Excerpt

THE OPRAH SYNDROME
(YO-YO WEIGHT GAIN)

In my years of personal training the main questions I get are; which diets are the safest and best? What’s the secret to my great abs? Why am I gaining weight? Is exercise the answer to most of the chronic diseases such as; diabetes, heart disease, strokes etc. that are affecting most Americans today, and last but not least why does Oprah struggle with her weight?....Which is the most frequently asked question.

My answer is simple about the diets- just pick one. They are all pretty much the same with the exception of ingredients. More importantly starvation is never a safe or healthy method for weight loss. The amount of calories that the diet allows you to consume and other factors I will cover in this book determines quantity and rate of weight loss. Low calorie diets are used to control your calorie consumption in some form or another. Whether that diet takes away one or more of your foodstuffs (fat, carbohydrates, or proteins), or portion control of foodstuffs, appetite suppression (weight loss pills), bar iatric surgeries, etc. the basic principle is the same-calorie restriction.

Remember this, all diets work mainly because of this one reason and one reason alone; they limit caloric consumption through one form or another by way of starvation. When you attempt a diet, initially you will start to lose weight and will continue to do so while you stay on that diet and as long as the caloric count is low enough.

The practice of weight loss through starvation will weaken your organs which will in turn weakens there function along with your immune system and will put you at risk for diseases such as diabetes and heart diseases so let’s make sure we take care of our organs.

This is where the Oprah question is answered and anybody else who has lost weight on a low calorie diet. If you were to go on any low calorie diet and lost 50 pounds. How much of it was fat loss and how much was muscle loss? You don’t know- this isn’t a good thing. Why? Along with the fat you are losing essential soft tissue mass (muscle and organs). Studies show that on a low calorie diet 25% or more of the weight loss is of soft tissue mass (muscle and organs) From now on, we’ll call soft tissue what it is…Muscle. Please remember organs are muscle tissue to. Losing soft tissue (organs and muscle) is detrimental to the body.

Did you know that one (1) pound of muscle has the capacity to burn 20 or more calories per day depending on its’ conditioned energy demands just staying alive? Let’s use the previous example with the 50 pound weight loss to illustrate this point. In losing 50 pounds, you have also lost about 15 or more pounds of muscle and other soft tissue mass. You have also lost the capacity to consume 300 or more calories daily. Do the math: this is 2100 calories weekly and 8400 calories monthly that you cannot eat or consume anymore without gaining weight (fat). Furthermore, it takes approximately 3500 calories to gain one (1) pound and you have now taken away your body’s natural need to consume and burn off almost three (3) pounds of food per month. That adds up to a lot of missed deserts.

This drop in muscle content is not the main reason for the larger fat gains that occur after your diet is finished. This is a huge misconception and where the problem and solution is found. The loss of muscle means that your body no longer has the same caloric needs that you had before the start of the diet. That’s it nothing more.

The main reason for the larger fat gains is that your EMR (Energy burning Metabolic Rate) has adjusted or slowed down. Normal EMR rate is approximately 20 calories burned per pound of muscle per day.