How to Lose All Your Excess Fat. Forever.

How to Lose All Your Excess Fat. Forever.

Fed up to the eyeballs with faddish weight loss programs that work for six months, tops? Ready for some in-your-face-in-a-good-way common sense? Read on, girlfriend.

I won’t tell you what you should or shouldn’t eat or even how much because I think you already know this. If you don’t let me know and I will post an update with suggestions that were provided to me by my sensible friends.

We live in a society that is just plain spoilt and greedy. We expect to always feel content, full, happy. Never to feel empty, lonely, sad. If we experience what used to be seen as ‘the blues’ we’re whacked on lexapro faster than you can say ‘bummer’. Of course there are exceptions to this and the recent progress by popular culture such as the film Silver Linings Playbook in de-stigmatising mental health issues is great. But back to the main event for today – blubber.

Hunger is designed to be out of everyone’s comfort zone. It is supposed to make you sit up and plan for the next feed. It’s your body talking to you. It triggers you to feel dissatisfied, slightly irritable, even sad. That’s the whole point. If we felt serene and calm when we were hungry we’d all starve to death as our bodies wouldn’t prompt us to do anything about it.

It’s just that fixing ‘hunger’ can lead to too much of a good thing: Excess fat.

My sensible friends have en mass chipped in with ideas and advice over my many years of yoyo dieting; the yoyo staying on the upside of fat for longer each time, staying on the skinny side for shorter and shorter periods. Sigh. This, along with guidance from bariatric (fat) doctor, Hendrik Rensburg has armed me with enough knowledge on the issue to feel confident enough to write about it. But of course you never stop learning about these things and there will be a mountain of things I miss because I don’t know it yet.

Eat less. Much less.

It sounds so depressingly simple, doesn’t it? It actually really is. However (big however!), there are just a few hurdles to overcome before a body is prepared to do this. If you know what they are it isn’t hard to jump them. First of all is working out whether you’re a hummingbird or a polar bear. You can pretty much guess what this means:

Polar Bear or Hummingbird?

Rensburg uses these animals as a way of explaining in layman’s terms how people’s metabolisms differ. A hummingbird has to eat at least its own body weight in food each day just to survive. They often eat around 14 times their body weight. No fat hummingbirds.

hummingbird

A polar bear on the other had needs to go for several months without food each year and is highly efficient at storing fat for this reason. People’s metabolisms vary from person to person. I am a polar bear. It sucks but at least I don’t have to think about eating all the time (ironically I do, though). Some of us have metabolisms that require frequent feeding to stay stable, others have clever, efficient metabolisms that extract every last calorie from whatever’s eaten and stores it carefully for the next famine.

polar bear

Denial

If you’re reading this and you’re overweight, this is step number one. Yes you probably have a metabolism that is good at holding onto every last calorie from that piece of sourdough fruit toast. Yes you are one of the “lucky” ones who is so efficient at storing fat that, come the next famine, will triumphantly survive while your perpetually skinny bestie who scoffs pizza every Friday night will be dead within three days. Suck it up, princess.

Deprivation

Do you honestly actually know what this feels like lately? One of my current fave blogger’s, Rose at The Londoner has a great little chart that describes the difference between a craving and proper hunger:

hunger versus craving

The uncomfortable side effects of hunger in the First World will not kill you. You can satisfy your hunger in an instant if you wish. However for those looking to reduce fat, unless you allow your body to partly consume itself, you are not going to lose excess fat. It’s just scientifically not possible. And having your body eat up its own fat is not a pleasant feeling no matter how exciting it is seeing the pounds come off. Just deal with it and have another drink of water. I bought a soda stream to make it a bit more interesting. I’ve come to love soda water, you can too. Learn to be at ease with what Rensburg calls the pain of deprivation.

soda water

Nutrient Density

If you’re going to eat a small enough amount that your body is going to have to feast on itself for a while (i.e. more energy out than energy in) you want to be sure that the calories you are taking in are actually going to feed you at a cellular level. Don’t eat food that contains little nutrient value (you’re a big girl, you work out what those are). Otherwise you’re going to be excruciatingly hungry the whole time and eventually get sick, fail, and get fat. Fatter than you were before. That doesn’t sound like much fun, does it? Take it from a pilgrim; it’s not.

The easiest way to do this is eat “clean” foods. Avoid anything that comes in a package of any sort. If you have to brush or wash earth dirt off it, more power to you. If it’s meat try to see that the animal was a happy one, ie pasture fed before becoming your dinner. This way you can still be primal, paleo, vegetarian, whatever floats your boat, and know that your body is getting properly fed, albeit in small doses for a little while.

Chocolate cake for example can have plenty of calories but because it contains foods that have little nutritional value (flour, sugar), it’s going to fill your tummy for a bit, then leave you wildly hungry and likely to snack unnecessarily. Trust me on this one.

Being Strong

Your biggest enemy is self-pity. We all go there. It’s something most of us avoid checking out to ourselves because well, it’s a bit embarrassing. Who wants to be caught out eating a massive second helping of risotto because they feel sorry for themselves? So to avoid acknowledging that we are over eating due to a “poor me” habit, we blame it on anything else: My marriage is hard, my daughter is strung out, I’m tired, I’m time-poor. The list goes on. You can try to work out why you overeat or you can just stop doing it, the choice is yours. I went for ‘just stop it’ and decided to check it out after the weight was gone. There is a time for navel gazing and there is a time for harden the fuck up. Your choice. Either road will get you there if you eat less regardless.

Exercise a Bit

While you’re dropping excess fat off, it pays to try not to get massively hungry so you want to be doing some exercise but not so much that the hunger is just too much to bear. I love to run but while I was losing the extra kilos I cut down how much I run and did a lot more walking. Happily, I found that even with cutting down my kilometres, I came out the other end after a few months able to run faster than ever before.

Do some fast walking and do some weight-bearing exercise. I just use the equipment at the outdoor exercise park and my own body weight for weight-bearing.

Bathroom Scales – they’re not the enemy

No one can love the bathroom scales; I get that. There are some of us who can monitor a healthy weight without ever getting on the scales. Sadly I am not one of these people. I can quite easily gain eight kilos without even realising it. So for me it’s onto the scales every day or so. If I am up, I eat less, if I am down I relax a bit. I try to keep within a two kilogram yoyo rather than a 15 kilogram yoyo. I can only do this if I keep my eyes firmly on the scales. If I know I have a big feasting period coming up, like a holiday or Christmas, I try to lose the extra kilo first rather than afterwards. It works so much better than trying to get extra holiday fat off as it doesn’t feel punitive this way. Instead, the feasting is a reward, nothing to feel guilty about. Hummingbird types reading this will have no idea what I am talking about but you polar bears do, don’t you?

Get to Grips With Yourself

Honesty time: how skinny do you seriously expect to be? If you’re entering the glory of middle age you might want to re-think that size zero, or eight, or whatever sizes your country does. It’s not a good look to be underweight. Seeing a doctor for guidance on this is a really good idea as you’re going to get totally unbiased advice.

On the other side of the coin, how long do you want to be fat for? It’s your choice. I’ve been fat and I’ve been thin and thin is much much more fun.

7 Replies to “How to Lose All Your Excess Fat. Forever.”

  1. mmmm….good article but I think if there was a pill that made you skinny everyone would rush out to buy it, not dissimilar to your reference to Lexipro making you happy and less anxious (if you can take something to help – why wouldn’t you?) Afterall plenty of people have no qualms about jabbing themselves with fillers and Botox to make them look younger and prettier…..don’t tell me that’s not a little ‘spoilt and greedy’

    1. I suppose so, perhaps lap band surgery is the closest we have at the moment to a magical weight loss pill? I don’t actually think botox and fillers make anyone look either younger or prettier! I have tried both myself and all they do is puff up a wrinkle. Age is in the eyes, in my opinion, not the lines. I am as spoilt and greedy as the next first world chick, here in my glass house.

  2. Hey Serena,

    Love this article and your blog. Congrats!
    As a fellow runner and polar bear I have to agree with everything you have said – the key to losing weight and staying healthy really is simple. Now if I could only follow the rules all the time… Can only keep trying.

    Deb

    1. Thanks Deb, God I am so bloody hungry right now 🙂 I wish I could follow all the rules too…One night of drinking and partying and its an eat-fest.

  3. Coming off a week of emotional eating I almost couldn’t read this. “The pain of deprivation” almost bought tears to my eyes!! I usually live by most of the above . After years of having very good self discipline funny how no matter how practised the habits are, when facing an emotionally challenging week it’s food that comforts and I succumbed to it this week. It’s wrong and I know all the alternatives but sometimes it just is food that satisfies, I think it must just be our primal instinct . Food = comfort.
    But being aware and able to reel myself in is something I should be proud and have managed to master before too much damage is done. So I will pat self on back and regroup ( after I finish this Lindt strawberry intense chocolate :))
    Love your writing and blog x

  4. Ever since I have been watching what I eat I have let myself get hungry. I actually like the sensation. That being said it is because I know I can stop it whenever I want to.

    1. I do this too Maria. If I go to bed and I am not totally full, I sleep better and get up the next morning on the right side of the bed. And yes – hunger for us is so easily fixed!

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