Flip the Switch, Lose the Weight by Robert K. Cooper

Author:Robert K. Cooper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Potter/Ten Speed/Harmony/Rodale
Published: 2012-05-14T04:00:00+00:00

META-STAT STARTER

Eat and Move

Follow each meal or snack with a few minutes of easy activity, such as walking around your work area or performing a few muscle tone-ups. Medical research confirms the alertness-boosting, fat-burning effects of these opportune “active minutes.”5

TURN OFF THE FAT MAKERS

The average human body has 25 to 30 billion fat cells, which serve as storehouses for fat molecules that accumulate both from food and from the body’s own fat-making processes. Typically, these cells congregate on the abdomen, hips, and thighs, as well as in layers beneath the skin.

Eating a few large meals a day, as most of us do, can overwhelm the body’s existing fat cells. They trigger a hormonal signal that the body interprets as a “no vacancy” sign. In response, the body begins producing new fat cells to accommodate the excess fat molecules. This is how we gain weight.

What’s more, eating a few large meals a day causes sharp fluctuations in blood sugar levels, another factor in the “battle of the bulge.” With the initial upward spike in blood sugar, the body releases a larger than normal amount of the hormone insulin, which is responsible for escorting blood sugar from the bloodstream into cells. The presence of so much insulin inhibits lypolysis, the process by which the body releases fat from storage for use as energy. After all, the body doesn’t need fat when it has all that blood sugar as a readily available fuel source. Instead, fat stays put in its cells.6

As insulin does its job, blood sugar begins to drop to a normal level. This not only saps your energy,7 it also triggers appetite. So by the time you sit down to your next meal, you’re more likely to stuff yourself. And you’re more likely to eat fatty, sugary foods, which the body naturally tends to crave in the mid- to late afternoon.8 In effect, you’re feeding the cycle by which the body accumulates fat—and you’re doing so at precisely the time of day when metabolism gradually falls off.

For successful fat loss, it’s vitally important to break the habit of eating too much food in too few sittings. This takes some effort; after all, you probably have been following the “three square meals” ritual since you were a kid. But as you shift toward a pattern of smaller meals and snacks at more frequent intervals, you will notice almost immediate improvement in your energy level—the result of more stable blood sugar. In fact, you may feel so much better that you’ll wonder why you haven’t been eating this way all along!

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