Steady Weight

Steady Weight
By Bernard L. Gladieux Jr.

Most health conscious Americans know by now that yo-yo dieting is a no-no when it comes to controlling your own weight.

Solid data that has been out in the public domain for twenty five years or more has shown
that persons who gain and lose weight over a period of six or seven years show a higher risk of heart disease compared with those whose weight remained relatively constant during the same period.

It is also clear that diet based, unrealistic weight loss goals, either in degree or time frame, in addition to increasing the risk of heart disease, are almost invariably counter productively self defeating in the longer term. Better for your health and for maintaining
all around fitness is a program that includes well balanced, moderate eating habits and an exercise program that suits your goals and temperament over time.

Here are some thoughts about installing and sustaining these approaches in your day-to- day life:

Goals: Try to be as objective and realistic as you can in assessing your own “ideal”
weight. Ask for the best professional advice you can find if you are unsure about it. If you determine that you need to lose pounds, set your sights on a level you know you can achieve. In this regard slow, steady progress is a lot better than a sharp dramatic loss.

Train: the core of any weight loss or weight maintenance effort is regular, fat burning, aerobic training. Dieting without exercise is notoriously ineffective, temporary and demonstrably unhealthy. Whatever your chosen mode, make sure it is something that you can do easily and that you enjoy without suffering pain or injury.

Strain and Pain: If you do have the grit for it, you can achieve more decisive results with harder, longer and more frequent exercise. The problem for many athletes is knowing when and how to ease up to avoid an over use syndrome or a chronic exercise related fatigue. Experience helps in knowing your limits. Learn them then use y our best common sense in setting your own course.

Reward: You can put the metabolic impact of exercise to use as soon after a workout
as you can. Because your body continues to consume calories at a higher rate after you stop exercising, some nutritionists theorize that early feeding minimizes the consumed
calories that will be stored as fat. For some reason this after burn mechanism does not appear to work very well either for highly trained athletes or for highly unfit people. But it certainly is worth a try whatever your level of fitness.

Pump: Because dense, well developed muscle tissue burns calories faster than fatty, less dense tissue, if you develop your musculature with specific weightlifting routines along with your aerobic activities, you will be more likely to trade in fat weight for muscle weight. That will make you stronger and better able to train, compete and function generally, but it will also make you look better and help you keep your overall body weight under control.

Snack: Eating between meals has traditionally gotten a bad rap from moms and nutritionists. Snacking on sugary, fat-laden, calorie-rich, vitamin-poor junk is decidedly a terrible thing to do to yourself. But if you eat quality, whole, nutritious foods in smaller increments throughout the day, there is some evidence that you will fare better than if you follow a starve and gorge eating pattern.

De-fat your diet: Given a choice, you are a lot better off if you pare the fat out of your diet in every way you know or can discover. Your body, remembering its ancient biological adaptation to life in the wild is geared to glomming onto every fat molecule it can consume to store away for lean times. Carbohydrate calories conversely, are much more likely to get used up as an energy source on or near the spot they are consumed. It is a phenomenon you might want to focus on next time you set out on an aerobic trek.