Jason Herman’s Laws of Weight Loss and Maintenance
1) You have only one way to take in calories, but many ways to get rid of them
2) Your food day should begin as quickly as possible and end as quickly as possible, and comprise no more than 75% of you awake time – with the bulk of the time being left before you go to sleep. Going to sleep hungry is the goal. You don’t need fuel to sleep. Sleep happens anyway.
3) The more things that went into the food, the more time it takes to get rid of the food, which is why a twinkie takes more time to burn than an apple
4) Your body burns calories by burning calories, so keep eating healthy small portions all day long. So if you bring digestion to a halt, your body’s burning engine slows down, and the calories get stored for who-knows-when instead of burned.
5) You do not need an appetizer. The appetizer for dinner is commonly referred to as lunch. Appetizers are the worst disguised hidden calories you have ever seen.
6) You do not need dessert. If you do, it had better be the type of naturally sweet sugar that tells your stomach the meal is over, rather than the flour-based, complex carbs that clog your digestive machine
7) Water is vital, not only to replenish the fluids in your body, but to keep the highway of digestion moving. If food can’t get washed away, it stays for days.
8) People that complain about exercising are usually those people who do NO exercise, rather than just a little. Even a little exercising is good, but most people do a lot – or none at all.
9) Sweating is one way that your body loses calories. If you’re not sweating, you’re not getting the most benefit from your exercise. You need to sweat to exercise. That being said, for someone sitting on the couch, even walking to the mailbox provides at least some useful physical exertion.
10) The scale you’re stepping on is a tool. Like any tool, it can be used for progress, information, and assistance with a project. It can also be used poorly, and provide misinformation, stress, and worry. If you use the scale as a day-to-day path marker along the much longer journey of weight management success. If you use it as a day-to-day harbinger of doom and gloom which is really just normal weight fluctuation, you will abandon your good habits and resort to emotional rather than rational caloric intake and consumption.
11) An important equation to remember is that an average person can consume calories at a rate 10 times faster (or more) than they can exercise. You need to make this the law that you live by to almost a religious significance. Running one mile might burn the average person 100 calories and take 10 minutes, but eating a 750 calorie Big Mac takes only 5 minutes. Do this three times in one week (3 burgers, 3 miles run) and you’re in the hole for almost 2000 calories, which is almost one pound gained.
12) If you’re a person that needs to exercise (which is everyone), you must understand and appreciate how the fuel (food) that you eat, will be burned. If you eat poor burning foods, you’ll have a poor exercise experience. If you eat good fuel, you’ll get a clean burn. This is why some people have poor exercise experiences, even though their technique is sound.
13) If you want to eat at a buffet, understand that the merit of a buffet should be that you choose an interesting variety of foods on the same size portion plate as normal, not extending the amount of portion plates past where you would/should be. You may be getting more bang for your buck, but you are going to pay for it eventually. The less you pay for the food in dollars, the more you’ll wind up paying in health and fitness.
14) Science has claimed a genetic predisposition to obesity. Then again, science also told us at one point the world was flat, the sound barrier could not be broken, and that a person could not be transported and retrieved from the moon. Science might want to give a thought to fat parents passing on their poor dietary and fitness habits to their children. Transference of poor habits from one generation to another does not constitute a genetic link.
15) Do not consume poison, or foods that can be directly traced to poison.
16) It is possible to consume 5000 calories a day worth of broccoli. Therefore, how much you eat is just as important as what you eat. Know portion sizes of everything, no exceptions. You are what you eat AND how much you eat. This is the critical failing of the past 50 years in US fitness decline. These two have been separated.
17) Just as fat people visualize and suffer from the vision of foods, fit people benefit from visualizing exercise and health and longevity.
18) It’s a never ending cycle. Look bad, give up, look worse. Are you moving this way, or that.
19) Beware of hidden calories, and take advantage of hidden exercise opportunities. Hidden calories in condiments, sauces, dressings, soups, bottled drinks (energy, alcohol, soft drinks, smoothies, coffees). Good burn opportunities include parking further away, dancing, celebrating outdoors, standing up instead of sitting, taking a nap.
20) Instead of treating yourself to that ice cream Sunday, reward yourself with fitness, a book, or a house cleaning. Don’t offset a good event with bad fitness behavior, and don’t make bad situations worse by compounding the event with poor nutrition.
21) Understand the difference between what you WANT and what you NEED…or else
22) Changing your diet won’t matter if you don’t change your mind
No comments:
Post a Comment