(Can you really lose weight that fast?)

Most experts recommend losing no more than two pounds per week. If you're fairly heavy, however, you may be able to shed pounds at twice that rate for perhaps a month. To do this safely, see a doctor, take a daily multivitamin, and use a tool such as Diet Power to make sure you're getting all your vital nutrients. Maintaining a rapid loss for a longer period is, for most people, potentially dangerous. This article explains, with award-winning clarity and humor, why that is true.  

By Terry Dunkle, Diet Power founder and chairman

For a 59-year-old man, I'm in pretty good shape. I'm still considerably overweight, however, and lately I've been getting emails with headlines like these:

• Melt Off 5-10 Pounds in 7 Days!

• Lose 10 Lbs the First Week!

You've probably gotten emails like this, too. And they bring up an interesting question:

Can a person really lose weight that fast?

In other words, if you absolutely must, can you get down to a size six for your cousin's wedding? Can you shed five pounds before your "60 Minutes" interview?

Most of those emails promise weight loss of one or two pounds a day. Suppose we go easy on them and say we only want to drop ten pounds in ten days. Is this doable?

I'm glad I asked that question.

To lose weight, you need to reduce one or more of the three main ingredients in your body:

• Fat

• Water

• Flesh and bone

Let's start by considering the flesh and bone.

You can easily get rid of ten pounds by cutting off an arm. The average arm weighs just about that much, if you take it off at the shoulder. This is convenient, too, because the arm you'll want to spare also happens to be the better one for holding the saw. I'm right-handed, for example, so I would naturally want to remove my left arm, which I don't use much anyway, except for shaking hands with Bob Dole.

So, yes, you can lose ten pounds in ten days—in fact, you can lose ten pounds in a minute if you have a sharp Homelite and a bottle of Wild Turkey.

Some people, however, will prefer the second method: losing water. (I'm not going to say which is better. I don't want to take sides here.) The average person sweats, breathes, and pees away about 80 ounces of water a day. This means that eating dry food and shunning all drinks should remove five pounds per day. Easy, huh?

Not easy. Unfortunately, your body desperately wants to replace that water, to keep your blood from getting too salty and short-circuiting the nerve signals that run your brain and muscles. This can rapidly lead to confusion, seizures, coma....

In other words, eschewing liquids may get you the ten-pound loss in only three days—but you'll probably end up wearing that size 6 in your coffin.

So now we're down to the third weight-loss method: burning fat. And here it gets really interesting.

Fat in your body is like gasoline in a car. It stores the energy you need for walking, running, yelling at telemarketers, opening childproof bottle caps, and all the other necessities of life. (Including thinking. Your head uses one-quarter of your total energy expenditure, which may be why Thomas Edison said, "The chief function of your body is to carry your brain around.")

As a storage medium, fat is wonderfully efficient. A pound of body weight contains 3500 calories—almost as much as a pound of gasoline. This is good, because otherwise your body would have to convert excess calories into glycogen, a kind of carbohydrate stored in the liver. To equal the storage capacity of 50 pounds of fat (the amount in my body right now), my glycogen store would have to weigh 400 pounds—and I would have to weigh 550. (I would also have a gigantic liver.)

Because fat is so efficient, however, you need to expend a lot of energy to get rid of a pound of it. A 200-some pounder like me can operate on 2600 calories a day. Since a pound of body weight is 3500 calories, this means I can't lose a pound a day unless I eat nothing and burn off 900 calories in exercise every day. (For me, that's a five-mile run.) If you can do this for ten days straight, you're a better (and thinner) person than I am.

If you weigh 400 pounds, however, your energy needs are proportionately higher. You could easily lose a pound a day by simply eating what I eat instead of what you eat. But you'd feel just as famished as I do when I eat nothing. That's because your body has an amazingly sophisticated system designed to "correct" a sudden weight loss by making you feel ravenously hungry. The only way to fool this system is by losing weight slowly.

Wait a minute, you say. Can't I take a pill or eat something to rev up my metabolism so I burn calories faster?

In fact, this is what most of those emails promise. (They usually sell "fat burners," "metabolic boosters, or "thermogencis.") But the truth is, even a dangerous level of amphetamines (probably the most powerful metabolic booster available) will increase your burn rate by only 20 percent. You can do better than that by taking a long walk every day.

The only real solution, then, is cutting off an arm. And so far, none of these emails has offered to sell me a chainsaw.

More on this subject later. Right now it's time for me to practice the fourth method of quick weight loss, which I forgot to mention. It works instantly, it's perfectly safe, it's relatively effective, and it costs absolutely nothing. It's called Sucking in Your Gut.

Colon Cleansing has made a comeback in the last several years.  Your grandparents may have routinely performed a colon cleansing as part of their preventive health regimen.   But is it really necessary?   The body is an efficient machine that runs smooth and quiet, like clockwork 24/7...IF you maintain it.  Just like any other hard-working machine, a proper maintenance routine is essential to peak performance. Your body was designed to function properly whether awake, asleep, hot, cold, young or old.  When your body performs as designed, it maintains a perfect weight and appearance. But your body was not designed for the processed foods, chemicals and pollutants that it’s bombarded with on a daily basis. When the only fuel you give this efficient machine is laced with preservatives and chemicals, you’re in effect self-poisoning yourself – called autointoxication. Autointoxication is the process of being poisoned by your own body as a result of inadequate digestion and/or elimination.  Every single cell in your body is affected by this - blood cells, nerve cells and cells in your lungs, skin and every other organ in your body.   How do you know if you’re toxic?  If you’re irritable, depressed and hard to live with, your nervous system may be affected.  If you feel weak, toxins may be pooling in your heart tissue.  Nasty breath can come from toxins residing in your lungs. Rashes and blotchy, blemished skin or wrinkly skin and pale complexion can result if toxins accumulate in your skin. A bloated feeling can come from toxins congregating in your stomach. Or you can experience tiredness, lethargy, lack of sex drive and have an old-looking appearance if they accumulate in your glands. But what does all that have to do with colon cleansing? Anyone who has been on a Standard American Diet (S.A.D.) for more than a couple of years would benefit from a periodic cleansing (once or twice a year). The S.A.D. diet is seriously lacking in fiber and healthy liquids while it is abundant with sugar, caffeine, excessive amounts of salt, fried greasy foods, fatty foods, processed foods, alcohol, preservatives, additives, chemicals and parasites. All of these work to clog the mucous linings of your intestines, building up and preventing them from removing water and receiving B-vitamins produced by healthy intestinal bacteria.  As well as adding pounds onto the scale when you weigh yourself. The first place where autointoxication exhibits itself is the colon.  If the colon doesn’t function properly, the rest of the body will be affected eventually. Think of your body as a small community, and the colon as the sewer system carrying waste from your home to the waste treatment center of the community.  If this pipeline gets clogged and narrows, the waste material backs up and eventually overflows into all the homes in the neighborhood, even those with a free-flowing sewage line into the community pipeline. In order to get the colon and thus, the rest of your body back to properly functioning as a streamlined efficient machine once again, a safe and healthy colon cleansing is a perfect first step and will go far in making you feel healthier.  **Please note if you have a serious medical condition you should check with your physician first. A good colon cleansing product should work in several synergistic ways to achieve a healthy colon and should contain: ·    Soluble fiber to promote normal water balance in the colon (like Psyllium husks and flax seeds) ·    Peristalsis support to achieve proper smooth  muscle contraction of the colon (like slippery elm, marshmallow root and fennel seed) ·    Soothing botanicals to prevent spasms and inflammation (like turmeric, hyssop leaf and ginger root) ·    Probiotics to promote normal digestion and metabolism (like Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium) ·    Anti-parasitic support to help kill and expel harmful intestinal parasites (like black walnut hulls, wormwood powder and clove bud powder) Colon cleansing can indeed be a very effective means to restoring better health, gaining more energy, promoting weight loss, and creating a more slender profile. And aren’t you worth a healthier body?

by Helen Kollias, November 27th, 2008.

Thankfully, the “too many calories” theory of obesity is dead or at least in sharp decline with the realization that there is a lot more going on. Frequent meals, higher protein intake, more exercise, timing of good carbs and all that good info from JB are all important for weight loss and staying healthy.

But what if you’re skinny or overweight because of your personality? Then what?

It got me thinking. Am I lean because of a personality quirk? For some reason, that idea bothers me. I don’t know why. It shouldn’t. The idea that personality would affect your life isn’t that shocking. Really, it makes perfect sense.

For example: sky divers. What’s the personality of somebody who sky dives? Worried all the time? Pessimistic? Not likely. Paging all worried, pessimistic sky divers. Anybody? Bueller? Nope, didn’t think so.

Personality affects your life, but as a “hard” scientist dealing with physiology and enzymes, the idea that I’m lean instead of overweight because of a character trait wasn’t something that was on my radar. Then I found this interesting study about personality of obese individuals and how successful they were in a weight loss program.

Sullivan S, Cloninger CR, Przybeck TR and Klein S. Personality characteristics in obesity and relationship with successful weight loss. International Journal of Obesity 2007 31:669-674.

Introduction

I don’t have to tell you that there is an obesity epidemic in North America. About 45% of women and 30% of men are trying to lose weight right now.¹

Over the years there have been several studies looking at personality and obesity, but the results contradicted each other. Thus, researchers tried to get some better data by using a new questionnaire: the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI).

The researchers asked three main questions:

1. Are there personality differences between lean and obese people?
2. Are there personality differences between obese people looking for weight loss methods and obese people who are not?
3. Are there personality differences between obese people who lost weight with behaviour therapy and obese people who did not?

Methods

There were a lot of people in this study (503), which is usually the case in questionnaire-based studies such as these, both because it’s possible to get many people to fill out questionnaires, and because researchers need a large number for meaningful analysis.

The breakdown went like this:

• 264 people were considered lean (Body Mass Index, or BMI of 18.5-24.9)
• 56 obese people (BMI ≥ 35), recruited from the general public
• 183 obese people (BMI ≥ 30), recruited from the Washington University Weight Management Program (WUWMP)

Researchers asked all of the participants a series of questions that looked at “seven dimensions of personality”: novelty seeking, reward dependence, harm avoidance, persistence, self-directedness, self-transcendence and cooperativeness.

Results

Lean and obese personality characteristics

So what did they find?

They found differences in persistence and self-directedness personality traits. Turns out that the obese group had lower persistence and self-directedness scores, meaning that they were more likely to give up easily, to be modest, inactive and have habits that were incongruent (inconsistent) with their long term goals. Fairly intuitive, right? Yup. Nothing too surprising there.

There is one more difference: novelty seeking. Obese individuals had higher novelty seeking scores. But I’m lean and seek novelty. I’m no bore. Really I’m not.

Higher novelty seeking surprised me and offended me. It didn’t seem to add up. I thought of myself and all my friends who are lean. We like adventure. We’re off hiking, biking, sailing – basically any activity you could think of, so how can we have lower novelty scores?

Participant in Vancouver Island's annual Naked Bungee Jump for charity. Likely high scorer on novelty seeking behaviour.

Well, if you look at how the researchers define “novelty seeking”, things became clearer.

Novelty seeking includes being exploratory, curious, and enthusiastic, but it also includes being impulsive, easily bored, disorderly, and trying to avoid monotony. As much as I’d like to think I have high novelty seeking characteristics, I’ve realized how much I like order and routine.

I enjoy my weekly schedule with “adventure” planned ahead of time. I welcome order — and dare I say monotony — from the regular Saturday morning grocery trips to the ritual of packing my food for the next day. With all that in mind, I guess being lean could translate into lower novelty seeking. Who knew?

Obese: Those in a weight loss program compared to those not in a weight loss program

No surprises here. Those in a weight loss program had higher reward dependence (dedicated and dependent) and cooperativeness (social tolerant, helpful and, constructive). If you were to sign up for group weight loss then chances are you are going to be more likely to a) need other people and b) be more cooperative with them.

Obese: What personality is successful at weight loss?

So what separated the people who successfully lost weight (≥10% of their initial weight in 22 weeks) from the unsuccessful (<5% of their initial weight)? Novelty seeking. Again.

Those with high novelty seeking were unsuccessful. Just as the in the lean versus obese comparison, it seems that those with high novelty seeking characteristics were more likely to have problems controlling their weight. The researchers suggest that obese individuals eat to combat boredom because of their novelty seeking personality.

I have a different take based on my own experience and people I’ve come across. If I don’t plan what I’m going to eat, if I don’t grocery shop, if I don’t cook, then I’m going to eat things that aren’t nearly as good for me than if I did. I don’t think boredom is the whole story. I think lack of structure and order associated with “novelty seeking” also leads to unhealthy food choices causing weight gain. If you’re big into novelty, then I don’t see you interested in working out regularly.

Our conclusions

Looking at weight loss and obesity from a completely different vantage point gives us some fantastic new tools. Yes, it’s important to know what you need to do to lose weight and be healthy, but you also need to know what behaviours prevent you from doing those things.

It gives the obesity epidemic a completely new angle. Has fast food and the like enabled novelty seekers to get a wide array of bad food at a drop of a hat? What did novelty seekers do fifty or a hundred years ago? Were there fewer “novelty seekers” or was it that bad food wasn’t easily available? Food for thought, if you’ll pardon the pun.

1. Serdula MK, Mokdad AH, Williamson DF, Galuska DA, Mendlein JM, Heath GW. Prevalence of attempting weight loss and strategies for controlling weight. JAMA. 1999 Oct 13;282(14):1353-8.