It’s nice to have the impression that we have everything under control. From the small things to the big things. From things we think about to things we actually do. Of course, most of the time this is an illusion. What really happens is that our fantastic ability to adapt kicks in. Our mind and body will sooner or later accept a new situation and you will probably be fine. In the context of losing weight and switching to a healthier lifestyle this can be a tough thing, You instinctively tend to go for the safe, well known terrain. If you can control some of that slowly changing your habits to improve the lifestyle you have you can achieve long term success. The funny thing about that is you ability to adapt will try to drag you to a point of equilibrium in which you will be able to keep the same weight.

Let’s take an example: Let’s say you run 20 minutes each day. The first day you run you notice that you’ve consumed 250 calories (just an example). Let’s say that the difference between your food intake and what you’re consuming in a day is 100 calories. By running you now have a 150 calories deficit. You will start to lose some weight as a result of the physical activity. What do you think will happend next? Will you be able to lose weight consistently? Probably no. First thing that happens is that you lose weight =>this translates in you burning less calories per day (not by much, but we’ll take it into account). The second thing that happens is that you body adapts to the running and in time you can run the same 20 minutes and only consume 150 calories (for example). You see, you body is reducing the caloric deficit and it’s adapting. It’s resisting. And it’s not a conscious process. (It’s not like you are thinking: I’m gonna fight this exercising things and the body is executing on that). So what can you do to avoid this?

The solution, as advertised and tried by myself, is to continuously challenge the body.

For example, you can:

• continuously alter your exercise routine.
• alter the time of the day at which you workout
• alter the type of foods that you eat (for example I switch between eating peanut butter and walnuts as sources of good fat)
• alter between a slightly higher than normal caloric intake and a slightly lower than normal caloric intake
• do interval training
• whatever induces a small destabilizing factor in your nutrition or exercise activity. I stress the small part!

Basically, you can do anything that will make your body keep guessing what to expect next. This kind of zig-zag-ing will ensure that you get the most out of your food and exercise. The key here is to do all this with moderation and always keep a certain baseline (you wouldn’t want to eat 200 calories one day and 4000 calories the next day – that would be just wrong/stupid)

That being said I think that this strategy can be helpful in fighting excess weight and it can definitely help in case you reach a weigh loss plateau.

Related posts:

1. Measuring (Losing weight saga – 4)
2. The Burger Gym (Losing weight saga – 2)
3. Calories. Counting. (Losing weight saga – 6)