Have patience with weight loss
The best weight loss tip? Have patience!
During the first few weeks of a diet, a rapid drop in weight may happen. Most of that lost weight was likely water, released as stored glycogen from your muscles. This occurred to provide you more fuel for energy, due to your lower food intake. But your body soon begins to adjust and stabilize after the “shock” of your new daily habits. You may even hit that dreaded “plateau” despite your efforts of exercising regularly and eating sensibly. Have patience while your body learns new habits.
To lose fat, the recommendation is usually very simple: Eat sensibly and exercise more. However, if you’ve been inactive plus carrying excess weight for some time, other factors may be involved. Understanding what they are can help us be more patient and we won’t sabotage our weight-loss attempts.
Here are just two of many metabolic frustrations and other weight loss handicaps you may be dealing with . . .
Lipase is an enzyme that releases fatty acids into the bloodstream for energy use when your body needs it, like, for example, when you exercise. A sedentary lifestyle trains the lipase enzymes to be lazy and inefficient, because they haven’t really had much work to do. So at first, these sleepy enzymes won’t be moving much fat out of storage and into those energy-burning fires.
Another enzyme called lioprotein lipase (LPL) helps to move fatty acids into the cells for storage. If you’ve also been eating a high-fat, high-sugar diet for some time, the LPL enzymes have become very efficient at plucking fatty acids from the bloodstream and putting them into storage. They became very good at their task because you were giving them plenty of stuff to practice with!
It may take some time for your good exercise and diet habits to retrain these enzymes. How long? Sorry, that’s hard to say. We’re all unique. But the longer you were inactive and the longer you carried the extra body fat, the longer it may take . . . perhaps several months, perhaps even a year.
Be patient and don't give up. Metabolic changes are still occurring within, even though it may not seem like it.
Eve Lees is a Nutrition Coach and has been a Health Researcher, Writer & Speaker for over 30 years. www.artnews-healthnews.com
