Busting through the Carbohydrate Myth....

Cut carbs out. Don't eat carbs - lose weight!! Sounds great doesn't it? Sounds like it should be easy right? There is nothing easy about weight loss. Get real with yourself, and get real with what you eat.

Carbohydrates (a.k.a. Carbs)
If you go about losing weight the wrong way, the weight you lose will be primarily water, and you will think you are well on your way to successful weight loss. Diets don't work, no diet, no way. If your last diet was successful, would you be on another one? The answer is NO. If your last diet was successful, you would not need to go on another diet, the weight would still be off.

Back to carbs. Losing weight the wrong way = water weight lost only. Losing water weight creates the illusion of losing body fat, but you will actually slow down the loss of body fat. How?

Your muscles use carbs as their primary source of energy. In order for your body to store carbs, your body must first convert it to glycogen. In order for this conversion to happen, you need water, about 2.5 -3 grams of water per gram of carbohydrate. When you dramatically restrict your caloric intake, in particular carbs, your body grabs the carbs stored as glycogen in the muscles. When the glycogen is released, so is the water it was paired up with. Your body then sheds the water, and the numbers on the scale-o-meter go down. Great, right? Wrong!

In this picture there is absolutely no fat lost!! Which is what we want, because fat is non-active tissue, it burns no calories.

The more efficient we get at storing the fat, the more fat we store!!

Stop the cycle - pick up some weights!! You want to eliminate the fat, and gain, (yes you read that right GAIN) more muscle.

Water helps keep your body regulated - it keeps your metabolism and all your bodily functions operating properly, and efficiently. Another note about losing water weight via carb reduction or elimination, as soon as you start to eat carbs again, BAM, up go the numbers on the scale!

Holding onto water is beneficial because it enhances your calorie burning ability, and because your muscles need it to maximize their performance. When you increase your activity level, you store more glycogen, and more water, to keep up with the demands you are putting on your body. You will add more water to your bloodstream, which will increase your blood volume, which results in efficient oxygen exchange, which results in improving your capability to maximize the calories used.

The above changes result in a gain on the scale, which can be frustrating. Give it 4 - 6 weeks of consistent weight training combined with cardiovascular training to start to notice the decrease on the scale. For some, it may be sooner, for others it may be longer. Do not give up. The weight did not appear overnight, don't expect it to disappear as quickly.