When someone thinks about losing weight, they might look into extreme diets and Kpop diet. Keto, Intermittent fasting, the banana diet, you name it. A lot of people will just avoid carbs to achieve their weight loss goal. You might find it satisfying to see the scale drop after a few days, yet it might be detrimental to your health. In fact, it is unhealthy to see dramatic changes in weight within a few days, it is very dangerous. This stresses your body, and your cortisol level you goes up. When your cortisol levels go up, it will start to trigger the fat storing mechanism. This is because you are putting your body in starvation mood. It might even have irreversible effects to your body. Then there will be a yo-yo effect on your weights after a couple times.
In the short term, stress can shut down appetite. The nervous system sends messages to the adrenal glands atop the kidneys to pump out the hormone epinephrine (also known as adrenaline). Epinephrine helps trigger the body's fight-or-flight response, a revved-up physiological state that temporarily puts eating on hold.
But if stress persists, it's a different story. The adrenal glands release another hormone called cortisol, and cortisol increases appetite and may also ramp up motivation in general, including the motivation to eat. Once a stressful episode is over, cortisol levels should fall, but if the stress doesn't go away — or if a person's stress response gets stuck in the "on" position — cortisol may stay elevated.
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As a matter of fact, carbs is a really important macronutrient to our body. Blindly avoid carbs can be dangerous. There are countries such as Japan, Korea, Bangladesh and Vietnam that eat rice as their main carb intake every meal yet still have the lowest rate of obesity.
Only 3.6 percent of Japanese have a body mass index (BMI) over 30, which is the international standard for obesity, whereas 32.0 percent of Americans do. A total of 66.5 percent of Americans have a BMI over 25, making them overweight, but only 24.7 percent of Japanese. [1]
Yet, an individual Japanese person consumes about 119 grams of rice per day, or around two and a half “onigiri” rice balls'. [2]
It is not about the quantity that you are taking, but the quality of carbs. Processed food and simple carbs is not the same with whole grain carbohydrates. This is also part of the reason why America has such a high rate of Obesity.
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The Smart Way to Look At Carbs
Furthermore, there are studies shows that young adults in their 20's actually need carbs to be healthy. This study also shows that body-weight loss and weight-maintenance depends on the high-protein, but not on the ‘low-carb’ component of the diet, while it is unrelated to the concomitant fat-content of the diet. The key is everything in moderation, and try to pursue a balanced diet.
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Relatively high-protein or ‘low-carb’ energy-restricted diets for body weight loss and body weight maintenance?
Researchers believe carbs can bolster your health and promote faster recovery from exercise because they stabilize blood sugar levels during particularly grueling workouts, which lowers your body's stress response. But there's a catch: Those carbs make a difference only in longer training sessions. While you can certainly work up a great sweat during shorter sessions, researchers say you need carbs only during high-intensity or prolonged exercise of 90 minutes or more. Eat 30-60 grams of carbohydrates every hour during exercise to support healthy immune function. [3]
So enough with all the scientific studies and sources, wanting to lose weight is not a bad thing as long as you are trying to change for a healthier life style and be stronger.
IF you are trying to lose weight because of the following beliefs...
I am so ugly
I am so fat
I want to be like someone
If I am skinny I am happy
If I am skinny I will be more preferred
I am sorry to tell you that you might shed a few pounds, you will still not be happy because the beliefs hides a deeper fear. It might be a fear to not be loved, etc. Without identifying your fear, you cannot reap the benefits from whatever diet that you are trying.
First of all challenge your belief and provide evidences. If you think you are fat, what are the evidences? Do you have an overweight high BMI? What is the proof that you are ugly? Because you think people prefer not to be with you? If you try to be like someone, then you will never be 'enough' because there are no two individuals in this world are identical, not even twins.
Think about babies. Are they fat? Yeap. Are they annoying? Sometimes. Do their parents still love them. Absolutely, YES. The fact is your appearance may contribute a little in interpersonal relationship, yet it will not affect how much love from people who cares about you. As we grow, we forgot that we could be loved unconditionally.
There is a Chinese proverb called 相由心生 (xiàng yóu xīn shēng). Meaning you will look like what you think. If you think positively, and always be cheerful, your will create the motivation and look for the opportunities automatically to make yourself better and stronger. Vice versa, if you are always pessimistic, you will convince yourself that there is nothing you can do to change the situation, and you will always be stuck in the current condition.
Chances are, all the beliefs are just what you are telling yourself. Your perception of 'self'. It can be something that built up over time, it might be a traumatic experience, doubt from someone who has high authority, emotional abuse or even betrayal from a person you trusted.
The goal in losing weight is not about just the numbers. Number of calories, number on the scale. Try to focus in how you feel about yourself, the macronutrients, and see how your life style changes. Do you always stay up late at night? Have fast food for every meal? Did not really exercise?
If you are unsure how to pick up a healthy exercise routine, one program that I would recommend is Chloe Ting's work out.
She focus a lot on how you feel about yourself, and it is more easier to commit to. She have a less intensive variation in some of the exercises so even if you are a beginner, it is okay too.
I personally did not see any dramatic change on my weight, but started to see ab cracks after the first two weeks, and I feel stronger than before. I feel less tired on day 14th compared to Day 1 doing her exercises. It is flexible, and I did this program over the course of three weeks, taking break whenever I need to, so feel free to customised it according to your lifestyle and schedule.
So take good care of yourself and I hope you will find this helpful! :-)
I will see you again in my next post.
Citations:
[2] https://japantoday.com/category/features/food/japan-ranks-no-50-in-world-rice-consumption-ranking
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