Posted: 13 May 2011 05:35 AM PDT Dr. Andersen is currently featured in the national health and nutrition publication Max Sports & Fitness in an article titled “Is Diet Soda Bad for You?” Click here to read the article.  |
Posted: 13 May 2011 05:31 AM PDT Dr. Jerry V. Teplitz, a pioneer in stress management and optimum health, recently interviewed Dr. Andersen on his internet radio show. Click here to listen to Dr. Andersen explain that there is an effective way to lose weight.  |
**** This Week’s Habits of Health Lesson ****
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Less Is Not Better
By Jami Krietzman, RN
Many of you out there are in a fat burning state if you are in Phase 1 of the program. Being in the fat burning state has some wonderful advantages. You will have little to no hunger or cravings and your energy level will be up. Because of these wonderful benefits, some folks believe that if they take in less, for example, Medifast meals or smaller Lean & Green meals, that is better and they will lose weight quicker.
LESS is NOT better! This program is specifically designed to provide you with all the nutrients you need in the right combination to help you lose weight while preserving muscle tissue as well as heading you in the direction of optimal health. This program is low calorie, low fat, and nutritionally balanced, meaning you are not getting high protein and little if no carbohydrates. You are looking at perfectly balanced meals.
Let’s talk about fat.
We encourage you to choose a healthy fat and limit your intake of trans fat and saturated fat. People feel that fat is bad, but not all fat is created equal.
Fat plays a few vital roles in your body:
Fat is important for the absorption of your fat-soluble vitamins. These are vitamins A, D, E, and K.
Fat adds a sense of fullness after eating a meal.
Fat also promotes healthy gallbladder contraction. In fact, for healthy gallbladder contraction, you need to take in 10 grams of fat at one time for optimal contraction. This comes from your lean and green meal. It depends on what your lean choice is for the day. Lean choices for this program can be found on page 4 of the quick start guide.
If you choose a lean protein, such as beef, salmon, pork, or other meat in that category, you do not need to replace a fat serving because the amount of fat that these types of proteins contain is more than 9 grams of fat per serving.
If you choose a leaner protein, such as chicken breast or turkey breast, than you would need to add an additional fat serving.
If you choose the leanest protein, such as shellfish, fishes like cod, flounder, tilapia, mahi mahi, deer, buffalo, or elk, than you need to add 2 additional servings of fat.
The fat servings you are allowed to have are found on page 6 of your Quick Start Guide and examples of these would be:
1 teaspoon of canola, flaxseed, walnut, or olive oil
5 black or green olives
Up to 2 tablespoons of low carbohydrate salad dressing; containing less than 6 grams of carbohydrates and approximately 5 grams of fat per serving
1 teaspoon of trans fat-free margarine
Why are the fat fat additions important and how does it affect your body:
Fat plays a very important role in the absorption of your fat-soluble vitamins. Fat-soluble vitamins are soluble in lipids (fats). These vitamins are usually absorbed in fat globules that travel through the lymphatic system of the small intestines and into the general blood circulation within the body. These fat-soluble vitamins, especially vitamins A and E, are then stored in body tissues. A person can be deficient in the fat soluble vitamins if their fat intake is too low or if their fat absorption is compromised, for example, by certain drugs (that interfere with the absorption of fat from the intestine. But I am mainly talking about low intake of fat here.
Another important consideration is your gallbladder. This is a little pear-shaped sac that stores and concentrates bile. It is connected to your liver (where bile is produced). Bile is what helps break down the fat you eat. If a person does not take in enough fat, the gall bladder doesn’t empty out the bile that it has inside and the bile that is not released may form gallstones or can lead to an inflammation of the gallbladder.
These are not pleasant conditions and the possibility of them occurring can be totally eliminated by following the program as it is meant to be followed; which means making sure to get the correct amount of fat servings in depending upon what your lean choice is for your Lean and Green meal. So guess what? LESS IS NOT BETTER!
Let’s talk about is your Medifast meals.
You need to get all 5 of these in daily. It is very important.
LESS IS NOT BETTER!
Taking in too little nutrients can hinder your weight loss as it could put you into starvation mode so you will see little if no weight loss when doing this.
The other issue is that with the reduced calories below 800-1000, if there is weight loss, it will not be all fat. About 50% if not more of it will be from lean tissue, which is your muscle. You do not want to lose that for a couple reasons:
Muscle burns calories. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn, even at rest.
When faced with a shortage of calories, your body's natural response is to conserve fat. This mechanism may have come in handy for your distant ancestors trying to survive a famine, but the "starvation response" and its associated hormonal changes make life difficult for us today.
With this self-imposed famine, the body begins to break down muscle tissue for fuel. When protein is broken down, it releases nitrogen. Your body will quickly wash away the nitrogen by releasing water from tissue cells, causing an immediate reduction in water weight and a noticeable drop on the scale. However, water and muscle loss is nothing to celebrate. The water weight will be quickly regained as soon as you have something to drink, and the missing muscle can wreak havoc on your metabolism for a good long time.
Muscle is a metabolically active tissue. It requires a certain number of calories each day to maintain it. Therefore, the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn even when you're just sitting around. As your muscle mass drops, so does your daily calorie requirement. Suppose, for example, that you lose 10 pounds of muscle (along with maybe 20 lbs. of fat). Now suppose that each pound of muscle had been burning 70 calories a day just sitting there. Together, those 10 pounds of muscle had been burning 700 calories a day. With this muscle tissue gone, you must now consume 700 fewer calories a day in order to maintain that weight-loss.
The thing is most people won't keep up the starvation routine or “less is better” dieting thoughts for long. They'll eventually return to their old eating habits thinking this program is not working even though it would if they were doing it properly. When they go back to their old eating habits, the weight inevitably comes piling back on. The kicker is that while they lost both muscle and fat during their program, what they put back on was all fat. So, even though they may weigh the same as they did when they started, they now have a lot more fat and a lot less muscle than they did before they started the program. This means that their metabolisms are slower and their calorie requirements are lower.
In essence what I am trying to impart to you is, do the program correctly. Less is NOT better. Less will lead you to problems.
Have a fantastic week!
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