Let's talk Extreme Fat Loss...First – let’s define extreme fat loss: losing 100 pounds? Losing 200 pounds? In my opinion, and for the purpose of this site, I feel that needing to lose 100 pounds or more is considered extreme weight loss. After all, if you are 100 + pounds overweight, you know that the idea of losing 15 pounds in one week, a la Biggest Loser, is very attractive. After all, who wouldn't want to be "thin" after just 8-10 weeks of work? Obviously it can be done - with focused, effort AND under doctor's supervision - people all over the world lose massive amounts of fat in brief periods of time. Here's the thing about extreme fat loss - the behavior that got you fat in the first place needs to be modified or eliminated, otherwise you will eat yourself fat all over again. Go from Extreme Fat Loss to 10 Ways to Lose Weight How do I know? The same way you do...I have done it over and over again. Aren't you an expert at LOSING fat? How many diets have you gone on where you have lost a lot of weight? Our problem lies not in the losing of the weight...but of maintaining the behavior (actions, thoughts, motivation) that lost the weight to begin with. If we could just keep eating the “way we did when we lost 80 pounds”, we wouldn't have gained 120 back. Let’s go back to the basics. Again, as far as I can tell in reading hundreds of books, blogs, and research articles, massive or extreme fat loss occurs 1 of 3 ways: - caloric restriction (calories consumed)-increase in metabolism (calories burned)- a combination of the twoThings like surgery to lose weight or effective diet pills, work within this basic framework: Surgery will physically change your body so you can’t eat and/or absorb as many calories (calorie restriction) and pills (in theory) increase your metabolism (calories burned) and/or decrease your appetite (calorie restriction). Keep in mind, patients who elect to have surgery frequently experience extreme weight loss: though the challenge remains the same – to keep the weight off.Within those three methods is diets (calorie restriction - I haven't found a diet that tells you to eat more calories than you are eating now), exercise / working out (increasing calories burned), surgery (causes reduction in calories consumed and absorbed) and diet pills (called thermogenics because they are designed to decrease or suppress appetite - to help cut calories, and / or increase metabolism to burn more calories.) If you notice - even surgery involves calorie restriction. Our bodies just aren't designed to utilize extra calories except as storage (fat) for times of famine. To most of us in the Western world or developing countries, hunger - true, life or death hunger, is seldom and issue. Rather, we have the responsibility to choose our calories by quantity and pleasure, instead of purpose (energy to run from the tigers). Return from Extreme Fat Loss to Obesity Free for Life |