How do you lose 6 kilos (13 pounds) in a week?

The answer is simple…you can’t!  Well, short of very expensive plastic surgery.

There has been a tv ad running recently, in which this man talks about his wonderful weight loss system, and confides that he conducted a survey of 8000 participants in this system, who allegedly achieved an average weight loss of 6 kilos per week.    I am assuming that most of them had died (and putrefaction was lowering the weight of the corpse) or they had their legs bitten off by sharks, or something of that nature..or a lot of them had liposuction.

The thing is, whenever someone makes claims like this, refuse to beleive a word of it until you have perused an authenticated (by you, not them) independent study, conducted according to approved scientific protocols.  Aneccdotal evidence (i.e.” my clients have told me this!”) is not scientific or legitimate.  or to put it another way…if anyone had devised a way that consistently enabled people to lose an average of 6 kilos in one week, they would be begging reputable scientists in the exercise physiology/dietetics fields to verify these results, because then that person would patent the method and become a billionaire overnight.  This man is just working on becoming a millionaire by manipulating and deceiving the unwary and desperate into handing over money.

Current scientific thinking tells us that the optimum overall fat loss goal per week is 0.5-1 kilos (1-2 pound).  One of the reasons for this is that there is a physiological reaction to losing fat too quickly.  Those pesky cells we have, decide that we are starving and swing into action to conserve whatever body fat you still have, as well as valuable muscle tissue, and fat loss comes to a screaming halt.  The optimal amounts are precisely those, because they fly under the cells’ radar, and they will let you get away with it.

There is also the fact that you didn’t put the fat on that quickly…it was a slow process (if you tried to gain six kilos in a week, you would be gorging yourself on extremely high-calorie, unhealthy foods, and your body would reject them; i.e. you’d make yourself ill).  So, it has to be an equally steady and consistent process to remove the fat.  You also have to factor in, that in an effective fat-loss program, it includes changes to both eating and exercise habits.

Then there is the muscle tissue aspect.  The more you have (obtained through resistance training) the more calories your body needs to burn to maintain each day (effectively increasing your metabolic rate).  Conversely, when you expend energy (calories) too quickly, some of them come from your muscle tissue, rather than from your body fat.  Hence, you lower your metabolic rate, and make it even harder to lose more weight.

Weight loss is simple; eliminate most, if not all processed food from your diet; get your carbohydrates from vegetable sources; eat lean organic meat (that hasn’t been pumped full of growth hormones) minimise sugar intake (never, ever, EVER eat artificial substitutes; use raw sugar, stevia or honey where sweetening is required), avoid corn syrup like the plague (you do realise corn is what beef-lot cattle are fed, as it fattens them more quickly?), learn to read labels on food packaging.  Then incorporate more physical movement into your life, on a daily basis.  And preferably make it part of your life, not something you see as a chore.  Make good lifestyle changes and fat loss will follow in the footsteps of those changes.

 

But forget about massive overall weight loss in just one week…unless you are so desperate to look lighter on the scales that you really will offer your leg to a shark!

2 responses to “How do you lose 6 kilos (13 pounds) in a week?

  1. When I saw this blog title, I thought “oooo, I’d like to lose that kind of weight, sounds impossible though”. LOL

    You make many great points here. Sometimes I wonder how these “diet” commercials don’t get caught in a web of false advertising.

    • I get very annoyed when I see ads like this, because they are preying on people who are vulnerable, by virtue of desperately wanting to lose weight. I don’t care if they do include something in fine print, such as “these results were achieved in conjunction with four hours of high intensity exercise each day, and a diet composed of snails and lettuce leaves”, they are still being deceptive. I would like to see a world where people are better educated about their bodies, and didn’t need to feel desperate in the first place. in a small way, this is what I am trying to achieve with my blog.

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