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2018 JUN 15 -- Day 65

The weight is coming down. I'm down by 1.4 lbs today from where I was yesterday. It still doesn't make up for the 9 lbs in total that I gained from just one weekend of eating, but it is going to take some time to get that back off. I really want it to come off as quickly as it came on, but we all know that will probably not happen. If I want something, that's the surest way to make sure it doesn't happen! LOL

Starting weight: 401 lbs
Current weight: 356.6 lbs 
Long-term Goal: 145 lbs
Short-term Goal: 325 lbs

I have been watching videos on YouTube about how people are shedding their pounds, and it is all very counter-intuitive to what I have learned from Doctors Fung and Berg. But it appears to have worked for these YouTubers, so who am I to judge or criticize what they have chosen to do? A lot of it is a variation on either the eat less; move more (ELMM) theory, or the calories in, calories out (CICO) theory.

I hope for their sake that they don't go back to old habits and pack the weight back on. That's how the cycle usually works. These are fairly young girls, so there's a chance this is their first attempt at weight loss, and they may become complacent and let it creep back on. I'm making this dietary change for life and not as a diet to meet a goal with a secondary goal of stopping the diet. It can't work that way.

According to Dr. Fung, CICO and ELMM don't work for some very good, logical reasons. CICO doesn't work because our bodies do not work that way.

The theory behind CICO assumes that there is just one compartment for energy. A certain amount of energy goes in, and then if that amount of energy is used, it goes out. Or if you expend more energy than what you put in, then you lose weight because you didn't put in enough energy to cover the expenditure. It's like a sink with a faucet (your mouth) and a drain (energy expenditure).

Per CICO, if you turn on the faucet, you fill the sink. Then you should be able to pull the plug on the drain and empty it out. The trouble with this theory is that the body doesn't have just one compartment. There are two. There's the option to take some of what comes out the faucet and store it for later use. So it's more, like, a refrigerator you can use for immediate energy, and a deep freezer you put in the garage or basement to store things for much later use when they are needed.

Now, with ELMM, the issue is not one of storage and usage, but of metabolism. The problem is that the body is really smart. If you consistently feed it fewer calories, it will learn to utilize only that many calories. So if you restrict from 2000 calories a day down to just 1500, the body will go, "Oh! There are fewer calories here. I'd better stop consuming so many resources so i can conserve these." This is the metabolism slowing down.

Then when you over-consume, say, 2000 calories again (like, after you have hit your goal weight), your body say, "Ah! More calories. I don't need these, but I'd better store 'em for later just in case I need them. Apparently we don't know when or where our next meal is coming from." Over time, of course the metabolism will speed up again to consume that much energy, but by that time, you are back up to the weight you were, or worse and more likely, you weight even more than before you started!

You can't outrun a bad diet graph:




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