Controlling our weight is a lifetime issue for all of us.  Some people are underweight and have to struggle to add weight to stay healthy.  Some people are a healthy weight and have to work very hard to stay that way.  Most of us are overweight and have to find the right way to lose weight and keep it off. There is a lot of information out there in books, magazines and newspapers, and on the web and T.V.  You probably are on a diet right now, or have tried several already.  The weight management industry is a $30-billion per year industry.  Many people have made a lot of money coming up with ideas about how to manage your weight.  As a consequence, there are a lot of different theories out there, and most of them do not work.  Sadly, there is no "cure" for obesity.  There is no pill or combination of foods that make you melt away fat, and 95% of people who do manage to loose weight will regain all the weight they lost, and usually more, within 1 to 5 years.  Loosing weight and keeping it off require dedication and real life-long changes.  Think of how long it has been since you were a healthy weight.  You need to be prepared to undo that number of years of eating and sitting around.  Armed with the right information you CAN do it.  Now, pay attention to the following: There are only two ways to reduce your weight: 1. Cut off a body part, or 2. Put your body in a Negative Energy Balance We recommend option # 2! Negative Energy Balance Think of your body as a machine.  You put fuel (food) into your body. Your body "burns" that fuel to run your body mechanisms, move your body and digest your food.  We measure the energy we eat in kilocalories, and we measure the energy our bodies "burn" in kilocalories.  (Food labels and most people drop the "kilo-" in kilocalories and just call them calories, but the real name is "kilocalorie".) When you put more fuel (kilocalories) into your body than you burn up, you store the extra fuel as fat.  When you eat more kilocalories than you burn, your body is in a "Positive Energy Balance".  If you remain in a Positive Energy Balance over an extended period of time, storing more fat each day, you will become over-fat.  Likewise, when you put less fuel (kilocalories) into your body than you burn up, your body dips into your stores of fat (body fat) to make up the short fall.  When you take in fewer kilocalories than your body uses, your body is in a "Negative Energy Balance".  If you remain in a Negative Energy Balance over an extended period of time, burning up stored fat from your body, you will reduce your body fat and weight.  You have already figured this out:  When the kilocalories you consume equals the number of kilocalories you "burn", then you are in Energy Balance.  If you remain in Energy Balance over a period of time, then your weight will remain the same. Diets Don't Work When you buy a book, join a weight loss group, try to starve yourself (less than 1,000 kilocalories per day,) or whatever program you use to diet, essentially you are being instructed to put your body in a Negative Energy Balance over an extended period of time (a few weeks, at least.)  All diets, regardless of what type of food or food combinations, try to get your body into a Negative Energy Balance.  At first, you lose weight quite rapidly as your body sheds water and breaks down muscle.  Then things slow right down to a crawl as your body begins to find those fat stores.  Eventually you go into a plateau where it seems like no weight will come off no matter what you do. At first the majority of your weight loss comes from  breaking down muscle.  The by-products of using muscle as fuel are toxic, so your body will flush them out by shedding body water.  After a few weeks when your body has broken down what little extra muscle you have, your body will start to break down fat stored in your body. Now the fight with your body begins.  Your body senses a reduction in fuel consumed.  Your body cannot look in a mirror and know this is a good thing.  It thinks you are starving.  Remember, our ancestors lived for millions of years in a state of semi-starvation.  Our bodies evolved in a way that we can store fat very well.  It is only in the last 50 or so years that we humans in North America have had access to an abundance of food.  With the slightest reduction in kilocalories our bodies prepare for starvation mode and begin to convert food energy to fat more efficiently.  This means your metabolism slows down.  Your metabolism slows down naturally as you get older, so it doesn't necessarily go back to its pre-diet level.  Because of dieting the net result will be your body will need fewer kilocalories to function, so you will always have to eat less. At the end of a diet most of us go right back to our usual way of eating.  But wait a minute.  Now your body needs fewer kilocalories to do its work.  Eating your usual way will provide your body with too many kilocalories.  The extra kilocalories your body doesn't burn will be stored as fat.  All that muscle and fat you lost during your diet will be replaced with fat.  That's not healthy.  If you are not careful, going on a diet can be more dangerous than not dieting at all. How do you stop your body from burning muscle?  You have to use your muscles to build them up.  You have to exercise.  Creating the Right Negative Energy Balance There are two ways to create a Negative Energy Balance: (1.)  You can decrease your energy intake by eating fewer calories, OR (2.)  You can increase your energy expenditure by increasing your physical activity--yes, exercise The best way to put your body into a negative energy balance is to increase your physical activity.  As we have discussed, you can reduce your weight by eating less, but you will only keep the weight off if you diet forever.  Most diets, like the popular low carbohydrate diets, are not balanced diets, and you cannot live a healthy life following them forever. On a diet you will lose muscle and water before you will dip into those extra fat stores, and you will reduce your metabolism.  The day you go back to eating as you normally eat, you will store the extra calories as fat on your body.  When you increase your physical activity you burn more calories.  If you burn enough extra calories you can put yourself into a negative energy balance and lose weight. Any exercise will do, but there are tricks you can learn to BURN FAT. For more information on burning the maximum amount of fat when you exercise, please turn to the next page.