Facts About Weight Loss

It's a national obsession in America to be slim. Statistics show that over one-third of American women and one quarter of the men are trying to lose weight. In 1992, they spent US$36 billion on it, without any significant results. In comparison with the total cost for all the 544,000 federal state,local police officers in America and all the costs of law inforcements for 1993, which came to 31 .8 billion.

It shows that Americans consider weight loss far more important then crime and personal safety. It's also clear that the weight loss industry can and will do whatever it takes to maintain this enormous income.Since the last decade they are very busy to produce low-fat foods, no-cal drinks, meal replacements,appetite suppressants, weight loss clinics, diet books, gyms, chub clubs and medical diets, all claiming that they will take off the weight. Almost all of it is marketing balderdash.

It sounds impossible, that such a multi-billion dollar fraud goes on for years without some one blowing the whistle, but it does! How do we know it's a fraud? Despite all the commercial weight loss claims, celebrity endorsements, fat before and skinny after pics and impossibly thin women in weeny bikinis, the evedence is irrefutable that America is getting fatter every year.

Two third of the Australian population, mainly the adults, are overweight or obese, according to the latest survey. According to surveys held by the National Health Examination Surveys since 1960 show that the average weight of American women aged 18 to 74 has increased by 2 kg and for American men in the same age group by 2.7 kg. The average heights remain almost unchanged, so undoubtedly the nutrient poor American food supply is making them wider,not taller and consequently fatter.

Young adults are getting fatter than older Americans, according to the National Health Institutes. The young hopes of the nation are bloating their way to premature oblivion.

Two third of the Australian population, mainly the adults, are overweight or obese, according to the latest survey. Even by the government's generous standards of Body Mass Index, 32 .6 million Americans are now classified as overweight. Between ages of 18 and 80, bodyfat levels typically increased from 15% to 35% in men and 20% to 40% in women. As we will see, that's enough flab to cause every known major disease.

Hold on a minute, you could say, what about the exercise craze? People are exercising more and putting on muscle and that's good. I wish it were true. But when we look at the evidence, the exercise craze that has supposedly swept Amerika is a marketing myth. It was cleverly setup by the weight-loss industry to make you buy home exercise equipment, health clubs memberships, "active" vacations and the like.

How do we know? Again the evidence. After a ten year study, the Centers For Disease Control in Atlanta report that only 8% of adults aged 18 to 65 do any regular exercise (meaning 20 minutes or more of vigorous exercise, three times or more per week). Couch potato-ism is on the rise, even among the young and presumably vigorous. The latest survey of students in all 50 states shows that only 37% do any regular exercise. That's a large decline from the 62% tha exercised regularly in 1984. Let's face it, the harmful effects of our denatured food, the marketing that stimulates us to eat more of it and the weight loss industry all conspire to make us fatter and sicker.

Most popular diet books and weight-loss programs seem to be designed to distort your nutrition and promote disease. When you examine the methods used. they are so opposed to human physiology, that a cynic might conclude that their main objective is to keep folk coming back repeatedly to highly profitable and terribly unsuccessful weight loss schemes for the rest of their lives.

Analyses of twelve popular diets by Dr Paul La Change of Rudgers University shows that all of them rely on reducing your calories to the point where the amount of food eaten is seriously deficient in essential nutrients.

Low - calorie diets not only deprive your body of nutrients, they also cause devastating muscle loss. Nutrition scientists have known for decades that reducing calories to 800 - 1200 per day, which is below the body's essential energy requirement to maintain vital functions, causes you to cannibalize your own muscles for fuel. On these diets, muscle provides up to 45% of the energy deficit.

If the deficit in essential energy requirement is 500 caloris per day, then up to 225 calories will come from muscle breakdown. At 4 calories per gram that's 56 grams or 2 ounces. In only four weeks on such a diet, you can lose 3 and one-half lbs of vital muscle.

Why is muscle so important? Any college physiology text book will tell you that the adipose cells that store your bodyfat have little metabolic activity. They burn very few calories. Fat sits like sausages, deadweight, until it is used for fuel. Muscle is different. It is always in motion. Opposing muscles are in constant dynamic tension to hold up your skeleton and enable you to every movement you make.

But much more than that, muscle is the engine of your body were almost all energy is created by burning of fats, carbohydrates and proteins in the mitochondria (furnaces) of each and every muscle cell. Studies show that even an ounce of muscle lost, lowers your basic metabolic rate of fuel consuption and reduces your ability to burn bodyfat. So all diets that are below the essential energy requirement of your body are a guaranteed recipe for failure.