On Oprah Kirstie Alley told us how and why she fell off the Jenny Craig diet wagon. The important thing for everyone watching is to learn from her mistakes and to get on a path to lifetime leanness instead of on line for the yo-yo diet rollercoaster.
Washington, DC weight loss expert Josef Brandenburg lays out the top 5 keys to lasting weight loss:
#1. Low is a "no go": "The past century of obesity research is in, and the consensus is that low-calorie diets do not work to keep the pounds off. They make people hungry, and hunger is in the BODY, not the mind. Its like holding your breath - you can use your willpower to override your body in the short term, but eventually your are going to give in. And when you give in that low-calorie diet will have created the perfect metabolic storm for maximal fat gain. Everyone reading this has experienced this, but you all think its your fault. It was the diet that failed you," says Brandenburg.
#2. Focus on what really matters in your diet: "Body fat is fundamentally regulated by the hormone insulin. Insulin is regulated by the quantity and quality of carbs in your diet. The only thing that you need to worry about is the kinds and amounts of carbs you are eating. If you do that then your body fat will take care of itself and you don't have to be hungry in the process," says Brandenburg.
#3. Ditch the "junk" exercise: Brandenburg claims that exercise done for the sake of burning calories directly - like jogging - is an exercise in futility. "Calories in and calories out are dependent variables. That is they depend on each other - if you meddle with one, you meddle with the other. If you expend more energy, then you will get hungrier. If you use willpower to keep from eating, your body will find other ways to get its calories back eventually - it can eliminate your spontaneous movement, reduce your body temperature and even break down your lean body mass," says Brandenburg.
#4. Do smart exercise: According to Brandenburg the good news is that there is a kind of exercise that will alter your metabolism in such a way that you will burn your own body-fat after the workout is over - high intensity exercise like metabolic resistance training and intervals. "High intensity workouts are much more fun, much faster and get way better results," says Brandenburg.
#5. Figure out how to love what makes you thin: Brandenburg thinks that this is the absolute best part of the process. "Just this weekend I had a bunch of my clients over and I made them a batch of low-carb ice cream. It was delicious. They were so happy that they could eat a decent sized bowl without gaining any body-fat," says Brandenburg.
