It’s no secret most of us have a big problem with weight. The obesity crisis is affecting many areas of our society, mostly creating health issues.
It’s scary to see how quickly our population has gained weight – expanding from an obesity prevalence of less than 20 percent in the mid 1980s to over 35 percent today. Experts have spent a lot of time studying the problem, and have come up with a number of factors that have contributed to this rapid rise.
Most of us know that some of the contributing factors are sugars and high-fructose corn syrup in processed foods, also the fact that processed and fast foods make up such a significant portion of our diet, and the decrease in activity. Another factor which I would like to concentrate on in this blog, is portion sizes and how much they’ve grown over the past few decades.
Calories and Over-Fueling
Most people are just eating way too much food- which is exhausting to the entire digestive system, and is simply way too much matter to give the body.
While calories aren’t the be-all and end-all in weight loss/weight gain, they do matter!
Calories aren’t quite as simple as most diets will say they are, however, a calorie is simply a measurement of heat energy and gives our body the fuel it needs to function.
Most of us believe that calorie counts of foods are the most important aspect when you’re trying to control your weight.
I don’t think it is that simple! You asking me why? Because if you have 200 calories of candy bar sitting in front of you, it’s going to provide your body with very different things than 200 calories of dark, leafy greens. Your body is not a simple mechanical machine. Instead, it is a complex biological mechanism that will respond to and utilize the candy calories quite differently than the leafy green calories. Each food will cause the release of different hormones and the secretion of different chemicals. Each will provide the body with a different set of nutrients and bring about a different level of satiation.
Your body only requires a set amount of energy to function optimally. When you provide your body with more fuel than it needs, it must do something with the excess. Because the human body is a miraculous machine built for survival in even the most difficult circumstances, what typically happens to the excess fuel is that it is stored as body fat to be used in leaner, more desperate times. This is why over-fueling matters. When you provide your body with excess fuel, you must either engage in extra activity to burn it off, or your body will store it as fat.
To lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you consume, which inevitably means one thing: portion control. But you’re not necessarily doomed to a growling stomach until you reach your goal. “Portion control” doesn’t mean you have to eat tiny portions of everything, or you feel like you’re on a diet because you need to eat fewer calories. There are different ways to cut portions without feeling hungry!
Read my next blog about “Easy ways to cut portions, trim calories, and lose fat without counting the minutes until your next meal!”
~ To be continued…