What I Learned

What have I learned in three years about being healthy, losing weight, and getting fit? 

1. If you want to lose fat you have to burn fat. The best way to do this is through slow aerobic (oxygen going to cells) exercise. When you are moving fast, anaerobic (lack of oxygen going to cells) exercise, you are burning glycogen (sugar). Guess what your body has the most of fat or sugar... you got it right fat! Slow down and burn fat because if you are like me you have plenty of that to take you to Michigan and back. You have to work to train your body to burn fat. 15-45 minutes at a slow to moderate pace burns fat, after 45 minutes you are almost exclusively burning fat. Walking and slow jog are the best exercise for this to happen. If you don't believe me , look at the setting on a treadmill. The first setting is fat burn which is slow pace and as it goes up your speed increases and you are reaching anaerobic (sugar burn). Check it out the next time you are on a treadmill.

2. Exercise needs to be consistent to teach your body to burn fat. In the beginning of your lifestyle change to improved living you may not notice a lot of change taking place, but it is. Women build fat between organs inside before accumulating fat that you see (like on hips, thigh, or around the mid section) Therefore, when you start burning fat it begins to melt away in and around the organs and later hits the areas we see. Not the way we would like it, but it is the way it works... sorry. So keeping doing it because there are other benefits like a healthy heart that are taking place immediately that are benefiting your life now.

3. Depriving yourself of food reduces body fat temporarily. But eventually our body thinks it is starving. The starvation reflex will kick in and your body will begin to store every ounce of fat you eat in order to survive which leaves me to the next thing I learned.

4. Don’t skip meals. There is a lot of talk out there about how many meals a day you should eat. Some say stick to three and others say spread it out into five or six. To be honest with you I have no clue, but I let my body tell me when it is time to eat. I f I am hungry between meals I try to eat a healthy snack, but I don’t have a set number of meals and that works for me. BUT........I never skip a meal.

5. Some things need to be eliminated from your diet, some eaten in moderation, and some you can have all you want. I believe that things like sodas (coke, sprite), processed foods (frozen meals, in a box, or packaged), enriched white flour, and artificial sweeteners should be eliminated. I think there are some foods that can be eaten in moderation, but eaten in excess can become harmful. These moderation foods are sugars, and natural sugar substitutes, carbohydrates like whole grains (not vegetables), meat and dairy products. Then all you want foods like fruits and vegetables are awesome.