At a recent trip to the doctor, she suggests that you lose twenty-five pounds. On the doctor's scale you weighed in at 174 lbs., a little heavy for your five feet, seven inch frame. Not thrilled to hear this but totally expecting the recommendation, you figure, " OK, well, if I lose the twenty pounds that will put me at 149 lbs. I can do that. I have friends that have lost a lot more than that (They gained it back later, plus more, but that's another article)."
So you go by the bookstore and pick up a copy of the South Beach, Atkins or even The Pritikin Diet. You plan on this being your Bible for the next couple of months. You buckle down and follow the diet of your choice for the next six weeks and before you know it you're twenty pounds lighter. Congratulations are most surely in order for reaching your goal weight... right?
Not so fast, not necessarily. Lets look at this weight loss a little more carefully.
Yes, you lost twenty-five pounds, but twenty-five pounds of what? What makes you think it was fat you lost? Could it have been muscle or bone or fluid you lost?
The answer to this question is most definitely a yes. You probably lost a combination of muscle, fat and fluid. This is particularly true when the weight comes off fast. Generally speaking the faster the weight comes off, the less of the weight is likely to be fat with a greater amount being muscle.
Losing weight is not synonymous with losing fat. In many cases when following any extreme meal plan or diet which Atkins and South Beach both are, it is common to lose both fat and muscle, oftentimes large amounts of muscle. You definitely do not want to lose any muscle.
I tell patients that inside every muscle cell there is a giant furnace that burns up the sugar that enters the cell. Not all of it, but a lot of it. Fat cells have a very small furnace and cannot burn up nearly as much sugar as the muscle cells. Fat cells do not really do much. Have you ever sat and watched one? Not much going on in there.
Unfortunately, whenever any diet calls for an extreme reduction in carbohydrates or calories there is a great likelihood that a considerable amount of muscle will be lost in addition to the fat. In these cases body fat percentages can actually go up instead of down.
As an example, if someone at 200 lbs. with 32% body fat, loses 30lbs. which is made up of 15lbs. of muscle and 15lbs. of fat, their percentage of body fat at 150lbs. would be higher than it was at 200lbs. This is not at all what you want. This for one thing will make it a lot more difficult to keep the weight off because the body's basal metabolic rate will be lower. The basal metabolic rate is the number of calories the body needs over a twenty-four hour period when the body is at total rest simply to maintain itself. Ideally, you want this number to be as high as possible. The more muscle you have in your body the higher that number will be.
The key point I want to make here is that losing weight is known to decrease insulin demands on the body. This is very beneficial, however, losing weight rapidly by severely restricting carbohydrates or total calories can cause too much of the weight that is lost to be lean muscle mass. To maximize fat loss, caloric restriction should be moderate at best and exercise should definitely be included in the weight loss efforts to preserve muscle mass.
Milt Bedingfield is a certified diabetes educator and exercise physiologist. Milt received his graduate degree in exercise physiology from The University of South Florida in 1988. Milt has been teaching people with diabetes about the disease and how to care for it for the last 18 years.
Milt was in charge of overseeing an in-house exercise program for people with diabetes from 2000-2006. Over 500 people went through the program during that time. Milt's primary goals when working with patients are to help patients learn exactly what is wrong with them when they have diabetes and to make sure patients realize just how important exercise is when it comes to managing their illness. Milt beleives that performing regular exercise is not stressed as much as it needs to be by health care providers and is always trying to change that for the better. Milt is the author of a new book entitled: Prescription For Type 2 Diabetes: Exercise. This book is very informative and easy to understand. Milt has a website at: TheExerciseDiabetesLink.com. and Twitter account. His user name is: IKnosugar.
Milt's email address is: MBedingfield
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