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The latest research to come out of Australia
shows 74 percent of young girls have engaged in some form
of disordered eating. This doesn't mean they have an eating
disorder as such. What it does mean is most young women
have attempted to diet by restricting their food or making
themselves vomit after eating.
Thankfully most women won't develop an ED (eating disorder),
but a lot of us still hate the way we look and try the
quick fix to lose weight.
We've all heard the stories that you should not diet because
it will lower your metabolism. I have a sneaking feeling
that nobody believes that. You diet, you lose weight.
Yeah, you might put it back on, but we can always go back
on the diet.
Well now we have some PROOF that restricting your eating
will slow down your metabolism. Dieting is totally counterproductive!
You may recall the Biosphere project where eight people
volunteered to be locked away in a 'mini world' called
the Biosphere 2 for two years. The volunteers had to literally
survive on their own without any help from the outside
world.
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition recently reported
some results from the Biosphere project and what effect
the whole thing had on the body's metabolism.
They all had to grow their own food, which the volunteers
found quite difficult. This meant they ate less but still
spent a lot of energy just doing their day to day tasks.
After the volunteers were released, researchers found
they lost an average of twenty pounds while they were
locked away, and their metabolism had slowed down considerably.
Here's the really interesting bit - after 6 months all
volunteers had returned to their normal weight but their
metabolism stayed at the slow rate. These people will
eventually weigh more than when they started the project.
More research is needed of course, but the outlook for
restrictive diets is not good.
If you're a bit confused about what your metabolism is
all about, my big, trusty Hutchinson's dictionary explains
it as: a constant building up and breaking down. Animals
break down food and resynthesize it in their own bodies.
To metabolize means to process food.
Your basal metabolic rate is the amount of energy you
use while resting. This energy is measured in calories
or kilojoules.
It's a complex system of chemical changes and reactions
to basically keep our engine functioning properly. Calories
are burned keeping our lungs working and hearts beating
and food digesting, funnily enough! There's a thought...burning
calories while you eat!
We need anywhere between 800 to 1800 calories per day
just to keep the engine idling!
Men burn more calories than women because they are simply
bigger. Bodybuilders have a higher metabolic rate because
of extra muscle. Children and pregnant women also have
a higher metabolism. Keeping warm in cold weather will
raise the rate too.
The reason why crash dieting can make you fatter is quite
simple: you lose muscle tissue (not fat). Less muscle
means the body needs less energy to run, so your metabolism
slows down to accommodate the change.
When you go off the diet, as you will because most of
them are just plain awful, you will put extra weight back
on. The diet has failed you again!
Notice I said the diet has failed...not you!
Exercise, sensible eating, and not following the latest
watch everybody else be happy while you're miserable eating
boiled rice diet, will guarantee weight loss and a metabolism
your body can run with!
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