5 Stupid Things We Believe About Losing Weight!

A potential client shared with me this morning some of her weight loss beliefs and even though I hear similar notions all the time, I will never get used to them. When these common misbeliefs once again infiltrate my hard-built walls of common sense, I want to simultaneously scream at the media, and all those who never take the time to educate themselves about nutrition and just repeat what they’re told, and cry for those (like the potential client) who unknowingly buy into such ridiculousness at their own expense.

As we were discussing her diet, she told me that she loves bananas but won’t eat them anymore since a Jenny Craig “counselor” told her that they were “bad for her.” Realize that Jenny Craig counselors are most often women who are paid about six bucks an hour and have had only a-day-and-a-half of training… none of which was nutrition-based and all of which was sales-based. Basically, the chicks at Jenny Craig don’t know any more about nutrition than your dweebie, never-had-a-date gym teacher knew about sex ed. But, in this upside-down society, they’re the ones dispensing the advice!

This got me thinking about all of the absolutely, damn stupid stuff that is pervasive right now that keeps people from losing weight. So I thought I’d bring to you, my awesome and oh-so-intelligent Fun Girls, the top 5 make-me-cringe “Rules” of Weight Loss. Here we go…

5. Butter makes you fat. Margarine is better for you. Here’s the facts: 1 tbsp. of whipped butter has 70 calories, 7.5 grams of fat, and it’s real food that your body recognizes. Remember, we were eating butter for centuries before there was an obesity epidemic. We spread it on our breakfast bread back in the day when a weight problem meant that you needed to gain some. Then experts come along and tell us that we’d be better off to eat margarine, a product invented in 1869, when Emperor Louis Napoleon III of France offered a prize to anyone who could make a satisfactory substitute for butter, suitable for use by the armed forces and the lower classes. French chemist
Hippolyte Mège-Mouriés (say that after two margaritas!) invented a substance he called oleomargarine, the name of which became shortened to the trade name “margarine.”

The numbers on margarine don’t add up to weight loss. Fleischmann’s margarine, for instance, has 70 calories per tbsp. (exactly the same as butter) and 8 grams of fat (slightly more than butter). How is this getting us ahead?

Best of all, consider this. In 1930, the average American ate 18 lbs. of butter and 2 lbs. of margarine per year. Remember, weight wasn’t much of issue for folks in the 1930s. At the end of the 20^th century, however, when the obesity epidemic was shifting into high gear, the average American consumed 5 lbs. of butter and 8 lbs. of margarine. Did margarine cause the obesity epidemic? Of course not. But it wasn’t the solution either.

Best to stick with good, old fashion, yummy butter… in moderate portions, of course!

4. You don’t need to exercise to lose weight. No you don’t. People in famine ravished countries, as well as those bozos on the show Survivor, lose weight just fine by not having access to food. Drop your calories to 500 a day and you’ll lose weight, for sure. Problem is, the minute food reappears in your life, you eat and you gain weight back… about as fast as an air compressor can inflate a beach ball! This is because your body didn’t just consume fat to lose weight when you didn’t have food (i.e. were on a diet), it also consumed a whole lot of muscle. You weren’t exercising and building muscle, and muscle is takes a lot of calories to maintain, so it’s often the first tissue to go when calories are slim pickin’s. Without that metabolism boosting muscle, and with a body primed to restore all the fat it lost, the minute food enters the body, the body immediately converts it to fat. More and more and more fat.

Those who exercise lose weight completely differently. They burn calories by reducing their intake moderately AND by burning calories through exercise. They lose weight slowly and permanently, always maintaining a revved up metabolism. When their “diet” is done, they still have plenty of muscle (and residual calorie burn) to eat like a normal human being without packing on the pounds once again. But best of all, they’ve made an active lifestyle a way of life, and it doesn’t change once the “diet” is over. It is who they are. And their bodies are adapted to their active life. Putting on pounds of fat is not what an active, healthy body does.

3. Don’t ever eat white rice! So I was in a lunch buffet line the other day at a Chamber of Commerce meeting, and a very influential man in the community was surprised that I was putting rice on my plate. He has struggled with his weight as long as I’ve known him and he told me that he NEVER eats white rice. He’s not alone. Recently a client asked if she could eat sushi because of the white rice. Sushi is probably one of the best choices you can eat when eating out, yet she didn’t want to eat it because it had that evil white rice.

Here’s some more facts: White rice has 105 calories per cooked ½ cup. It has 22 grams of carbohydrates (the recommended carb intake for a healthy person on a 2000 calorie per day diet is 250 grams.) The bad part of white rice is it only has 0.6 grams of fiber. Brown rice, on the other hand, has 110 calories per cooked ½ cup, 1 gram of fat (that’s a good fat), and 22 grams of carbohydrates.

Hmmmm…that doesn’t look much different from the white rice. The only significant difference is that brown rice, since it hasn’t been stripped and refined to the extent that white rice has, has 3.5 grams of fiber, which helps slow the absorption of those carbohydrates into your blood stream. Brown rice will make you feel fuller and you most likely will eat less of it. However, it is NOT any lower in calories or carbohydrates than white rice. Just like there are no fat people in China (until they imported McDonald’s), white rice ain’t gonna make you fat (in reasonable portions!)

So go ahead and eat your sushi or have a little white rice when it’s on the buffet. Just cook up brown rice the rest of the time…

2. Potatoes are bad… bad…. bad!
Really? A natural root vegetable, fresh out of the soil, teeming with belly-filling nutrients has become the Satan to all weight loss intentions? I don’t think so. Again, let’s look at the facts instead of the hysteria. The humble potato has a mere 185 calories, 0 grams of fat (of course), and 34 grams of carbohydrates. When you eat it with the skin (why wouldn’t you?), you are also getting 4 grams of fiber. Is that a perfect food? No. But it isn’t really that bad. When you add a tbsp. of butter, you have a 255 calorie food with the addition of fat to slow the absorption of the carbohydrates into the blood stream. You’re getting a reasonable amount of fiber to fill your belly, to keep things moving, and some life-sustaining nutrients. Throw on some grilled veggies, or some bean-heavy chili, and you’ve got yourself a darn good meal, that will accommodate weight loss.

And for the Number One most ridiculous, most stupid thing we believe about weight loss…

1.Fruit is too high in sugar. For heaven sakes… once and for all… let’s get over the idea that fruit is bad for us!! In all the years I’ve been training and working with women that need to lose weight, I’ve yet to run across one of them that got fat from eating too many apples, or bananas, or cherries, or blackberries, or oranges… you get my point. Yes, fruit has some naturally occurring sugars, usually in the form of fructose, that makes that peach taste nothing short of heavenly! But I really think that many women have been conned into believing that fruit actually contains cane sugar… you know, the white stuff we add to our ice tea.

Here are the calories and carbohydrates in some well known fruits:

Calories        Carbohydrates

Medium apple         70            17

½ cup blueberries    40            10

1 slice cantaloupe     20            5

1 cup cherries        75            19

Med. bunch grapes    140            36

Med. Kiwifruit        45            11

Med. Orange        85            21

1 cup strawberries    50            12

1 slice watermelon    15            4

As you can see, almost all of the fruits fall into the 100-calorie snack range that is all the rage, and pack way more nutrition. The carbohydrates, or sugars, contained in the fruit are no problem for healthy individuals either when they pair fruit with a small slice of cheese or some almonds to slow the absorption of the sugars into the blood stream. Consider what most people eat for a snack instead of fruit: ice cream, muffins, yogurt (170 calories and 33 grams of sugar!)… you get the idea. You are always better off having a piece of fruit for a snack.

So go ahead ladies, eat the apple from the tree of knowledge… and do it proudly!! J