Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Debunking dieting myths?

Pin It
Sometimes I listen to The Jillian Michaels podcast on the way to or from work.  I love her podcast, but am not always certain I agree with her (which is fine).  Today she stumped me.  She stated that in 99.9% of cases, people are not experiencing a plateau (even when they think they are).  She brought up some very valid points:  when we first start dieting we give up a bunch of stuff (soda/pop, chips, etc.) and basically our body gets excited and drops weight, but after a while, we have to change things up again; secondly, she said that typically if we examine what we're doing after a while, we are probably UNDER estimating our food intake (portion distortion) or OVER estimating our calorie burn - another valid point; the last thing I recall her saying was that if these don't apply, then you probably have some kind of hormone imbalance and should get it checked out.  If everything checks out, she states that if you have less than 25 pounds to lose, this could be your body's way of saying STOP - you're at a healthy weight (she calls this weight vanity weight).

What are your thoughts?:  Are plateaus real or do we create them ourselves?

3 comments:

Lizzie said...

What a good question! I think there is something mysterious about weight loss...and I think the body does get used to having a certain amount of calories and it becomes the new norm. Thus switching it up once in awhile (whether eating MORE calories, or just from different sources) keeps your metabolism working well.

But yes, I think that for the most part if we quit losing that we're fudging the math!

Debbi Does Dinner Healthy said...

Interesting thoughts. I've always thought that with the plateaus, your body is still WORKING on losing weight but the scale just doesn't show. I've found that once you GET through that point, it falls rapidly. One of the biggest mistakes is to give up during a plateau, stick with it and the scale WILL show success eventually. :-)

Unknown said...

I've never worked through a plateau so I don't know from experience but as previously said she does make interesting points. it's definitely something to consider.