... Then Just Stay Fat. (10 page)

Have you ever stopped to think how many calories you need in a
day and how many you just ate?
 
Most peop
le need between 1,500 and
2,200 calories per day (fo
od labels are based on 2,000).
 
You can go to almost any restaurant and easily find a meal that delivers all of
that in one sitting...
whammo
.
 
There went
your day's allotment at lunch.
 
Plus you add breakfast, mid-morning
snack, afternoon snack, dinner
and late-
night snack to it... and anything else you happened to graze on as you passed it (M&Ms from your co-worker's candy dish, half a stale doughnut in the break
room, six cream and
sugar coffees
and, oh,
that
piece of office birthday cake). S
uddenly you are WAY over your daily calorie n
eed and packing on the weight.

There are not enough hours in the day to exercise e
nough to burn all of that off.
 
That's why weight gain is practically infinite and weight loss is rate limited
—
it'll only come off so fast.
 
Even if you starve yourself and workout like a fiend, it will only come off at a certain rate (by the way, I am not proposing starvation o
r self-abuse workout schedules;
not only is it unsustainable and unhealthy, but it wo
uld make me mighty unpopular).
Nature doesn't care about your skinny jeans

Metabolic pathways in our bodies have al
l kinds of mechanisms, triggers
and feedback loops that are awesome at saving u
p some energy for a rainy day.
 
We can lay do
wn fat like nobody's business.
 
We are calorie-
storing machines.

Imagine living in a time when you didn't know where your next meal was coming from, and you didn't have a way to store or carry extra food around with you
—
no refrigerators, lu
nch boxes, or even a backpack.
 
If you came upon a pile of food, you had no way of taking it all with you to rati
on out over the next few weeks. What did you do?
 
You gorged!
 
I mean stuffed you
rself... really poked it down.
 
Lucky for us our bodies knew just what to do with the excess
—
it packed on the pounds, baby.
 
Yep, our thunder thighs used to be our backpacks
—
our spare tires a mini-fri
dge.
 
Think about it. W
e toted our surplus
around as fat, available for energy and life-processes when food wasn’t
available.
 
Our body is great at this ... and it has served
us well for thousands of years.

The problem is
we
don’t live like that anymore.
 
Not only are calories abundant,
but the energy needed to acquire thos
e calories is hardly anything.
 
We aren't out there clawing at the
ground hoping to find a carrot,
spending 20
0 calories to eat 50 calories.
 
Nope.
 
We now spend 50 calories to eat 1,000 (thank you very much giant,
drive-through fast-food meal).
 
And all our body knows to do with the excess is store it
—
becau
se it thinks we might need it.
 
There aren't really any strong, metabolic triggers in our bodies that have negative
feedback loops for overeating.
 
No chemical comes cascading through our cells saying
,
"
bleecckkk
, bacon doub
le cheeseburgers are revolting; get them
away from me."
 
Nope, our
mind
keeps saying
,
"
yyaahhh
,
gimme
all of that!"

Your body doesn't care that you can't fit in your clothes,
 
that your bathroom scale number is astronomical, that your doctor is pulling her hair out, or that you look in
the mirror and hate yourself.
 
Your body only ca
res about avoiding starvation
(and I’m not talking our false fears of wre
t
ched metabolisms from dieting)
.
 
It's never been threatened with "anti-starvation" so it has no idea what to do
about it.

Add to that your body’s natural protective instinct
to save calories where it can. It
tries to slow you down to maintain the
calorie reserve
,
making weight loss
a little
more difficult
(but not beyond your control)
.
 
When you restrict calories, your body kicks in all kinds of chemicals and metabolic pa
thways to get you to move less – maybe take a nap.
 
The thought of going to the gym becomes daunting
,
and
the couch looks extra comfy.
 
Thanks Mother N
ature.
We Hear Diet and Think Deprivation

The mere thought of “going on a diet” conjures immediate imagery of canned bee
ts, dry tuna fish in a hollowed-
out tomato, and
mounds upon mounds of lettuce.
 
We already yearn for our sickly-sweet, gooey-fresh doughnuts, finger-licking, salty orange cheese puffs, and butter cream frosting roses from the edges of birthday cakes.

At first, our self-anger is so high we easily commit to the “diet
” – we deserve the punishment!
 
Tak
e that, cottage cheese thighs!
 
I hate you, flabby stomach!
 
Now you’ll pay!

But then, our anger fades.
 
We lose our punitive momentum and slowly start to notice that delivery pizza is on sale, or
cookies are in the break room.
 
Then a new kind of anger s
ets in – the “why me” variety.
 
“Why can’t I have a doughnut?
 
It’s not fair!”
 
Because entire food groups are completely
off limits, you feel deprived,
set apart from others you deem
normal.
 
Eventually, you cav
e and eat the stupid doughnut, and
then you slide ri
ght back into your old habits.
 
No more deprivation – or diet.

So you see?
 
You've been right all along
—
weight loss is hard.
 
Science agrees with you.
 
Sing hallelujah from the
roof
tops
—
you were right!

(I'll wait a moment while you gloat a little
.)

Feel better?
 
Relieved?
 
Validated?
 
Vindicated?

That's nice.

But you're still overweight.
 
Whatc
ha
gonna
do about that?

Well, you've got two choices:
 
Keep prancing around with your apple fritter reminding ev
eryone that weight loss is hard
OR swallow that Brussels sprout whole if you have to
—
and
then
start down the path to a
moderate, healthier lifestyle.
 
On
e choice gets you validated,
and
the other gets you into a smaller size.
 
It’s y
our choice.

Time to start moving into action.

How many of you hate the skinny girls, the muscle guys... the "pretty people?"
 
I know I did.
 
I us
ed to hate their guts.
 
No lie.

I'd see them out and about, looking all toned with a spring in their step.
 
Clothes fit them, they didn't wheeze, and they laughed just a bit too much.
 
I managed to not kill them by assuming them to be egotistical
jerks, slow-witted or giggly.

My loathing for them also made me stay out of gyms.
 
I knew that's where they congregated.
 
Besides, I had bet
ter things to do with my time.

Eventually, I got sick and tired of my constant war against myself
—
against the "skinny world," for that matter.
 
My anger at myself became greater than my hatred of "them" and I
sucked it up. I entered a gym.

Wearing my sweat pants and a giant T-shirt (that I kept tugging at 'cause it clung in places I didn't want accentuated), I walked into the weight room.
 
I saw a few heads turn and I clearly remember feeling judged.
 
I forced myself to
ignore it and pushed forward.

I was sore for weeks.
 
I did too much and probably with questionable technique.
 
But I did it, and I kept doing it.
 
Sometime
s anger really is your friend.

Over time, as I became a "regular," the others began to chat with me.
 
Muscle-head guys befriended me.
 
Skinny girls I used to hate were nice to me; they complimented me.
 
My guard began to drop.
 
The muscle heads started showing me new exercises, suggesting books and talking to me about protein.
 
Skinny girls shared their fat pictures, wowin
g me with how far they'd come.

I had an epiphany one day
—
the pretty people I'd always hated didn't just wake up pretty every day.
 
They worked at it.
 
In front of me was a guy who looked like a magazine cover sweating his guts out on a stair
climber.
 
A skinny girl was over doing
ab
crunches. It was a weight-lifting
guy
who introduced to me to the concept of tracking my food on a sheet and keeping my protein up.
 
I think he even talk
ed about his "fat pants" once.

They had the same challenges I had; they had just been doing something about it all the time I was busy hating them.
 
I never hated poor people who worked hard and wound up rich.
 
Then why should I hate fi
t people who work just as hard?

As I revisit my first moments in the gym, in all honesty, they were probably looking at me thinking "who's the new girl"
—
not "who's the fat girl
.
"
 
I wasted a lot of time.