Weight Loss for Healthy Gains
Weight Loss > > Weight Loss for Healthy Gains
Most of us are not medical experts who can inform others on the best ways to approach weight loss, but many of us have had enough experience over years of dealing with our own weight issues that we can rightfully say we are weight loss experts.
I am one of those weight loss experts. Born with the genes of a hefty paternal family of 300-pounders who loved food, respected food, even revered food, I was conversely raised by a small, short, slim mother in a step-family that was (and is) svelte and/or buff enough to grace the pages of a popular magazine. So with all my years of dieting, of refusing to diet, and of love-hating the weight gain and loss cycle, I am ready to come clean about the realities of being a hefty 300-pounder in a culture that is quite freakish about staying as close to being a 100-pounder.
The first reality is that heavy, overweight, or obese individuals do sit higher on the health risk scale: health problems for weight loss candidates range from shortness of breath, heart palpitations and headaches to high cholesterol levels and high blood sugar levels to high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, and subsequent complications that lead to death.
At younger ages, we weight loss victims (forced to diet, diet, diet) do not appreciate these repercussions, as we don't experience their wrathful symptoms till we are older. But by middle age, that denial is replaced with frustrating visits to our physicians, where we are told that even at 40 we have a heart murmur or high blood pressure that prevents us form getting the medication we need for other problems we have also just acquired.
The second health reality check is that weight loss-that stays weight loss, permanently-will likely make us healthier. According to the medical professionals at NIDDKD, for example, even losing "10 to 20 pounds can improve your health," lowering unusually high cholesterol, blood pressure, and heart rate levels. (National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases)
Finally, the reality check that I most needed and you might be interested in is the one that breaks our hearts anyway: weight loss does not come with the all banana and skim milk diet, the grapefruit diet, the harassment by cruel and judgmental bullies diet, the self-destruction diet, or any other absurd plan that we can concoct to get out of having to actually lose weight to be healthy. In other words, we must find a weight loss program that does not deprive but instead nourishes with balanced foodstuffs, vitamins, minerals, and enzymes and that is accompanied by pleasurable and reasonable exercise regimes. I know these facts are true, as I am still working on getting over how popcorn is a vegetable and being chased by a tennis-racket wielding bicyclist so I will move my butt is exercise.