I’ve decided not to talk about #WeightLoss, but instead, #recovering from #obesity.
When you’re on this journey at the moment, you get lots of conflicting information. After the unhealthy #diet and #CalorieCounting culture that was promoted in the 80s-90s, weight loss has become a dirty word and it’s all about lifestyle change. I accompanied someone to a paid #nutritional advice session and he was told ‘don’t focus on loosing weight, focus on eating healthy’
That sounds good except that the human body is not designed to loose weight (or fat). Rarely in the history of our species have we needed to loose the proportions of our body fat that many of us need to loose today to stay healthy, because food was never as abundant and unhealthy as it is now.
You can focus on only eating #healthy #foods, but without intentionally restricting how much or when you eat, you won’t loose much weight, because your body will adjust your satiation levels so you still eat the same amount of calories.
#Exercise also does lots to help you, but your brain will naturally tell you to eat more to keep up with your exercise.
I’d like to propose that recovering from obesity is like turning a ship around. Let’s suppose you are used to eating unhealthy foods and your taste is adjusted to that, it does take time for your taste to adjust to that you can enjoy vegetables, and I do believe that everyone should be able to enjoy healthy food. Practicing eating healthier foods and weaning off the sugar and fat can be the start of your journey, before you turn the ship, it has to slow down.
Then, once you start to turn, it takes a long time, has a large turning circle, it doesn’t look like you’re getting anywhere fast, and you have to keep adjusting for tides, currents, winds, but you do have to keep the wheel locked and stay the course.
These days, I don’t exercise to burn calories, I exercise to gain back mobility that I have lost or never had due to becoming obese as a teenager.
