Thursday, 11 August 2011

Downsizing & Upsizing

There is a constant war raging on inside of us.  More often, this battle is being fought by the female of our species.  The media portrays women as these exquisite, statuesque, bronze goddesses who have the genetic makeup of an avatar.  Who are these people?  Have they been manufactured on some farm in Hogwarts?  Are they cultivated with gold dust, diamond shavings and grown in opium soaked compost?

It is these advertorials that send women and some men into a state of complete panic.  How are we to live up to these fabricated illustrations?  Driving women to starve themselves in the hope of losing a few kilograms, or turning to pharmaceuticals for those miracle drugs. WAKE UP!!!!  There is no pill prodigy, if there was, Jamie Oliver wouldn't be harassing the American's about their over sized offspring.

We forget about those people who struggle with weight gain.  I have been a 'tiny' person all my life who has slaved to put on weight, I even attempted Morgan Spurlock's 'Super Size Me' diet - I didn't gain a gram.  What baffles me is how easy it is for people to approach me and say "You're so damn skinny!"  You don't see me poking around and calling you fat.  That is just seen as rude and inconsiderate.  It works both ways.

We are all genetically different and come in wondrous sizes, believe me those cover models don't look the way they do because they woke up that way one day, and they most certainly were not cultivated in some science lab off the coast of France.  The idea is to not strive for social acceptance but to strive for health and longevity.  Do not be blind sighted by what the media is telling you.

There are a million books on weight loss, hundreds of methods and most people unfortunately try and fail with each program, and each one goes up in smoke, and then they turn to the next one.  What they don't realize is yo-yo dieting causes a 'metabolic disaster', when cycles of weight gain and weight loss are repeated over and over, their energy burning process decreases with weight loss as the body adapts to the lower energy intake,  and then when they start eating energy rich foods again they gain more weight than before.

Every time the destructive yo-yo cycle is repeated, the body's ability to burn fat decreases until you reach a point where weight loss theoretically becomes close to impossible.

My advice, eat healthy and train hard - its a winning combination.

To eat is a necessity but to eat intelligently is an art - La Rochefoucauld