Nutrition and Weight Loss

Nutrition and metabolism is synonymous with nutrition and weight loss. In this lesson, I'll be going over the part of the definition of metabolism that has to do with nutrients. Your natural weight loss depends on how easily the cells of your body can get nutrients. If your cells, especially your muscle cells get nutrients in the right balance, fat loss is inevitable.

As stated in "Speed Up Your Metabolism", the purpose of your metabolism is to promote the longevity and health of your body by building new cell tissues and repairing and maintaining your existing cell tissue.

So it needs raw materials to build this very complex organism called the human body. These raw materials are called Nutrients.

For humans, these nutrients are grouped into the following categories:

• Carbohydrates
• Proteins
• Fats
• Fiber
• Minerals
• Vitamins
• Water

Macro-Nutrients: (Needed in relatively large amounts)
These comprise Carbohydrates, proteins, fats, fiber and water. When these are broken down and rebuilt into the cells and tissues of the body, they account for over 90% of the nutrition needed for the repair and maintenance of the body.

Micro-Nutrients: (Needed in smaller amounts):
These comprise minerals and vitamins. These are found in very small quantities and very small quantities are needed. But without them the process of breaking down the macro-nutrients and rebuilding cell tissue cannot occur.

In the human body each of the macro-nutrients are chemically broken down into smaller parts or elements. Carbohydrates are broken down into glycogen and then into glucose. Proteins are broken down into amino acids, fats are broken down into fatty acids, minerals and vitamins are combined with the aforementioned to create new cells and repair existing cells.

So to make this information applicable and relevant to your weight loss, whenever you eat food or drink substances or absorb chemicals through breathing and through the skin, they are broken down through your digestive system. All that you ingest turns into a liquid mass in your digestive system. Out of this liquid mass, your digestive system extracts mainly the above items: glucose, amino acids, fatty acids, minerals and vitamins. This is the process of digestion.

All the other substances left over or not used at the end of digestion are either stored or eliminated by the body. Some of these excess and left over substances are nutrients and others are not.

When foods are in a form that require a lot of work to break down in the digestive system, energy is spent in this breakdown process. Then your metabolism has less energy to rebuild your body. And the less energy your body has as well.

This is commonly experienced as a feeling of sluggishness after eating. It is a drain in energy. One of the reasons for this is that meal contained food and food combinations that, chemically, were so far away from resembling any basic nutrients. So all this energy has to be spent in breaking the food down to extract the nutrients needed.

Then there is the energy spent handling the unused chemicals. That is a whole separate subject that a whole book can be written about. But suffice it to say, the moral of the story is that your metabolism requires some very specific nutrients to do what it does. The less work that is needed to get it, the more energy there is to do build and repair cells and the more energy you have.

Each and every cell needs these nutrients to do what it does. If the nutrients become scarce, the cells of your body stop functioning. They stop reproducing, processing nutrients, stop eliminating waste material. They start to get smaller because they lose water. Blood cells start to clump together and become flat and misshapen.

Compare this to healthy cells that have nutrients they need ...

The above pictures are blood samples from the same person. Try to imagine what the person was feeling like when her blood was clumped together, a fraction the volume as when they were healthy, unable to carry and transport oxygen and less mobile and therefore less able to go to all areas of the body simply because they could not fit into all the capillaries of the body.

Many cells actually die and become toxic themselves. Some cells start to break other cells down and consume them. When cells become unhealthy and starved, parasites, bacteria, and toxins can have a much easier time destroying them.

What is amazing is that a person can consume vast quantities of food and his cells can still be malnourished. In fact, when you look take a country like America, where there more food garbage than most countries produce to feed their inhabitant, most americans are actually still malnourished!

The reason is that Food Does Not Equal Nutrition.

Okay, so how do I get nutrition then?

In different pages on this site I will show you guides for choosing foods that will provide cellular nutrition for you. As you get this nutrition you will see your fat melt off. But you will also feel better than you have felt before because your cells, the smallest living units of your physical health, are getting what they need.

This course though, is to teach the principles of how your metabolism works and to explain concepts so you can make better choices. So you can ask better questions about your health and food choices.

When it comes to getting more nutrition, there are three dimensions to look at:

Quantity:
Fit, vital individuals with little excess fat consume adequate nutrients. Individuals with excess weight who are dieting do not consume enough nutrients. They are on a "diet" and restrict their intake. This temporarily lowers their weight because the muscles atrophy and starve. Since muscle is heavier than fat, a loss of muscle will show weight loss.

But there is always a breaking point. They either end up in the hospital or their cells are so starved, the individuals attention is almost completely consumed with hunger, lack of mental clarity, mood swings and everything else associated with starvation.

Then the binging starts. With so much less lean muscle available the excess glucose cannot be used by the muscle and the glucose is converted to fat.

So a person needs to eat enough nutrients to feed their cells. This is not hard to do. Especially in a developing country. This is very much under your control. Eating less is not the solution to weight loss.

Quality:
Most of the food that you are assaulted with are not quality foods. What I mean by quality is that the food closely resembles the nutrients that your cells need. Low quality food is food that is so processed that it is practically devoid of nutrients. Even worse, they are toxic.

The typical American diet is comprised of processed and chemically modified food that does not provide nutrition. If it does provide nutrition, the digestive system has to work so hard to get it, toxic and acidic by-products are created that cause fat gain.

Fast food, vending machines, microwave food, canned food and processed food all are in this category. Go to a supermarket in this country and you will find the food with greatest access is the food that is most processed and with the least nutritional value.

Zero calorie drinks and food bars are in vogue and contain harmful chemicals that pile on fat. As you will learn in later lessons, "calories" have been the best marketing tool for the health and nutrition industry.

In theory, much of the weight loss marketing is correct. Protein is very important and makes up a very large part of our body. But there are many different sources of protein. And these different sources create different effects on the metabolism. For example, some sources supply protein over longer periods of time and other sources provide it for a short period of time.

A lot of advice from "experts" state that you should chose food that digests slowly so you "feel fuller" longer. So the advice is to make choices for food that essentially prolong and limit nutrients from reaching the cells! As a result, the food putrefies in the digestive tract and becomes toxic!

If you had food that digested very quickly and left very little waste and converted almost directly to nutrients for you would not feel hungry. Period. There are no need for tricks or manipulation. Just give the cells what they need.

There are solutions. You can get good quality foods. The sources of your nutrients can be improved. I will be showing you how. It takes training more than anything else.

Proportion:
This is, together with poor quality, is also a major contributor of obesity and excess fat. When you examine the diet fads over the last several decades, they have each consisted of one common element: each was a manipulation of the proportions of nutrients we should consume. Currently, the restriction is on carbohydrates and sugar and the super-saturation of proteins. On top of that, the individuals that are on these diets are getting their proteins from very poor sources.

Sugar was the enemy before this. When sugar became the target, there was the proliferation of low-sugar, low-calorie food products. The only way this was possible was to create synthetic chemical substances to make something taste sweet without having "calories". However, these synthetic chemicals are truly harmful and worse than sugar!.

There was a time that all fat had to be eliminated from the diet. That was the fad.

I know this may be hard to believe, but there was a time that protein was the enemy.

The truth is that all nutrients are necessary. THAT'S WHAT MAKES THEM NUTRIENTS IN THE FIRST PLACE! The ratios of how they are consumed make a tremendous difference. Depending on the metabolic state of the individual, the correct proportion of nutrients, especially macro-nutrients: carbohydrates, proteins and fats) will either speed up your metabolism or slow your metabolism. In other words, changing your proportions of accouterments can dramatically increase your fat loss!

An example is the reduction of all fat. There are good fats and bad fats. There are entire civilizations that, as part or their diet contain as much as 40% good fat. Japan, Greece and Italy are examples of cultures that have historically had very low rates of obesity and obesity related illnesses. Yet, they eat more fat than what we are told by "medical experts" to eat. They eat less proteins and types of proteins that are recommended by the current fad diets. They also eat more carbohydrates that what we are told to eat. Yet, they have far lower rates of obesity, and related illnesses such as heart disease.

The "Zone" diet emphasizes the 40-40-30 ratio. That is, 40% protein, 40% carbohydrates and 30% fats. An early pioneer in the nutrition field, Adelle Davis also recommended similar proportions. The types of proteins are lean but cooked animal products such as beef, poultry, fish. The types of carbohydrates recommended are pasta, breads, etc. And the types of fats included are good oils.

Story:
I know someone who got good results with this but after talking with me changed the ratio to 40% fat, an almost complete cessation of protein from animal sources (her own choice) and an almost complete cessation of processed carbohydrates. Where then did she get her protein and carbohydrates? From vegetables and nuts. She got 40% of her calories from good fats and 60% from vegetables and nuts.

She got a far higher level of nutrients entering the cells, so she reported feeling less hungry and at the same time far more energy. Could sleep better, think clearer, her dry hair regained its luster, her dry eyes felt moist again, her skin became softer and she got repeated questions about what new makeup she was using. Her fat percentage also dropped 3% in one month and there was a gain of 2 lbs of muscle. No meat and potatoes but she gained muscle and lost fat and felt amazing.

Why the discrepancy? I showed her how to

She later decided she wanted to get back to her exercise routine which involved both aerobic and anaerobic exercise. I told her that her cells would be needing a greater supply for glucose and good proteins to recover from the workouts and build the muscle-mass needed for the workouts she was doing. So she increased her percentage of proteins and carbohydrates from vegetable and plant sources - meaning they could break down very easily to the basic nutrients the cells need.

Her fat percentage continued to drop and her lean muscle mass did not.

For another person, they would need different quantities and different ratios. Another example is an athlete that does a good percentage of anaerobic exercise like lifting weights. Lifting weights signal muscle cells to grow to deal with the continued resistance. To do that the cells signal through the nervous system, that they need more nutrients. Because this persons body is dealing with a different environment than the previous person, the cells adapt. And when the cells adapt the nutrients they need change. And the ratios and quantities change as well.

So a person's nutritional requirement, the amounts and the ratios are dependent on the result they want.

This web site is here to show you how to do this for yourself!

If you have any questions what so ever, please contact me and ask. All your questions are very valuable. Much of what I write here is based on people's questions. It lets me know what your concerns are. Click here to contact me.