Energy Balance and Weight Loss

The law of thermodynamics states that there is no free energy. Energy in equals energy out! All this is to say that if one consumes less energy (measured in calories)than is burned that a person will loose weight. But to do that some may have to eat like a bird and work like a horse. Others can eat like a horse and work like a bird and still lose weight. The difference is in the metabolic rate and lifesyle, not excercise. As mentioned on last week's blog, caloric burn can easily be measured on the $50 test called a RESTING MEATABOLIC RATE (RMR). The burn is determined by Exercise, Lifestyle Activity and RMR and the supply is determined by food consumption-what we eat. Although all calories consumed are not the same, but this is a topic for another blog, but for now let us assume they are.

Exercise, although healthy, burns a surprising little energy. Three hundred calories for an hour of very strenuous workout is about all one can get out of it-an extra candy bar a day. However, Life Style Activity is just moving through one's daily doings and can be greatly modified. An increase of simple activities such as never using an elevator, parking two blocks from work, walking up and down your house stairs twice instead of the once that you would ordinarily do and the technique of dynamic tension will double your caloric outgo in this equation of health.

Dynamic tension is working two opposing muscle groups against each other with out moving the limbs to which they are attached. Pushing your palms together as hard as possible or “making the biceps muscle” hard are examples. This can be done many times a day at times of wait like at red lights, standing in line, while talking or waiting for the party to answer the phone. This will loose fat in two ways. One, by burning extra calories by using these and two, building muscle. For every pound of muscle one makes, it takes a hundred calories a day to service and maintain it. Not only that but it will decrease one's anxiety during the delay which is interpreted as stress by many type A personalities and produces harmful free radicals and fat-gaining cortisol. It is said that Charles Atlas, the body builder of the 1950’s kept his body in good muscular form and in prime health by this method.

Again one's exercise must include heavy resistant (weight) training to build muscle that will translate into raising the RMR and loss of fat. Other ways to increase the RMR is by supplements as mentioned last week. Medically, hormones are adjusted by giving that which is missing, not so much by its decrease in the blood, but with the natural down regulating of insulin, thyroid, and testosterone receptors. Aging, free radicals and organic disrupters like Biphenol A found in most plastics Pthalates that leached into our water supply from modern farming is only now catching the eye of government concern. Lipotropics such as methionine, choline, inositol and HcG do this as well as giving more of the necessary hormone particularly thyroid despite normal blood tests. As noted on last week's blog, medical doctors are finially recognizing that low thyroid does exist despite normal blood tests. This is Type II hypothyroid and is diagnosed today as it was 75 years ago by the RMR.

So if one is “dieting” and it is not working or eating the same foods and now gaining fat, consider the above. Dieting is not an answer to the problem but a short term fix until lifestyle will prevail.. That is why in a large study done recently 94% of those that lost significant weight dieting found it within the ensuing two years. With the help of the RMR, your health care worker can not only guide you into achieving your weight goal which is not too difficult, but keeping it there for the rest of your life.