3 - How the fat got onto your body in the first place

It's critical to really get to the details of this in order to avoid useless dabbling

3 – How the Fat Got Onto Your Body in the First Place

• Understand how your brain has decided your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours about food, that led to overweight/obesity

• Recognise that is definitely outside your conscious control

• How to change those thoughts, feelings and behaviours automatically, so you don’t even have to think about it

The Answer is the brain

Our conscious mind absolutely does not “run the show”. No matter what we want consciously, it is our unconscious mind with its automatic, conditioned responses that control our thoughts, our behaviours, our perspective on what’s going on in our lives, our values, our beliefs, and our choices.

You may think that you’re choosing all this, but you’re actually not – if your free will were operating, you’d already be exactly as you’d like to be. The facts are:

• Our food preferences and lifestyle preferences are not under conscious control, but are merely conditioned responses, or unconscious learning

• An unconscious “choice” has been made nearly a full half second before we become consciously aware that our brain has made that choice

• Your conscious, aware mind can process 7 bits of information a second, while your unconscious mind is busy processing 2 million bits of information a second! You cannot consciously control your unconscious mind, which is why 98% of people end up reverting back to old habits

• If you want to create change in your life, you must therefore change your unconscious mind, not your conscious mind

• The SDR Therapy approach which you’ll learn in this program will allow you to change your preferences at the deepest level possible, at the level of your unconscious mind, putting yourself on auto-pilot to a healthier, happier, more satisfying life

The fascinating way your brain processes information and makes decisions

Information from every single event in our lives enters our brain through a brain structure called the thalamus. This structure can be thought of as the gatekeeper for the brain. From there the information is “coded” for emotional meaning by the hippocampus and amygdala. These emotionally loaded “meanings” then arrive at the frontal cortex, where they dominate any decision we attempt to make, including decisions about things as basic as eating, drinking, and moving our bodies.

How the Brain Generates Conditioned Responses

Figure 1 – Brain diagram sincludes location of thalamus, hippocampus and amygdala, the parts of the brain primarily responsible for the formation of conditioned responses. Emotionally loaded information from the hippocampus and amygdala floods the frontal cortex whenever we try to assess, judge or make a decision about anything. No wonder it’s almost impossible to choose 100% rationally!

The hippocampus and amygdala together are responsible for memory, learning and emotion. These things are very much interdependent and are the basis of conditioned, automatic learning. In other words, this mechanism produces automatic associations between stimuli (eg objects or events) and responses (our automatic feelings or behaviours). This is why we respond so predictably to certain music, or certain smells, or certain faces, and of course certain foods.

And the whole stimulus-response process happens faster than the conscious mind can possibly track.

Here is a timeline showing how unconscious processing precedes conscious thought. This is how your brain says “yes” to chocolate well before you even realise you’d like some

Figure 2 – On receiving a stimulus, the brain reacts within 0.02 seconds. This is the reason it has been so difficult to make the best choices for our bodies. Unconsciously, the choice has already been made. Presented with information, the unconscious mind has selected its choice nearly a full half-second before we become consciously aware we even have a choice. The stimulus may be the smell of chocolate. Your brain can say a big “yes” a full half second before you become aware you’d like some. Your hand might even reach out to pick it up before you consciously notice what you’ve just done.

Hypnotherapy has recognised this problem of the unconscious mind running the show, but has attempted to deal with this simplistically by merely giving hypnotic commands (for example around habits, appetite, or imaginary stomach banding). These types of hypnotic commands were doomed to failure over time because they didn’t match a multitude of other unconscious stuff and that great bulk of “stuff” pulled our whole system, body and mind, back into line. Back into old, unhelpful habits.

In fact analysis of weight loss programs using hypnosis show an average weight loss of only around 2 kg over an 18-month period. Serious scientists would agree that this unimpressive result shows that hypnosis is even less effective than placebo. In other words, if you hung a bogus “weight loss pendant” around your neck you’d likely get an even better result.

The techniques you’ll learn in this book can be used to automatically alter your unconscious programming and choices, and that’s what makes change so effortless, natural and permanent. With this approach, if you’re trying hard, you are definitely doing it the wrong way. Willpower is overrated.

Following the methods used in this book, you should be rewarded by regularly standing in front of your mirror and being delighted at the progress you’re making quite effortlessly. You should enjoy taking out a dress or a pair of jeans that you thought were too small for you, and finding that they fit perfectly.

Not because you starved yourself or stuck to some food plan, but because this is who you are now.

This is freedom.

Your unique programming

The WeightChoice^tm approach to weight problems works because it fully appreciates and addresses the complexity of issues which underpin weight disorders, whether that is overweight or underweight. These issues include many which are common with people generally, and many which are quite unique to the individual and must be discovered and treated. This is not a “by the numbers” or “recipe” style of approach – it is highly personal to YOU.

That’s why my main focus has to be training psychologists and counsellors to deliver the WeightChoice^tm program. They need to be able to explore and understand the unique psychological dynamics at play in YOU as an individual.

When you see just some of the issues that impact on body weight, you will begin to understand not only the complexity of the problem, but also why the results you can now achieve can be so easy and so outstanding.

Keep in mind as you review the list below, that until now most of these issues were either untreatable, or would take many years of intensive therapy until they were resolved. Now we know that we can resolve most of these quickly, easily and permanently.

Examples of Issues Affecting Weight Gain

Knowledge about health issues
Nutrition behaviour
Lifestyle behaviour
Eating strategies
Family history, beliefs, values
Addictive/compulsive components
Habitual or situational components
Appetite
The individual’s meaning ascribed to food and movement
The individual’s meaning of “slim”
The individual’s meaning of “fat”
Feelings about food and weight
Feelings about sexuality/gender
Feelings about relationships
Advantages of excess weight
Disadvantages of excess weight
Disadvantages of losing weight
Advantages of losing weight
Fantastical thinking
Identity issues
Esteem/confidence issues
Unconscious programming around weight itself – including our internal “setting”!

No wonder traditional diets don’t work. How could they when they don’t even begin to attend to the real causes of weight disturbance? How could they when the diet consultants have no or little knowledge of the way unconscious programming works, nor of how that programming may be very quickly, easily, authentically, and permanently altered, often in just minutes?

So how did we get “programmed” in the first place?

How did we develop the conditioning that has made it possible for us to gain weight? Do you recall hearing stuff like this: Finish what’s on your plate or you won’t get your pudding!”, “You can’t leave the table till you finish your plate!,” “Finish your plate – there are children starving in Africa!”, “Your mother cooked that and you’ll eat it!”

Maybe 20 years ago you would’ve heard those kinds of words at least a million times! No wonder it’s almost impossible for a grown adult to push away a plate with food on it, without guilt.

And if you were one of several children, do you remember what meal times were like? Did you have to get in quickly before the others got everything?

Or did your parents use food to reward you, to quieten you, to console you or to shut you up? Guess what, you learned the “meaning” of food and chances are that deep down you’re still living that out today.

There are thousands and thousands of pieces of programming inside our heads and these run automatically. Collectively, this is the auto pilot that runs our lives when we’re not looking. Like any auto pilot, it follows a set of rules, or programming, that respond to feedback in order to stay on its designated track. If the programming contains an error, the auto pilot won’t recognise that, it will just keep right on flying, right into a mountain or into a storm – because it doesn’t think for itself. It is not smart – it just follows “the rules”.

So this is how our conditioned responses rule our lives, totally regardless of how much self discipline we possess. These responses happen too fast and too many at once, and they literally overwhelm our conscious awareness, as you saw in the charts earlier.

This is how we come to make the same unhealthy choices about food and about physical exercise, over and over again. This is how we seem to sabotage ourselves, with these repetitive behaviours that have built up over a lifetime.

However when we understand some simple facts of neurology, we can breathe a sigh of relief to know that it was never about willpower – it was about unconscious conditioning!

Let’s look more closely at how this “unconscious conditioning” actually works. Have you heard of Pavlov and his dogs?

Pavlov was a behavioural scientist very interested in how animals (including humans) learned to behave in automatic ways. He ran a famous experiment on dogs where every time the dogs were fed, a tuning tine would be rung. He soon discovered that if the tuning tine were rung, even with no food, the dogs would increase their salivation rates. They had learned to associate the sound with food, and their brains had linked a stimulus (the sound) with the response (salivation).

We humans have many, many stimulus-response associations. When we hear a special song, we feel a special way. When we see someone’s hand reaching toward us in handshake, we find our own hand rising by itself. When we smell onions sizzling on a barbecue, our mouths water even though we’re not hungry. When we attempt to leave a half-full plate on the table, we get the same guilty feeling we got as a kid with the old “kids starving in Africa” routine from Mum or Dad. Certain sights, sounds, touches, smells and tastes, cause us to feel or behave in very predictable ways.

Now you might be thinking, “I can be aware of that and stop it.” But remember as I already explained, the trouble with that theory is that there’s too much to be aware of. Your unconscious mind is running several million responses at any given time. Your conscious mind can track only about 7 of them over the same period.

That’s a pretty big gap!

The Gap Between Conscious and Unconscious Processing

Figure 3 – Your unconscious mind is like the greater mass of an iceberg, and can process 2 million bits of information a second. Your conscious mind can be thought of as the tiniest tip of the iceberg, because it can manage to process only 7 bits of information per second (according to neurologist Libet). Now you see why you can never hope to control unconscious programming by willpower!

This is exactly why it is not your fault if you are overweight. There is literally nothing you can consciously do about it. You are like the "ex" smoker who becomes aware that she is standing at the smokes counter taking change from the packet of cigarettes she doesn't even remember asking for. Sooner or later the unconscious mind will have its way!

Now that might sound pretty depressing, but in fact it’s quite the opposite! Now that we properly appreciate and understand the true nature of the problem, we can stop wasting our time trying to apply willpower and actually do something different. “If you want a different result, use a different strategy!”

Fortunately there is now something that can be done about this serious problem. Using the effective, modern SDR Therapy^tm approach, we are now able to extinguish (eliminate) all conditioned responses around food and exercise so that we revert to our original, healthy programming.

This is the key to permanent, authentic change.

Maybe at this point you’d like to go back to the front of this book and re-read people’s comments, really noticing the depth of transformation that they’ve experienced.

Identifying problem behaviours – our blind spots

Most overweight people have unhealthy behaviours that they may not even be aware of until someone brings it to their attention. Even then, there may be some denial of the behaviour actually being a “problem”.

We’re going to look at that very thoroughly.

So what’s going on with you - Food Behaviours and Emotions that Need Help

A Word About Pigging Out!

Please accept that pigging out, binging, feasting, and eating just for the heck of it for sheer pleasure or because it’s a special occasion, are all perfectly normal, enjoyable, healthy human activities. Doing that once every few months makes no difference whatsoever to our weight. A problem only arises when this becomes commonplace in our lives. At that point, we need to admit that we have a problem with our conditioning because regularly doing those things isn’t healthy or “normal” human behaviour.

In fact someone who doesn’t have compulsions around food, once they’ve engaged in a big feast, they’re likely to feel like they never want to eat again and it’ll be a long time before they’d put themselves through it again, as fun as it was at the time.

Here are some examples of behaviour that certainly is a problem if it occurs regularly (Note: while some of the items in this list are serious cause for concern, quite a number of these are no problem whatsoever if they are just “now and again”)

• Regular snacking on biscuits or confectionary

• Being out of control on certain foods (ie, can’t stop)

• You know certain foods are your “weakness”

• You deliberately don’t buy certain foods because you know you’ll eat it all

• You keep going back to that cake/treat/leftover in the fridge or pantry, again, and again, and again …… until it’s all gone

• You make excuses to “reward” yourself with food that you know isn’t good for youYou frequently tell yourself “just this once”

• You hide treats around the house because you feel guilty about eating them

• You eat secretly

• You steal your children’s lollies or treats

• Once you start eating you can’t stop

• You’re eating to fill a “void” rather than for hunger

• You’re eating for emotional reasons like stress, or boredom, or loneliness

• Regularly eating in the car or in front of television

• Obsessive thinking about food all through the day – it’s almost always on your mind

• Feel you can’t get by without it

• Fear “missing out” so you put more than you really need on your plate

• Guilty over wasting food

• Resentment over “having” to eat healthy food

• Drinking carbonated beverages, milk or fruit juice instead of water

• Drinking more than 2 cups/glasses of caffeinated beverage or alcohol per day

• Eating high energy foods inappropriately (eg, a large handful of nuts is equivalent to an extra meal)

• Eating fatty or rich food (eg desserts, junk food, Chinese takeaway, fried or crumbed foods, sauces, cheese)

• Thinking of food throughout the day

• Feeling “needy” about food

• Fears of starvation or deprivation

• Avoiding fresh salads and vegetables and going for the nutrient dense stuff instead

• Cravings of any kind

• Going back for seconds

• If you are a woman, eating the same portions as your larger or bigger-muscled male partner (men aren’t just generally bigger, they also have a higher metabolic rate)

• Feelings of anger or sadness about making changes

• Eating for social reasons

• Eating when not hungry

• Feelings of dislike or disgust for food you know is good for you

• Feeling resentful of others eating

• Feeling that you should “finish your plate”

• Accepting food you do not want

• Vomiting or wishing to vomit after eating

• Making up excuses to eat

• Not wanting to resolve something because it is scary or upsetting to think about not having the problem any more (eg, loving pizza and being afraid of what it would be like not to love pizza)

If you are engaged in any of these in a significant way then you are certainly under the control of your unconscious conditioning! Of course you can stay that way if you wish, but then you get to keep your weight problem also.

Are you feeling anxious? Are you concerned about “going without” or “missing out”?

Be very careful here because we are not telling you to stop. We are telling you to eat whatever you want, whenever you want. By eliminating your food triggers, you’ll never need to use willpower again.

You’ll never feel fearful about food again because you will only want to eat foods that represent healthy choices. And when you do eat junk, or when you do pig out on some great feast, you can totally relax, guilt free, because in the scheme of things it’s uncommon enough that it means precisely nothing.

Behaviours and Emotions Related to Exercise

Once upon a time we didn’t call it exercise – we called it “play”. When we were small and caught up in some great “game”, hot, red and sweaty with our hair plastered to our heads and a big grin on our faces, and mum called us to dinner, were we interested in eating? No way!

Just because we’re grownups now, doesn’t mean we’ve lost our right to play! What’s getting in the way of your loving the feeling of moving your body? What’s getting in the way of getting your life back again and getting out there and playing for the fun of it? Taking some fun time for yourself?

Here are some indicators that you need some help to learn to play again, and to love being active:

• Hate exercise of any kind

• Feel low in energy

• Believe that there is simply not the time to exercise

• Believe that some people (you) just aren’t suitable for exercise or don’t really need it, or even worse, don’t deserve it

• Think that slow walking is adequate for health

• Think that gardening or housework is enough

• Think that watching someone else exercise is enough!

• Feel embarrassed about exercising in front of people

• Think that you may eat more because you’ve exercised

• Think that coasting down hill on a bicycle is exercise

• If you think watching an exercise video “rubs off”

• If you have excuses not to exercise: too tired, too early, too late, too cold, too hot too …….

• If you have fears about exercise that are not backed up by your doctor

• If you fear the normal “good” ache of a muscle that’s been well worked

• Feelings of self-blame, disappointment, hopelessness, guilt, struggle, etc

• Feeling like you “deserve” a break from exercise

• Thinking of exercise as a punishment or struggle

• Feelings of dislike or disgust for exercise

• Feeling resentful about exercise

• Feeling that you shouldn’t have to exercise

• Feeling fat, ugly or indeed any negative feeling about your body in movement

Behaviours and Thoughts that Work Against Your Metabolic Rate

Our metabolic rate is indeed our “life force” and if our metabolic rate is low, not only do we find it difficult to lose weight, but we probably battle with fatigue and depression.

Did you know that 70% of the energy you burn every day is burned by your resting metabolic rate?

That means that sleeping, sitting down, or standing still, uses up 70% of your daily energy requirement. And that means that your resting metabolic rate is the most important single factor which impacts on your weight.

There is an enormous amount we can do to support our resting metabolic rate, which, by the way, automatically increases our sense of wellbeing and our energy and zest for life.

First though, you need to understand what you’ve been doing to sabotage your metabolic rate!

Here are some common behaviours, lifestyle mistakes, and problems that lower metabolic rate:

• A cycle of dieting, losing weight and then regaining it

• For some people (certainly not all) missing a proper breakfast (do not count muffins, liquid replacements, or food concentrates). A proper breakfast consists of at least a bowl of minimally processed cereal which has no added sugar, or some fruit, along with some protein.

• Being exposed to undue stress, worry or fear

• Not sleeping properly (approximately 7-9 hours of relatively uninterrupted sleep per night, from which you wake feeling energised and refreshed)

• Drinking insufficient water (at least 1/2 a litre per day including tea or coffee, more if you’re active or the weather is really hot/humid)

• Not making sure you have healthy snacks between meals in case you feel hungry

• Not doing something active and fun pretty much every day

• Allowing your muscles to atrophy (especially the large muscles in your upper body, glutes, and legs)

• Illness

Oh My Gosh! Where Do I Start?!

I know it probably looks rather daunting right now, but I’m not about to hold out on you. You need to know how to recognise a problem when you see it!

But guess what? You don’t have to go getting all extreme about it. The fittest, healthiest people engage in lots of these behaviours and they’re still fit, slim and healthy.

How do they do it? The answer is moderation. Some of these problems may be quite big ones for you (one lady we worked with was eating a minimum of one family-sized block of chocolate every day – and as she explained that was when she had it under control!). You’ll get the best results if you start with the problems with the biggest impact – those are the ones you need to concentrate on because you’ll get the biggest “bang for your buck”, maximum results with minimum effort.

Notice that some of these problems could come under the heading of “habits” (like eating in front of television), while others come under the heading of “emotional” (like eating because we feel stressed). Different techniques work to eliminate different kinds of problems, as you’ll see for yourself once you’ve read through this important background material.

So go easy on yourself, take it as slowly or quickly as you’re comfortable with. This is not a race to perfection, but a change in direction. You are moving towards health and wellbeing, and the changes you are making are not just the latest fad. Because you are making real, deep changes at the level of your subconscious, they are changes for life. You are becoming the person you choose to be, instead of the person you felt you had no choice to be.

Ageing, fatigue, leptin, genes, hormones, medication and your metabolic rate

This little section is really only for the over-45s! Most of it will be completely irrelevant for younger people.

An enormous number of people claim that they are not over-eating, but cannot lose weight. This is not possible without somehow busting through the time/space continuum and breaking the laws of physics. Time after time, when groups of these people have been put into a controlled environment where their calorie intake is exactly what they claim it is, they lose weight.

What has happened? These people weren’t telling deliberate lies. Without exception these people did not realise what they were eating – they quite literally had a kind of amnesia for times they had eaten extra food. This is far from unusual.

But quite apart from the behaviours, lifestyle mistakes, and problems discussed in the last chapter, metabolic rate is also affected by the behaviour of our genes as we age, and by the bad effect of fat on your leptin sensitivity.

Your gene activity in relation to your energy production begins to deteriorate from about age 18, and how quickly and how severely this deterioration occurs is part of your genetic makeup.

Certainly you can avoid and even repair gene behaviour by creating as healthy, fun and life-sustaining environment as you possibly can, but there is a limit and that limit is genetically defined.

Basically the reason why we lose the ability to produce and use energy is because the 52 genes that control mental, physical and sexual vitality start to “express” differently around the end of our teens. This is why we don't see many elite sports people still competing at top level past 25 and why most are pretty much retired by 30 or so. They don't have the energy, the strength, the stamina, or the resistance to fatigue. Neither do they bounce back quite the same from effort or injury.

In addition, two completely different sets of genes control fat accumulation, inhibition, and fat burning. These genes also begin to express differently as we age, leading more directly to weight gain.

This deterioration continues to worsen as we age, unless we slightly reduce our food intake to suit, and increase our activity level, we might experience not only overweight but also:

• Physical weakness

• Slowed reaction time

• Less stamina

• Poor resistance to fatigue (mental or physical)

• Tiredness or fatigue

• Frequent overwhelm

• Poor sleep

• Waking unrefreshed, “dragging” yourself through the day

• Fuzzy thinking

• Trouble concentrating or making decisions

• Poor memory

• Low mood or even depression

• Anxiety/worry/stressed out feeling

• Low or absent libido
  Inability to perform well sexually

• Accumulation of fat despite no change in caloric consumption or exercise levels

If you have this type of experience, then it’s definitely time to talk to your medical doctor because there are possible medical reasons for all of these as well as plain lifestyle errors.

The hormone leptin is crucial to weight management. However it isn’t only about how much leptin you have, but about how SENSITIVE you are to the leptin your body is producing.

Leptin is a very important hormone because leptin sensitivity switches off hunger signals, and also tells your body to burn fat. Leptin is manufactured in fat cells, and the more fat, the more leptin. The more leptin, the more likely you are to be leptin-resistant (not good!), or to have reduced leptin sensitivity. That’s why I said it’s NOT about how much leptin you have (more is not necessarily better) but about how SENSITIVE your body is to the presence of leptin.

Did you know that women have twice as much leptin as men, but are three times less leptin sensitive? No wonder women struggle a lot harder than men to lose weight.

Leptin is manufactured in our fat cells, so the more overweight or obese we are, the more leptin we have, and the more likely we’ll be leptin-resistant instead of leptin-sensitive. So the fatter we are, the harder it can be to shift that fat.

If our leptin levels are correct (ie, we are not carrying excess fat) then we tend to be less hungry, and any bit of extra food (from a binge or celebratory feast such as at Easter or Christmas or family events) tends to burn off faster.

So we have a catch 22 – we need to be slim before we can get both our leptin levels and our leptin sensitivity back to the point where they can naturally maintain healthy weight.

This is why I sometimes now advocate rapid weight loss in the beginning of a program, to help achieve better functioning around leptin that can support healthy weight maintenance.

Sometimes people use shakes to get this quick burst of weight loss, but you must understand that shakes on their own are worse than useless! But as part of a program where mental and physical aspects of overweight are properly addressed, shakes can instead be quite useful.

Sometimes rapid weight loss is even a matter of life and death, and sometimes you might feel an urgency to lose weight to be ready for some event and so one way or another you want to get a faster result. In that case, while you complete your program, you need a temporary strategy to support you in a fairly stringent calorie deficit, while feeling completely full and happy.

This is where a quality meal replacement shake can be very useful. I’ve tried many on the market and most taste revolting. One excellent one I found was very costly at around $5 per shake.

I wanted to find a way that people could make their own quality shake very inexpensively and very conveniently, so I made a study of ingredients, and came up with a bulk recipe which provides nutrition at an equivalent level to the commercial shakes, is nice and tasty and can be varied to your own preferences, and which costs approximately $0.86 per shake to make.

You’ll find the recipe in the free downloads at https://bestweightlossbook.substack.com.

I’m looking forward to seeing what kinds of flavours people like to make!

Testosterone in Older People

Both men and women need a healthy level of testosterone to function well, but this is a hormone which also decreases as we age and that reduction can sometimes have devastating effects on our health and wellbeing.

If you are an older person, and you are suffering from fatigue and reduced libido, or depression, then it is very worth while to ask your doctor to request pathology testing for testosterone levels.

Thyroid Function

While it is certainly more rare than many people think, thyroid dysfunction can also wreak havoc with weight.

Never guess or self diagnose. Your qualified family medical doctor (not a naturopath) is the only person to see in order to begin diagnostic procedures and perhaps refer you to an endocrinologist depending on the outcome of those tests.

Medication

It’s possible that medication can cause you to feel ravenous, even to the extent of being unable to think straight because you’re just so hungry all the time. One important drug is Prednisone, a real life saver when people have out-of-control inflammation that is destroying their lives. There is no way of overcoming this and the best you can do is use this book to eliminate liking of unhelpful food, so that you’ll feel keen to fill up on good stuff that is less energy dense. You’ll put on weight, but that’s a very small price to pay for getting your life back.

Essential Mental Makeover

There is absolutely no point embarking on this program if you’re not willing to face the fact that you may have a preference for foods that are less than healthy, that you may drink too much alcohol or other “problem” beverages, and that you may have been putting too much on your plate.

Why? Because denying you have a problem means that you’ll deny a need to do anything about it and unless you actually do the work to change your automatic and unconscious preferences around what goes in your mouth, that’s exactly what you will revert to after the program is over. This is why all traditional weight loss programs, sooner or later, fail. Ignoring or trying to suppress this stuff is only going to lead to failure.

You also need to look at issues like stress and sleep, because these impact significantly on metabolic rate.

The good news is that it’s relatively easy to achieve this deep and permanent mental and physical makeover, and that we can “fat-proof” your brain and your stomach!

Essential Physical Makeover

There is also little point in embarking on this program if you’re not willing to face the fact that you must lead a physically active life, and are prepared to make enjoyable and/or meaningful activities part of who you are.

Why? Because if you allow yourself to lose muscle mass, you will regain weight very quickly, and yo-yoing weight is devastating to your metabolic rate. Also, if you don’t move enough you will function sluggishly and your metabolic rate will be low, meaning that you will regain weight.

So you need to engage in both aerobic/cardio activity that will get your heart rate up, and weight resistance (eg weight lifting, or playing a sport like tennis) that will maintain and even increase your muscle mass. Even a little 30-minute morning walk is great.

Some women are worried about increasing muscle mass because they don’t want to look masculine. But it’s very easy to allay that fear because it’s almost impossible for women to “muscle up”, especially in the upper body!

There are many examples of women gaining weight but reducing their dress size. How does that happen? The answer is that muscle takes up way less space than the same weight of fat, and in addition to that muscle requires energy and fat doesn’t. That fat that you replace with muscle, actually burns more fat!

So to some degree you must stop thinking solely in terms of weight, and also consider body fat percentage, or dress size.

Weird weight loss stuff

I’ve seen so many times that weird stuff can seem to happen on a weight loss program:

• Weight may decrease, but the tape measure, and dress size, shows no difference

• Weight may increase, and the tape measure may or may not show an increase (could easily show a decrease)

• You could be faithfully keeping to the program, but NOTHING seems to happen, and then suddenly you drop a kilo out of nowhere

These seemingly crazy things all have logical explanations. Because muscle weighs MUCH more than the same VOLUME of fat, you can easily weigh more, but be considerably slimmer.

If you’ve lost weight but your measurements remain the same, have you measured your neck, wrists, fingers, and ankles? Not everyone loses fat evenly on their bodies; for a lot of people it’s lost in places they don’t normally measure, including the “toxic” fat that hides amongst their internal organs!

Likewise, your fat may still be present, and therefore weigh the same, but may now be of a different nature. This has been described as “softening” of the fat, so that at a critical point it breaks down and is excreted quite suddenly, rather than evenly over time.

Another scenario that occurs for pretty much everyone who is decreasing their weight is a plateau due to adjusting metabolic rate because successful weight loss can temporarily dampen metabolic rate. It’s a good opportunity to do a recheck of the calorie equation you’ve used as your benchmark, as well as going back to week 1 where you eat deliberately without any constraint, and photograph and calorie count everything that goes into your mouth, in order to identify unconscious preferences which may be holding you back.

So as difficult as it may be, patience is a requirement if you really want to eliminate that excess fat on a permanent basis, and you really need to place yourself in a caring and nurturing support community in order to sail through those disappointing times. One more good reason to become part of the community we’ve built for you.

Scams vs Science

Over the years we have seen many scams in relation to weight loss. Some of these have been obvious scams and some have appeared to have some semblance of fact behind them.

What I can tell you is that my background is in clinical research and as a scientist I review the evidence. To date, I have not found any validated evidence whatsoever to support products such as the following:

HCG drops. People often quote anecdotal evidence in order to defend this approach to weight loss. In fact there is no validated scientific evidence whatsoever, and the temporary weight loss which is often achieved is not due to the HCG drops but due to extreme starvation.

Shakes such as Body Slim. There are so many of these meal replacement shakes on the market and the fact is that they “work” only if you go on the diet and exercise program that comes with them. If you went on their suggested diet and exercise program and did not use the shakes, you would lose exactly the same temporary weight (just like the “HCG Diet”).

African Mango (Irvingia Gabonensis ). The only research I could find for this substance was highly questionable in terms of the so-called scientists involved and the backwater university they were associated with. The actual data quoted were completely insignificant, and did not in any way match the conclusions offered in any case.

Carcinia Garbogia. This one got spammed all over the internet for years, and yet there is not a shred of significant scientific proof. Any studies showing weight loss (and there are more showing no difference) demonstrate a weight loss so tiny that it can only be called “completely insignificant”.

Appetite suppressants and “fat burners”. What can I say – load of codswallop.

“Hormone” supplements advertised on social media. Sorry to tell you, but these are 100% health fraud. They tell you the reason for your overweight is your hormones (highly unlikely) and that their product can change your hormones (absolute BS).

So just because you see a magazine advertisement, or a piece of spin on the internet, don’t be taken in. If the research does not involve scientists who have real standing in their profession, and is not associated with a credible scientific laboratory, they are having you on.

Trust me, in the multi-billion-dollar field of weight loss, when something really works, the world’s biggest and most prestigious universities line up to collaborate. When a bona fide laboratory develops something that outstanding, they don’t “circle the wagons” to keep it to themselves, they likewise reach out to other respectable scientists in order to share and extend understanding of a true breakthrough.

THAT is how you tell if something is the real deal, or not. Not by reading spin or advertising. I hope that helps you to avoid wasting time, money, energy or hope on useless products in the future.

Ozempic and similar pharmaceuticals. Contrast all those slimy ads for appetite suppressants with a bona fide drug like Ozempic. If it’s real it gets talked about and marketed entirely differently, and has solid studies and scientific papers to support it. And doctors actually prescribe it. It is REAL.

I’m far from against Ozempic, despite my criticisms. Ozempic and its relatives constitute a really exciting advance that is already saving a lot of lives and hopefully will lead to more great discoveries. In relation to weight loss, the big problem is that when people stop using the medication, just as with every other program, only around 2% of people are likely to maintain their results. The reports of side effects are worrying. So Ozempic makes sense in critical situations, especially where the person is at risk of cardiovascular events, or outcomes of diabetes, but for the average person wanting to drop some weight, is not better (but is far more expensive and more risky) than WeightChoice^tm.

Where Ozempic really, really shines is in serious cases where diabetes, cardiovascular or other problems exist because of overweight, especially where people don’t have time for a program to take effect and need to start dropping weight like yesterday. Ozempic is saving lives right now and that’s remarkable. If people on Ozempic can do a program like WeightChoice^tm while they’re on it, it’s even possible that unlike everyone else, they won’t have to keep taking it for the rest of their lives.