Natural vs. Unnatural Weight Loss
Natural Weight Loss
Natural weight loss occurs when your body burns more energy than it is supplied with. What I mean by that is that food is the body’s energy source. That is what the purpose of food is basically. Energy is measured in calories so I’m not advocating a calorie counting diet for you when I use the word ‘calorie’.
The body burns that energy with every movement. Reach up and scratch your nose and you have burned some energy. Our bodies’ burn energy even without movement. Our brains alone burn about 400 calories a day just thinking. We burn calories when we sleep.
If you ever watch sporting events, you might have heard sportscasters tell you that a participant in a bicycle race can lose up to 10 pounds just during the race and that is true. Some of that weight loss is fluid but most athletes know to replace lost fluid. Most of that weight loss that the sportscasters are talking about is actually caused by the body burning stored fat because the athlete is burning more energy than he is consuming.
Nobody reading this is likely to be one of those athletes who can burn 10 pounds of weight off while riding a bicycle, swimming or playing football but this is natural weight loss. Natural weight loss means burning more calories than are being consumed through food and drink over a 24 hour period without the aid of pills or surgical procedures.
Unnatural Weight Loss
There have been a lot of well publicized weight loss pills and pill combinations in recent years. Many have been proven to be unsafe for extended use while others have been proven to be down right deadly. When over weight patients ask their doctors for appetite suppressant pills, many times these doctors will quickly prescribe them and then fail to oversee their use or, even worse, they will fail to take their time to counsel their patients on the dangers of using these kinds of drugs.
It is very tempting to use diet pills in the quest for weight loss. Imagine the idea of just popping a little pill in and presto the weight is gone. Unfortunately, diet pills don’t work like that. There really isn’t a little magic pill. Unless a reduced caloriediet and exercise are used in conjunction with diet pills, the pills themselves will have no affect whatsoever on a person’s weight.
Prescription diet pills as well as over-the counter diet pills all have side effects. These potential side effects certainly need to be weighed against any hoped for benefit to be derived from taking them.
Weight loss pills are usually appetite suppressants. Most of the prescription varieties have the potential for becoming habit forming all of them, prescription as well as over-the counter diet pills interfere with normal metabolism.
The Food and Drug administration has approved two drugs for use as diet pills. They are sold under different brand names, of course, but there really are only two drugs. They are orlistat and sibutramine. Sibutramine is sold as Meridia and Orlistat is sold as Xenical. Sibutramine is an appetite suppressant. Orlistat is a lipase inhibitor, which means it interferes with the body’s ability to absorb fat.
All prescription diet pills have one or the other ingredient....either orlistat or sibutramine. If your doctor prescribes a diet pill for you, you need to be aware of the possible side effects that the drugs can cause.
The makers of Meridia (Sibutramine) list these side effects on their website:
If you experience any of the following serious side effects, stop taking Meridia and seek emergency medical attention or contact your doctor immediately:
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an allergic reaction (difficulty breathing; closing of your throat; swelling of your lips, tongue, or face; or hives);
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an irregular heartbeat;
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high blood pressure (severe headache, blurred vision); or
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seizures.
The makers of Xenical (Orlistat) list these side effects on their website: “More common side effects may include: Abdominal discomfort or pain, anxiety, arthritis, back pain, diarrhea, dizziness, earache, fatigue, fatty or oily stools, fecal urgency or incontinence, flu, gas with fecal discharge, gum problems, headache, increased defecation, menstrual problems, muscle pain, nausea, oily discharge, rectal discomfort or pain, respiratory tract infections, skin rash, sleep problems, tooth problems, urinary tract infections, vaginal inflammation, vomiting”
OK...you say maybe diet pills aren’t the way to go. Those side effects sound gross and maybe even dangerous.
There are many surgeries available for very obese people. These surgeries cause the body to not function as it was designed to function and thus they produceweight loss. There are basically three types of surgeries performed for the purpose of the patient losing weight:
• Reduction of the size of the stomach. This procedure simply reduces the physical size of the stomach by stapling or other methods and makes it impossible for the patient to consume much food at a meal.
• Removal of a portion of the intestines. This procedure removes a portion of the intestine and thus reduces the amount of intestine that comes into contact with food consumed by the patient.
• Reduction of the size of the stomach AND Removal of a portion of the intestines.
There are several different names for these types of bariatric surgeries. You can read about the potential risks here. There are many risks associated with bariatric surgeries. Just the first five of those listed are:
• Bleeding from a tear to the liver, spleen, or blood vessels
• Bowel obstruction, requiring further surgery
• Cardiac problems. Greatest risk in patients who are the most overweight, or who have cardiac disease
• Complications due to anesthesia and medications.
• Deep vein thrombosis. Blood clots in the large leg veins. They become serious when they float up into the blood vessels of the lungs.
Sometimes bariatric surgeries are required for those who are more that 100 pounds overweight and have serious weight related health problems but bariatric surgery should never be entered into lightly. The risks are great.
Diet pills can be tempting but they won’t work at all unless a reduced calorie diet is followed and exercise is increased. Bariatric surgeries are sometimes necessary but should not ever be considered if there is an alternative of losing weight naturally.
Unnatural weight loss means burning more calories than are consumed over a 24 hour period with the aid of diet pills or surgeries.Chapter II
What Causes Weight Loss
Food Consumption Affects Weight Loss
The first thing that you need to know is that 1 pound of body weight is equal to 3500 calories. If you gain a pound that means that you consumed 3500 calories more than you burned. If you lose a pound that means that you have burned 3500 calories more than you consumed. That figure does not change whether the calories are consumed from fat or carbohydrates or whether they were burned by riding a bicycle, swimming or just veging out in front of the TV. A calorie is a calorie is a calorie. This is important information in your quest for weight loss and weight control so make note of it.
1 pound of body weight gained or lost = 3500 calories.
The trick to losing weight is to eat fewer calories AND burn more calories each day. That is the basis that all ‘diets’ (there is that four letter word again) are based upon no matter whether you are counting calories, fat grams or carbohydrates.
Even though you may believe that most of the calories that your body burns in a day are from the exercise that you do, you are not right. Only about 30% of the calories you burn each day are from exercise. However, the exercise that you do can influence at what rate you burn calories when you are not exercising. Exercise or the lack of exercise affects your metabolic rate....that is, the rate at which your body burns calories when it is at rest. About 60% of the calories that you burn each day are burned when you are not engaging in physical exercise.
The body burns calories to fuel the thousands of chemical reactions required to maintain body temperature, repair cells and keep your heart, lungs, liver and kidneys functioning.
So, you ask, where do the other 10% of the calories get burned up? 30% during exercise, 60 % the rest of the time....what about the other 10%? Those are the ones that the body uses to actually digest the food you eat that supplies all of the calories needed for everything else.
There is more. All calories are not created equally. Our bodies simply do not process all calories consumed in exactly the same way.
Calories that are consumed in the form of Essential Fatty Acids (EFAs), for example, contain about 9 calories per gram but our bodies don’t use those calories as an energy source. These calories are used to rebuild cells and tissues, particularly after an injury. If consumed at very high levels they increase metabolicrate and increase fat burn off, resulting in loss of weight. (This is the basic theory of the Dr. Atkins Diet). Consumption of high levels of EFAs has been linked to heart disease but that is an on-going debate in the scientific community.
More calories are absorbed from refined foods because it takes so much longer for them to pass through our systems. Natural and unrefined food (an apple for example) usually takes between 12 and 15 hours to pass through our digestive systems. Refined foods can take up to 75 hours to pass through our digestive systems and our systems continue to extract calories from them for the whole 75 hours.
Our bodies require vitamins and minerals to properly digest food therefore empty calorie foods....those that contain no vitamins or minerals.....are stored as fat while our bodies wait for the needed vitamins and minerals to properly process them.
Each human being is unique. All human bodies do not process not use calories in the exact same way. You know at least one of those people who can eat like the proverbial horse and never gain a pound....they make my eyes turn green with envy. Then we all know those people (we may be them) who can just think about eating a donut and gain a couple of pounds. It hardly seems fair but that is just the way it is.
We each have to learn what and how much we can eat in order to lose those unwanted pounds. We can use the available charts to help guide our choices but when it comes right down to it, each of us will have to determine what and how much of it is the right thing for ourselves.
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