LOSING WEIGHT IS NOT WHAT YOU IMAGINED IT TO BE

BY: FITZ-GEORGE RATTRAY

When most people imagine themselves on a weight loss diet, they imagine that it will be challenging, it will require self-discipline and it will take time, and that is all true. However, many people also imagine that once they are religiously sticking to their trusted weight loss diet, the excess weight will be lost consistently with a few plateaus here and there, this, is not at all true.

The reality is not so mathematically beautiful, it is biological, chemical and built on many thousands of years of survival.

The imagined graph of a downward slope of varied gradients and a few level points is just that, imagination, and no more. The reality consists of walking to the scale after a perfectly planned and executed day of eating, stepping on and seeing anything from a large drop, a gain, a minute drop or no change at all.

Here is where the greatest complication kicks in and the love hate relationship with the scale. Here is where your mind starts messing with you; using this inconsistency and the increased measurements to get you to do what it wanted you to do all along, get frustrated and rationalize giving up.

There is a perfectly reasonable cause for every gain after a perfectly executed day of eating, that is what we are all designed to do. We all have ancestors who survived decades and centuries of ice ages and famines, despite those traumas. The only physiological reason why any of us is here to discuss this now is metabolic adaptation. This is the ability you and all your ancestors have wired into us, all the way down to each and every cell.

Metabolic adaptation allows our bodies to adjust the rate of utilizing ingested energy, stored energy and essential materials necessary for life sustaining processes, resulting in a slowing of weight loss, stabilizing your body weight for a period of time and even retention of electrolytes and water, even to the point of a weight increase.

The next time you step on a scale after a negative calorie day (where you consume less calories than you expend) and see a half pound INCREASE in your weight, keep calm, think straight and know that you could NOT POSSIBLY have somehow, magically spontaneously generated 1,750 calories worth of fat from thin air overnight.

Understand that the possible reasons the scale went up are:
• you very likely retained water
• your body could easily be going through an adaptive stage
• also, if you are a female of menstruating age your weight can increase significantly, even up to 4 lbs. during menstruation.
• MOST importantly, you are HUMAN with a healthy adaptive system

Other factors, and internal changes may also exasperate these vacillations and plateauing, including medical conditions such as:
• Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS)
• Hypothyroidism
• Diabetes
• testosterone decline
• heart disease
• and stress,
also, medications such as, some; steroids, epilepsy medications, antidepressants (talk about a catch 21), blood pressure medications and insulin. So, AS ALWAYS, consult your physician.

To deal with these variations, fortunately, the InteKai system has at its core:
• A unique set of formulas designed to modify your intake to match changes in your adaptive state, keeping the weight loss going for practically everyone who adheres to their meal assignments, content, guidelines and portion sizes
• The result of minimizing plateauing
• Options which will not deprive anyone of any ESSENTIAL foods and promotes rounded healthy natural eating.

SHOULD YOU WEIGH?
Yes, you absolutely should, do you NEED to? No, some people do just fine without weighing, but if you are like the enormously large majority of persons who have had weight issues, know that studies have shown that people who weigh regularly tend to lose weight more consistently and maintain their weight loss within a reasonable range of their mode weight. For most, failure to journal/monitor your weight, hiding from your changes, invariably WILL result in weight gain.

InteKai, for example, attempts to make each member realize that healthy eating mindsets and habits are more important than any given number on the scale, check daily if you can, but remember that while daily weights may teach us lessons about our actions and reactions, WEEKLY and even two week averages are many times more important in identifying actual change and the true results of your consistent, steady, positive, lifechanging efforts.