Most people including myself in the past believe that if you restrict your diet for several months and loose a bunch of weight that you can go back to eating cheeseburgers, soda's, fried chicken and ice cream on a regular basis. The problem with that belief is that while you deprive yourself of important calories and nutrients your body actually looses vital muscle mass. Now you may ask what does muscle mass have to do with anything. Well actually it has everything to do with it. You see every pound of lean muscle tissue burns 6 calories an hour without doing anything at all. Fat tissue only burns 2 per hour. When you go on strict diets you can loose up to 10 pounds of muscle causing your body to burn less calories thus resulting in rapid weight gain when you go back to old habits.
Of course we all know that in order to loose weight we need to eat better but I also believe that in order to loose weight the healthy way one should not deprive themselves. Everyone wants to indulge in a rich chocolate dessert at times but the key is to not make it habitual. It really is a lifestyle change to manage our portion sizes and eat more greens, whole grains, lean protein, and fresh fruit. We also need to keep in mind that muscle building exercises are a must to get lasting results. For folks 40 plus it is even more vital since that's when we begin to loose 1 percent of our lean muscle mass per year. This is why I'm a huge fan of Yoga! Excluding power yoga it is virtually non impact and works and strengthens every muscle of the body in just a short amount of time.
After I had my baby I had a good 40 pounds to loose. Since I was breastfeeding, going on a strict diet was not in the cards. I had never been in this position in my whole life since I had been so disciplined with eating well and working out. I was some how hoping that I would be one of those woman who would just magically loose all of her baby weight in just a few months. After 3 or 4 months I was barely even loosing 1 or 2 pounds a month and I began to get really frustrated.
One day after reading "The womanly art of breastfeeding" by the la leche league international, I came across this very subject. Because I was breastfeeding going on a restricted diet to loose 10 pounds in a month was a big no no. Fat tissue holds the majority of toxins as well and nutrients. If I were to loose a large amount of weight in a short time I would risk passing the toxins into my milk which could possibly make my precious one ill. It further stated that true healthy weight loss was about 1 to 2 pounds a month. The more I thought about it the more sense it made.
We have become so accustomed in this modern day thinking to take a pill and "poof" we would be skinny. If your on a journey like I am we have to keep in mind that babies weren't conceived and birthed over night. If you look at nature and how plants grow, they do so at a slow pace. So learning from nature we should be patient in the process of transforming our bodies. We will then grow naturally into our new form without much resistance.
It has now been just over a year and a half since my son was born and I have about arrived to my pre-baby weight and It was a slow but painless progress. Sometimes we are steady and strong in the progression to our goal and sometimes we stumble. As long as we realize not to get discouraged or beat our selves up we can continue on the path and eventually we will reach our destination size.
So stay encouraged! You can do anything when you set your mind to it!
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