Does calorie counting really work? It is said that the human body is like a ship that follows the laws of thermodynamics: calories in, calories out. “Weight gain is due to consuming more calories than you burn, to lose weight you have to eat less and exercise more” Just by not putting those two tablespoons of olive oil in your salad every day, you can lose 230 calories. That way, you can lose 1 pound in two weeks, and 25 pounds in a year. But… This never materialized. According to statistics, 95.4% of calorie counting diet methods fail! Because the human body is not a mathematical equation, weight is the result of the body’s self-balance. What’s wrong with dieting? When your body needs calories but can’t get them, it chooses to slow down its metabolism and reduce its energy consumption. Instead, it converts fat in the body into energy through complex biochemical reactions. So eating less will only make our bodies consume less, and will not help us reduce fat. Dieting for a long time, the body’s metabolic rate will slow down. Once the diet can’t hold out, even if you only eat back the same amount of food, for your body, it is already eating too much. The extra calories are converted into fat, and the result is that the person is fatter than before. And when a person comes out of a “famine”, the hormones that regulate appetite are less than before, and he or she will eat more. Weight setpoint Everyone’s metabolism has a “setpoint” (setpoint). Fat people have a higher setpoint than thin people. The setpoint of body weight is the amount of fat that the body automatically maintains, and it does not depend on how many calories are consumed or consumed. Even if you eat a lot all the time, a person who gains up to 250 pounds will not gain endlessly to 2500 pounds. Weight gain is because the fixed point is elevated, and an elevated fixed point is like a clogged sink. When the sink is not clogged, the water poured in does not rise much and quickly drains away. The more water is poured in, the more it flows away. But when the sink is clogged, a little more water will come up. What if the sink is clogged? Dieting is like restricting water every day, and increasing aerobic exercise is like using a ladle to scoop out the water; neither of them is a long-term solution. So, weight loss doesn’t work not just because of a person’s lack of willpower; it has a physiological cause. Why not fix the clogged drain? Clogged drains are the equivalent of blocked hormones in our bodies. When we eat the wrong foods, the hormones that regulate our metabolism become “clogged” and our weight is set at a higher level. To get your hormones back in order, it’s important to eat the right foods and choose the right exercise regimen. Quality of food is more important than quantity. Insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas that determines whether we store fat or burn it. When glucose is elevated in the blood, the pancreas releases insulin, which tells the cells that it’s time to absorb glucose. Too much glucose in the cells is converted into fat. With too much insulin, the cells will not burn fat. Another hormone is leptin (leptin). Leptin is produced by fat cells and is used to control appetite and energy consumption. If there is too much insulin in the blood, the effect of leptin will be affected. Even though there is already a lot of fat, the person still has a good appetite and no desire to exercise. This is how the weight set point begins to rise. Some foods are very “strong”: they are very efficient in converting into calories and will quickly raise the glucose level in the blood. These foods are very strong in terms of calories, but very small in terms of nutrition, not satiating, and make you hungry very quickly. We need to eat foods that are satiating and not “strong”. These foods are characterized by high levels of water, fiber and protein. These foods include non-starchy vegetables, meat, poultry, fish, eggs, nuts, seeds*, and unsweetened dairy products, which are safe to eat. (*Soaked, fermented, sprouted, etc.) Starchy vegetables, legumes*, fruits, and whole grains* have some water, fiber, or protein, but they also contain starch and sugar and should be consumed in amounts that are careful, as they can grow fat if eaten in excess. (* after soaking, fermentation, sprouting, etc.) Fine grains, baked goods, fruit juices, soft drinks, sugary dairy products contain too much sugar or starch, and lack of water, fiber or protein to balance, is the culprit of obesity, should be eaten as little as possible. The proportion of food in the pyramid, representing their recommended dosage. Foods in the lower half of the pyramid should make up the majority of your daily diet in terms of portion size, while foods in the upper half of the pyramid require attention to dosage. As for these, eat them occasionally… Effective exercise method A 30-year-old guy who is 1m 7m tall and weighs 70kg has a basal metabolic rate of 1,671 calories per day, which means that he burns that many calories every day while lying still. Although the treadmill shows 300 calories, in fact, after 35 minutes of running, he actually consumed only 230 calories more. Jogging is a low-intensity, stabilizing exercise that repetitively uses only a small portion of the weakest slow-twitch muscle fibers. Because only a small portion of the muscle is used, other muscles are treated as useless and exhausting. When doing this type of exercise, the body will adapt with the loss of other muscles. A person who consistently does stability exercise seven days a week can lose 5 pounds of muscle over the course of six months to a year. The basal metabolic rate of 1 pound of muscle is 50-100 calories, and losing 5 pounds of muscle means consuming 250 fewer calories per day. This person is exercising every day, but he is consuming fewer calories than he did a year ago. Why can people eat a lot when they are young and not gain weight, and everything changes after 30 years old? This is because as we age, the body’s muscles will naturally shrink. The reduction in activity accelerates the loss of muscle. Suppose the body loses 5 pounds of muscle, the daily metabolic rate will be reduced by 250 calories. If you still eat as much as you did when you were younger, you will gain 1 pound of fat in 14 days and 10 pounds in 20 weeks… So the key to losing weight is to restore the metabolic rate of your youth by replacing lost muscle mass. This is the way to lose weight with half the effort. Research by scientists at McMaster University in Canada found that even a few minutes of high-intensity exercise, as long as the intensity is close to your maximum limit, can produce molecular changes in the muscles equivalent to those induced after a few hours of long-distance running or cycling. When doing low-intensity exercise, a glycogen produces only one metabolic effect, but if you switch to high-intensity, one enzyme activates a bunch of enzymes, and like a domino effect, thousands of glucose molecules can be split from the glycogen at the same time for emergency use. So high-intensity exercise can effectively empty the muscle cells of glucose, only when the cells of glucose is no longer “overcrowded”, the insulin in the blood will not remain high for a long time, weight loss is effective. This is an example of a set of high-intensity interval training (HIIT). This set of exercises a total of 12 movements, each action to do 30 seconds, 10 seconds rest between, “a breath” to complete. Stress and sleep Lack of sleep can increase hunger and reduce satiety. Studies show that 7 hours of sleep per night balances our hormones and keeps leptin high throughout the day. Stress can cause people to involuntarily eat large amounts of high-fat, sugary foods. The best way to reduce stress is to exercise. With the right amount, any exercise is better than no exercise, preferably alternating between aerobic and anaerobic exercise.