Weight Management – A Guide to Weight Reduction

by | Jun 16, 2011 | Health Habits, Nutrition Support, Uncategorized

9 out of 12 people who walk into my consultancy want to talk about weight reduction. When I say “don’t you mean weight management?” the usual response is, “yea, but I want to reduce weight”. So in my blog post today, I won’t refer to weight management. Incidentally, weight management is the correct way to go about reducing weight but I’ll give that a skip for today.

Understanding the relation between food and weight

To reduce weight, the first thing you would want to do is to utilize the calories gained from the food you eat. If you own a powerhouse that generates electricity, you wouldn’t want to simply generate and store it in containers (batteries) – that would be so pointless. Electrical power is of value only when used.

The same principle applies to calories released from consumption of food – there simply is no purpose in storing it as fat; in fact, as we are all aware, it causes severe health problems.

So, the calories released from consumption of food needs to be utilized.

It does not matter whether you utilize it in your aerobics class or swimming sessions or walking sessions or at the local gym or at work. It just needs to be

utilized. Once we understand this basic fact, we are ready to take the first tentative steps towards weight reduction.

When I had explained this food and weight relation to a client earlier this week, he asked me

“what about the excess weight that I already have?”

“Ahh” I said, “there lies the difficulty that all people wanting to reduce weight face; which in turn makes them want to run to the nearest weight reduction clinic or buy a weight reduction miracle diet”.

The only thing that such clinics or weight reduction diets succeed in reducing is your bank balance – if you’re lucky. In a worst case scenario, you might have to be hospitalized. Shocked? You should be. There’s a right way of doing things and wrong (in this case life threatening) way of doing things.

You might remember that many of your friends who have been to weight

reduction clinics or had opted for weight reduction diets had paid glowing tributes to the effectiveness of the treatment. They do so during the period immediately after they notice dramatic weight reduction. They are happy at having achieved something difficult and feel the need to share their happiness with close friends. Social networking sites make this so easy don’t they? Couple of months down the line when the ill-effects of such dramatic weight reduction are felt, they would love to sing a different tune but ego prevents them from doing so – after all, no one wants to admit they were taken for a ride.

Still with me? Okay, so by now you know the direction I am pointing to.

The right way to weight reduction is eating healthy,

eating right and utilizing the calories released / stored in your body. How to go about doing it is something I will cover in my next blog post…