Consistency Is The Key to Losing Weight

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Abstract

would just drink water and eat cucumbers and salads during the day in a frantic rush to drop that overnight weight. But it doesn’t work that way.The answer is: I have to get right back on [the wagon] and go back to 1500 calories and do that and keep doing that until I fall off the wagon again.You’ve also heard that you can’t outrun a bad diet. So exercising isn’t the answer, either, after a bad night. If you just work out harder you might actually find yourself gaining a pound the next day. Why is that? After almost a decade of reading for my own benefit (and not listening to that advice), I know that excess exercise actually causes your body to retain water because it thinks it’s under stress. It’s a hormone called <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5373497/">cortisol</a>. The same thing happens when you try to compensate by eating less the next day. Your body thinks you’re in starvation mode so it holds onto the weight — again, cortisol.You’ve also heard that you just need to be “good” 80% of the time. So when they say consistency is the key, I realized this morning what that means. For example, my goal is 1500 calories a day, which just about maintains my body weight with a slight decline over the next six months. This is what my body needs to do its work. If I go crazy one

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day and eat 2000 calories, the next day I can’t work out doubly hard OR cut myself down to 1000 or 1200 calories because my body will protest! The answer is: if I’m in a steady state of 1500 calories per day, the next day after I fall off the wagon, I have to get right back on it and go back to 1500 calories and do that and keep doing that until I fall off the wagon again.<figure id="4f87"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*[email protected]"><figcaption>Eating fewer calories to compensate for a bad day versus going back to your baseline maintenance calories. Drawing copyright Carmen Fong 2020</figcaption></figure>The majority of this is backed by science but it’s also a lot of trial and error over the years. I couldn’t figure out why the yo-yo dieting, the crash fad diets, the protein diets, none of that worked! As I near 40, it’s going to get worse, unless I fix it now. I have to tell my body that I honor it and I know what it needs and I will give it what it needs…80% of the time.For more content, visit my Medium profile; or my LinkTree for scholarly work, or Subscribe to my monthly newsletter, Flying Penguins, which is a digest of my best work every month as well as completely new pieces written just for the newsletter, delivered directly to your Inbox!</article></body>

This is what they mean by ‘consistency’

My partner and I had a rough day yesterday. Patients, phone calls, emails through the wazoo. Add on top of that, our house seems messier than ever, even though we’ve had the time to “spring clean” for 8 weeks. At night, we opened up a good bottle of wine and brought out the salty snacks. While I don’t regret it, my scale protested this morning.

You’ve heard it time and again: consistency is the key to losing weight. I never really knew what that meant.

I thought that meant that you wake up every day at the same time, or every morning you work out and every day you eat healthy foods, but that never worked for me.

What happened is, I would have a bad day and eat all the things and drink all the things. The next day I would be up 5 pounds with the salt and sugar and alcohol bloat so I would compensate with eating fewer calories during the day. I would just drink water and eat cucumbers and salads during the day in a frantic rush to drop that overnight weight. But it doesn’t work that way.

The answer is: I have to get right back on [the wagon] and go back to 1500 calories and do that and keep doing that until I fall off the wagon again.

You’ve also heard that you can’t outrun a bad diet. So exercising isn’t the answer, either, after a bad night. If you just work out harder you might actually find yourself gaining a pound the next day. Why is that? After almost a decade of reading for my own benefit (and not listening to that advice), I know that excess exercise actually causes your body to retain water because it thinks it’s under stress. It’s a hormone called cortisol. The same thing happens when you try to compensate by eating less the next day. Your body thinks you’re in starvation mode so it holds onto the weight — again, cortisol.

You’ve also heard that you just need to be “good” 80% of the time. So when they say consistency is the key, I realized this morning what that means. For example, my goal is 1500 calories a day, which just about maintains my body weight with a slight decline over the next six months. This is what my body needs to do its work. If I go crazy one day and eat 2000 calories, the next day I can’t work out doubly hard OR cut myself down to 1000 or 1200 calories because my body will protest! The answer is: if I’m in a steady state of 1500 calories per day, the next day after I fall off the wagon, I have to get right back on it and go back to 1500 calories and do that and keep doing that until I fall off the wagon again.

Eating fewer calories to compensate for a bad day versus going back to your baseline maintenance calories. Drawing copyright Carmen Fong 2020

The majority of this is backed by science but it’s also a lot of trial and error over the years. I couldn’t figure out why the yo-yo dieting, the crash fad diets, the protein diets, none of that worked! As I near 40, it’s going to get worse, unless I fix it now. I have to tell my body that I honor it and I know what it needs and I will give it what it needs…80% of the time.

For more content, visit my Medium profile; or my LinkTree for scholarly work, or Subscribe to my monthly newsletter, Flying Penguins, which is a digest of my best work every month as well as completely new pieces written just for the newsletter, delivered directly to your Inbox!