Cambridge News: Metabolism

Originally Posted by Pam Turner on 01/04/12:

This was my response to a post yesterday on my support board. The question was regarding advice given by a personal trainer and was about the common misconception on how weight loss, calorie restriction and metabolism work. You can visit the board here,

http://members5.boardhost.com/pam140/index.html?1325691851

Posted by Pam T on 1/3/2012, 6:18 pm, in reply to "Metabolism"

Not his fault, but he is passing along old information. It used to be thought that it was impossible to get the nutrition your body needed on less than 1200 calories a day. That was possibly true if it is on regular food. It would be very tough to balance every bite you take to be sure you get everything your body needs for safe weight loss. However, Cambridge provides every nutrient known to be needed by the human body in the proper amounts. It gives your body complete balanced nutrition on around 400 calories a day. Remember, calories are not a nutrient. They are only a way to measure how much energy is produced by food. If you have stored body fat you already have an abundance of calories. That is why it has been around for 30 years, is the top selling diet in the world, and why medical supervision is not required to purchase or use it.

There was 11 years of research that went in to the development of Cambridge with the goal being to protect the lean tissues of the body while allowing it to use primarily fat for energy. This is unique to Cambridge and why people feel so great when they follow it correctly.

Let me explain why it makes no logical sense what your trainer told you. There is an old saying, "Feast or Famine". This is because in past generations before the food industry was mass producing an endless food supply it was normal for people to only "feast" when there had been a successful hunt or harvest. They ate seasonally and that meant there were also times of famine. The human body was designed to handle this. It was not designed to eat what we do, as much as we do or as constantly or frequently as we do. We store fat for a reason. It was to keep us alive. If having a significant period of time without regular eating caused the metabolism to permanently slow down there would have been a lot of obese people back then. In fact, the only ones that were obese and suffering with the diseases like we do now, diabetes, gout, vascular disease etc, were the rich because they had an endless food supply all year round.

It has been scientifically proven that a low calorie diet actually prolongs life and prevents many of the health problems we now have.

Losing weight will mean that your smaller body will not need as many calories (energy) to run as your larger one did. That makes sense, right? A small compact car will not burn the fuel that a SUV will. I suppose that could be part of the reason people thought that the metabolism slowed down, but more likely it was just because people return to the same old eating habits that caused the weight gain to begin with. Of course...you will gain it back.

I have kept my weight off for 10 years now. I've never been able to do that before. I may go up and down a few pounds, but overall my weight has been stable and that was with little effort on my part, just the normal lifestyle changes that happen when you lose weight and get healthy. I move now! lol!

So to answer your concerns about what happens when you go back to regular food, can you gain it back? Certainly. This isn't a cure for what got you overweight. That was an emotionally based issue and if you have not taken the time to work through it you are vulnerable to going back to old habits and ways of coping. It will not be due to the diet or how fast you lost the weight or a slow metabolism. There is no science to back that up.

Cambridge does supply the body with essential nutrients better than anything you were eating before. The only thing it is lacking is calories so as long as you have body fat you have everything you need for whatever you are doing. You can supplement with some protein if you are really working hard and building muscle. That won't slow you down. Avoid any form of carbohydrate though. It will kick you out of fat burning mode, stimulate your appetite and likely cause you to overeat.