau” — a stubborn
inability to lose weight while dieting, and the primary reason behind
diet failures. To avoid becoming a victim of this well-practiced
swindle, watch on...
Watch on
YouTube.
Watch the next episode.
Transcripts
Greetings,
In this episode I will decipher for you one of the most
baffling complications of practically all weight reduction diets: a
stubborn weight loss plateau, or a seeming inability to lose weight
after the initial precipitous weight loss, even though calories intake
remains exactly the same.
I discovered the true reasons behind this phenomenon,
and the practical ways to overcome it while investigating the
shortcomings of the Atkins diet for my book entitled “Fixing Up The
Atkins Diet: Why Dr. Atkins Is Dead, You are Still Overweight, And the
Debate Rages On.” [link]
I actually credit this discovery with helping myself to
finally attain my own ideal size and weight, and stay that way for over
a decade now.
As all breakthrough discoveries go, this one is
remarkably simple too: the weight loss plateau happens because doctors,
nutritionists, and celebrities who develop and promote weight reduction
diets do not make a distinction between the loss of body weight and the
loss of body fat.
I repeat: the weight loss plateau happens because diet
promoters and dieters alike fail to recognize the difference between the
loss of body weight and the loss of body fat. To understand what I mean,
let's review the most basic
physiology of weight loss:
There are two principal components of body weight —
constant weight and variable weight:
— The variable weight is a sum of all digestive fluids
inside your GI tract, undigested foods inside your stomach and the small
intestine, the stools inside your large intestine, and water that can be
safely lost with sweat, urine, and perspiration. This variable component
of your weight represents between 15 to 30 lb depending on your
original diet, current weight, and digestive health.
— On the other hand, the constant weight is everything else — blood, lymph,
saliva, and remaining digestive fluids, the weight of your skin, bones,
internal organs, muscles, and, of course, adipose tissue, or body fat —
the sole substance you actually want to get rid of.
Variable weight swings from day to day depending on the
amount of foods and fluids consumed and expelled. A day on the beach or
an hour in the hot tub can, for example, reduce your weight by several
pounds simply from sweating.
Constant weight, on the other hand, remains stable for
longer stretches of time because loss of body fat alone is quite slow on
any diet, and requires time to produce measurable results.
In practical terms, this difference between variable
and constant weight means the following: when you commence any
restrictive diet, the first 15 to 30 lb of your weight loss are almost
exclusively represented by the following five components:
● First, a reduction in the total weight of foods
that you have consumed since starting the diet. It may be considerable,
especially if you used to eat a lot more foods by weight and volume;
● Second, a reduction in digestive fluids. As soon as you
start eating less, your body reduces the amount of saliva, gastric, and
pancreatic juices involved in digestion. This amount ranges from 6 to 7
quarts per day, and may be reduced in half while dieting.
● The third component is a loss of water throughout your body,
particularly with urine. This happens because all low-carbs diets have a
pronounced diuretic effect related to metabolic ketosis.
● The fourth component represents a dehydration related to significant reduction
of fluids that make up the largest part of all regular foods, but
particularly sweet fruits, starchy vegetables, and sugary juices.
● Finally, the reduction of stools passing
through your bowels is the fifth component of variable weight loss. As you reduce food intake, and particularly dietary
fiber in high-calorie processed food, such as fiber fortified morning
cereals, the total volume of stools inside the large intestine may drop
by several pounds.
I refer to the total of all of the above variable
losses as phantom weight. This universally and intentionally ignored
fact of human physiology is behind the ubiquitous promise of the near
instant weight loss of 10 to 20 lb on the covers of diet books,
supermarket tabloids, and ready-to-eat diet plans.
This precipitous loss of phantom weight also explains
why so many people yo-yo back to their original weight as soon as they
stop dieting — the cumulative weight of foods, digestive juices, water,
and stools starts to come back the moment you return to your usual fare.
A quick reduction of the waistline is another popular
diet swindle. As your stomach, intestines, and bowel clear out their
respective content, the waistline around them shrinks down a few sizes
as well, even though all the fat under the belly remains exactly where
it was before the diet.
So, let's summarize what I have just described:
— Anyone commencing reduced calorie diets will
demonstrate some loss of weight, but this is not a loss of actual body
fat, but a loss of phantom weight related to the reduced intake of foods
and fluids.
— Next, practically all restrictive diets demonstrate a phantom
weight loss at the expense of displaced body fluids. You can accomplish
pretty much the exact same effect by restricting fluid intake for a few
days or just sweating out in a hot tub.
— Likewise, when you encounter or can‘t overcome a weight loss
plateau, it actually means that your diet is way too generous for your
particular body type and rate of metabolism.
— Finally, if you experience a rapid weight increase after
resuming a regular diet, it means, ironically, that your diet had caused
you to gain even more fat that was simply concealed by a loss of
variable weight.
At this point you may be asking yourself a rightfully
indignant question:
— But why did not all those diet books I have been
reading for so long tell me any of that?
Three reasons:
● First, their authors simply did not know or did not
want to know about this unsavory phenomenon.
● Second, telling readers the hard truth — that it
actually takes a lot of time and effort to lose body fat gets in the way of
selling no-sacrifice diets and cookbooks, web site memberships, classes,
medical tests, and diet-branded foods and snacks.
● Finally, to top it off, the unexplained weight loss
plateau allows diet promoters to blame you for diet failure, rather than
accepting or acknowledging their responsibility for their bad advice or,
most likely, gross
incompetence.
Since I am not constrained by the goal of selling
millions of books and tons of low-calorie snacks, I can tell you the hard truth:
if
you are contemplating losing weight, it must be body fat, not undigested
food, water, and stools. And losing actual body fat takes time, because
even on a very restrictive diet you can, at best, lose between one and
three ounces of fat daily.
That said, once you understand and accept the
difference between the loss of body fat and the loss of mere phantom
weight, you will have a much easier time attaining your desired weight
and size without encountering a weight loss plateau or other
diet-breaking complications.
The next episode, entitled “Why Do You Need a
Professionally Prepared Weight Loss Plan?” answers this very question.
In a nutshell, a professionally-prepared weight loss plan is needed to
set forth realistic weight loss goals, to estimate the duration of your
diet, to anticipate possible complications, to devise a proper
transitional diet, to prevent weight loss plateau, to eliminate diet
spoilers, to avoid medical errors, and to see you all the way through to
your target weight. Please, watch it right now!
Thank you for your interest in my weight loss program,
and I look forward to greeting you in the next episode!
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