Burn Baby Burn

March 17, 2013

So the “question of the week” for me this week is: “Why are the last 10 pounds so hard to lose?”  Ewe, good one!  Unfortunately, the answer is often not too well received and apparently unacceptable, but it is true.  And the answer is for every body.

As human beings, our bodies are maintained and controlled by the amazing God-given computer called the endocrine system.  And that my friends, for the most part is out of your control … sorry ‘type A’ personalities.

Metabolism- the release of energy.  Go ahead, look it up and you will find a plethora of really ‘smarty-pants’ definitions.  After you have compiled a bunch of data, the simple answer is the release of energy.  Wikipedia defines metabolism as the set of life-sustaining chemical transformations within the cells of living organisms in the creation of energy.  Energy is a nice way of saying activity.  There are two activities when we look at metabolism; inner skin and outer skin.

1. The activity or energy created from the organs while breaking down food/fuel (the digestive system), processing and maintaining temperature (the endocrine system and organs), and the muscular contractions to create movement and stop momentum (the muscular system.)  These actions all burn calories and increase activity.  INNER SKIN METABOLISM
2. Everything you do is activity; brushing teeth, walking from your car, sitting in a chair, pushing away from a table, all forms of exercise and require activity/fuel.  This would be considered OUTER SKIN METABOLISM.

I digress … NOW, back to those last ten pounds.  Once again I mention ‘the Law of Thermodynamics’ and that calories in = calories out.  If you want to eat more food, you will need to burn more calories to equal the additional intake!  Instead of eating less, what about you move more?  If you were to do both (eat less and move more) you would be burning more than you consumed and in this create a caloric deficit.  In a caloric deficit we burn up additional storage calories or fat,  achieving weight loss. There is no shortcut that works or lasts. A lifestyle of properly prepared or raw foods, extra exercise and discipline to avoid simple sugars (candy, white flour, and the marvelous glass of wine)  will OVER TIME get rid of that last 10 LBs!

When we were in high school or college, and had active lifestyles it was fairly easy to shed a few pounds quickly. But if you think about it, you younger stronge and moved a LOT more than you do today.

The answer my friend MOVE MORE. Get to FIT more often and use the tools provided to burn burn burn the food off!

In good health,

Bob

“A bear, however hard he tries, grows tubby without exercise.”
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh