It’s not your fault you’re Fat

I have been a training martial artist and athlete my entire life starting at the age of three years old.  For most of my life I have struggled with Diet. It seemed that almost smelling the food would put  extra pounds on me.  Having been a vegetarian for the over a decade, I am looked at by most as having a great diet and a strong discipline.  While that is true to some extent, for many just being a vegetarian doesn’t mean you are eating properly. 

Even athletes who are in their prime sometimes have diets that could be damaging to their health and they could be working against themselves on a daily basis.  So what is the secret to weight loss and to staying healthy?  Actually it isn’t a secret at all.  Doctors, scientists and researches uncovered this years ago.  The answer is simple, you are what you eat, but more in depth you are how much you eat. 

In the U.S, we are slowly eating ourselves to death.  When I had my radio show, called “Martial Arts Talk Radio” with my co-host Chuck Wilson – Sensei and I spoke about diet.  We also had on a very famous guest Dr. Gary Null.  In detail Dr. Null talked about the relationship to diet and exercise and how it directly relates to the body, health and weight gain or loss.  It is a simple equation, eat less, loss weight, eat more gain weight. 

Think about it, if you were on a desert island and had nothing to eat, you would most certainly lose weight.  If you only had coconuts and fresh vegetables, you would also lose weight.  Now let’s say you become great at hunting and you start to harvest your own vegetables and fruits and at any time you could go and gather and eat, you will gain weight based on the amount of calories you take in.  The simple goal is to eat what is necessary and nothing more. The minute you eat more, the more you gain.

Now I am sure you have heard people who struggle with weight say “I watch what I eat, I even eat only diet foods and drink only diet drinks.  Why do I still gain weight?  The simple math again says, they are eating more than they are burning off.   Even if it is only 500 calories – which is easy by the way, you can get that in one soft drink or snack food.  If you are eating only 500 calories above your necessary fuel capacity that is excess. 

How do heavier people get heavier?  It is simple, little by little.  The 200 or 500 calories ads up, and it creates a vicious cycle.      You gain more, you get lazier, your body requires sleep, and start to become lackadaisical, it requires more and more sleep and sedentary life-style.  Therefore you burn even fewer calories and then you start to get heavier.  The answer is simple, you grow or gain slowly and then before you know it, is too late. 

The answer is simply - exercise more, and eat less and you will lose weight.  No fancy diets, no gimmicks, no secrets.  It is simple math.  Think of this, if you put one gallon of gas in your car, you can only use that one gallon.  The interesting thing about the gas analogy is the car runs better lighter.  In other words the more weight your car carries, the more gas it expels to move the car.  So if you are weighing more the same situation is likely, unfortunately the body is different than a car, it is far smarter and stores fat, and plays tricks on itself.  So the goal is to see how many calories your body requires, and start setting up a routine for exercise, so that in the end, you are burning more than you are taking in.  This will result in an amazing weight loss.  Granted it is not easy, and takes extreme discipline, but that is all it takes.

The ultimate goal is a leaner meaner body and this doesn’t mean beach body. It means healthier body.  I highly recommend seeing a quality nutritional expert, so they can custom tailor a plan for you.  Knowing what I know now, I could have saved myself tons of time and effort.  I personally used to walk for one hour on the treadmill all while downing a health drink that gave me more calories than I was burning.  Even though it was healthy to be exercising and I was making my body stronger, I was not losing weight.  Think about this, if you burn 500 calories on the treadmill and then go and drink a drink with 550, you just wasted an hour of your time and set yourself back 5o calories.  Remember you are what you eat and how much you eat. 

This article was written by Kyoshi Allie Alberigo a martial artist with over 4 decades of physical fitness experience.  Kyoshi was also a non competitive body builder for most of his life.  For questions do not hesitate to email at Kyoshi@lininja.com