Healthcast 668 - Six Popular Myths About Weight Loss

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My medical practice, BioBalance® Health, allows me to hear all of the myths about how to lose weight, when I am in consultation with a new patient. All of my female patients and some of the men have at one time, or multiple times been fooled by the false promises of friends, doctors, and advertisers, about quick and easy ways to lose weight.  If you have bounced around trying every diet out there on the internet and failed to lose weight, then I can help you stop the pointless trial and error process, and help you embrace the difficult and time-consuming process of truly losing body fat and keeping it off!

If you thought that all we do at BioBalance Health is replace women and men’s testosterone with long-acting bioidentical pellets, you are partly right!  In addition to treating our patients’ hormone deficiencies we also have the goal of attempting to guide them toward a healthy long life!  This involves treating “pre-diseases” like prediabetes that other doctors don’t treat until damage has been done and guiding our patients as to the right way to achieve their ideal weight.  One of the important roles we have in assisting our patients with “fat-loss” is to disprove all the lies our patients have been told over the years by nearly everyone about how to lose weight.  Some of these myths are actually believable (unless you are a doctor and understand the physiology of weight loss), but still never work. Other diet plans work for some people with specific genetic qualifications, but not for the majority of the population.   Then, there are diet plans that are so bizarre and illogical, that they literally make me giggle when my patients describe the protocol (or advice) they have been following without results.

Why are these myths so prevalent?  It is because we have been programed since childhood to eat in a way and in amounts that are inevitably going to cause us to be obese. It takes a lot of work to turn those lifestyles, habits and food choices around to lead my patients to lasting fat loss and long-lasting health. Hard work never “sells” and a time-consuming diet doesn’t either so businesses make a lot of money keeping you fat!

You may or may not have heard these! I will tell you why they

 

#1 Myth- If you eat fewer calories, you will lose weight, and all calories are the same.

This is one of the myths that is spoken by doctors every day because they learned it 30 years ago in medical school, and it just isn’t true!  To begin with calories in food are metabolized differently depending on whether they are Protein, Fat or Carbohydrate. It takes more calories to metabolize Protein, and more than fat and the food that burns the least calories to be metabolized are carbohydrates.  So, food calories are different depending on which food group they are from. Eg. There is a vast difference between the weight you might lose, or gain based on the food group your calories came from. For example:  If you eat a steak with 500 calories verses a slice of birthday cake/icing that contains 500 calories, it takes more calories to breakdown protein so you USE calories to make it into blood sugar, while the birthday cake takes almost no energy to make BS and readily makes fat if it is not used in exercise.

Another factor that causes counting calories to be a losing proposition, is that every food stimulates insulin differently, and insulin that is over stimulated over time gives a person insulin resistance which causes them to be so efficient that they can go a day and not eat anything, and still fail to lose weight.  If you have tried a low-calorie diet and that happened, then you are not alone.   Going back to the steak and birthday cake example, steak does not stimulate insulin very much and birthday cake is likely to over stimulate your insulin making insulin resistance worse and doesn’t make energy but is stored as fat!

The third reason limiting calories cannot be the basis of a weight loss diet is that an individual human body has a vast number of factors that influence how you as a unique individual burns calories, therefore any one calorie limiting diet will not work for the majority of humans. We are all different with individual requirements for the types and amounts of food we need which is based on our genetics, our history of healthy or unhealthy diets, our daily exercise, and how obese we are when we start to lose weight.

What that means simply is that there is no easy way to attain your ideal weight and stay there but limiting your calories.  Weight watchers tried this method for years and I never found a person who lost weight by eating a certain number of any type of calories (candy, dessert, or fruit and vegetables with the equivalent number of calories) in one day, who lost weight and kept it off.  If you eat 1200 calories of fruit, veggies, eggs, fish and or meat throughout the day and have an active lifestyle, you will lose fat that day. If you eat 1200 calories you save up all day to eat one dessert you will probably gain weight because it will overstimulate your insulin and make your calories into fat and not energy.  Weight Watchers changed their program several years ago when their clients realized their system didn’t work. Counting calories to lose weight is a myth you should avoid.

 

Myth #2: The promise:  “If you just  eat _________ (one food like grapefruit/cabbage soup/ salad/juice take your pick)  for ____ weeks you will lose 20 lbs.

The cabbage soup diet is an example of this failed “theory” which invaded the US female population in the early 2000s and my patients embraced it completely believing that they would lose 20 pounds in 4 weeks.  I objected and told them that eating only one food for 4 weeks was unhealthy, a baseless fad which was unlikely to work, but very few of them listened.   It turns out that Cabbage is a food that slows the metabolism of people with   A blood type, and the majority of citizens in my city, St. Louis, have A blood type!  At their next GYN visit my patients were all moaning over the fact that they had GAINED 20 pounds on the cabbage soup diet! Not eating a variety of foods is unhealthy and this proves that even an unhealthy diet doesn’t promise weight loss for everyone.

So please don’t follow fads. they are baseless, and you might gain weight and not lose it!

 

Myth #3 You can exercise your way to fat loss,  eat whatever you like and still lose weight.

I believe exercise should be part of every human’s healthy lifestyle, and exercise is necessary to speed up the metabolism while you eat a low carb, high protein diet and refrain from bad habits like alcohol consumption. However, eating like you normally do and exercising hours daily will not bring about weight loss for 90% of the population of the US. Lasting weight loss doesn’t occur unless you add eating a healthy diet, stopping bad habits and taking the required supplements necessary to decrease your fat mass, and exercise.  Yes, you have to do it all!    Increasing muscle increases our metabolic rate and exercising muscles increases the loss of fat, but both muscle building and muscle strength require high protein diets, with a moderate amount of fat, and without a lot of carbohydrate.  Eating carbohydrates unchecked can cause the weight loss promised by exercise-based weight loss programs to fail, over and over again. After the age of 45 your muscle will not be preserved while you lose weight if you do not replace your low testosterone and exercise too.  So it is not ONE factor that facilitates weight loss, it is complicated and there is a perfect fat-loss plan for everyone…you just have to find it!

 

Myth #4 Low fat diets are a good way to lose body fat and prevent heart disease!

Every study has failed to support this idea!  Low fat diets don’t lower cholesterol, but low carb diets do!  We were told by cardiologist for the past 30 years that low fat diets would lower the cholesterol and the atherosclerosis in your arteries…but they lied!  It is now accepted by most doctors that low fat diets leave people hungry which causes them to  eat too many carbs resulting in an increase in cholesterol and weight gain. Re-introducing fats into your diet should include healthy fats (fat from seafood, vegetables like olive oil, milk fat and other omega 3,6, and 9 ) are necessary for brain health and good body composition.

The advice by the US FDA and Medical specialists to eat a low-fat diet has contributed to over 50% obesity, dementia, and diabetes in America. If your cardiologist tells you that a low fat diet is going to prevent heart disease, then look for a more up to date cardiologist.

 

Myth #5 High protein diets are not effective for weight loss.

High Protein-Low Carb diets are the best diet for the majority of people in the US.  This diet is the most effective type of eating plan for your weight loss.  If you want to know what % of protein, fat and carbohydrates you should eat, then go to our website, BioBalancehealth.com and become a weight loss patient with genetic guidance and you will learn how to distribute your foods based on your unique genetic map.  High protein diets keep you “full” longer after a meal or snack, so your calorie intake is naturally lower.

Reserve your intake of carbs to supply you with physical energy before and after exercise. Otherwise, your diet should consist of high protein and fat, and limited carbs, with plenty of fresh vegetables and fruit (these food are not considered carbohydrate).

 

Myth #6 Diet soda is a “free food” because there are no calories, so I can drink as much as I want to and lose weight!

 Diet soda contains many chemicals, salt and includes a chemical sweetener called aspartame.  Salt causes swelling, and all chemical sweeteners stimulate insulin and act to make you hungrier than if you drank unsweetened iced tea, water or anything sweetened with stevia.  Stevia is a plant that does not contribute to insulin resistance and diabetes.  The majority of diet sodas stimulate insulin just like carbohydrates do and contribute to weight loss failure.  Every time you drink one you should consider it just like eating a carbohydrate!

  

Summary:

Following the advice above will prevent so much frustration with future weight loss attempts, and will help you achieve your ideal weight through avoiding these myths about weight loss.

Remember that weight loss fads have been around for a long time without a public refute of the obvious myths above.   Fads should be ignored if you want effective weight loss. Remember that Instagram and Facebook posts are only motivated by profit, even though they spread crazy diets as based on fact. There is no one monitoring the “fads” validity.

Please don’t listen to fads of people who are not doctors or nurses trained in weight loss! More Myths about weight loss next week!