Let’s discuss some factors you may not be thinking about when you’re considering what type of weight loss program to look at. And I want to start with a key factor for everyone on this journey. Fat cells. When you lose weight or you gain weight, do you ever envision how that happens? What happens to the fat? Fat cells actually increase from our childhood up into our early 20s. That’s when we start growing the most fat cells and we’re growing them at a rapid pace.
After we get into our mid-20s, we don’t grow too many more fat cells except in certain situations. Let’s say you become pregnant and you gain 75 pounds, you’re probably going to gain more fat cells at that point because it’s a tremendous amount of weight that you’re putting onto your body. But let’s go back to my example of what I shared in my first video, which is that I was an obese child. That means as I was growing, I was also gaining excess weight and gaining excess fat cells. So, as I got into adulthood and started to really manage that weight, it was a little bit more difficult for me than the average person because I had so many fat cells.
So, when you gain weight, that fat cell expands and when you lose weight, the fat cell actually shrinks. It kind of lets all the air out if you were to imagine a balloon. So, when you think about weight loss as it relates to fat loss, you have all these fat cells and they’re either expanding or deflating.
If I had a million fat cells and my next door neighbor only had 500,000, it might be easier for her to lose weight than it is for me. I have got a lot more roads to cover in the process. This is a really important point because it really ties into our next video series, which is looking at weight loss maintenance. As I mentioned in video one, it’s hard to lose weight. I’ve been there. I know many of you have, and you probably understand the difficulty, but it’s even harder to keep the weight off.
The second thing I want to mention is environments. I’ve had patients come to me within my 20-year career and say I want to be vegan or I really want to do this pattern. But they’re living with someone who is not following that pattern nor wants to. The vegan wannabe is living with an individual who was eating meat all the time. Imagine how difficult it will be for that person to sustain the vegan approach.
Sustainability is key to whatever plan you choose. The best diet for you, in fact, will be the one that you can stay on long term. Let’s say, for example, you want to do a ketogenic diet because your sister lost 20 pounds on it. There are a few factors here. Number one, can you stay on that diet, on that pattern for three weeks, three months, even three years? Because if you can’t, it might not be the right approach for you.
There are also some genetic indicators for something like a ketogenic diet as well. Certain gene variants actually don’t work well with ketogenic approaches and work much better with other dietary patterns. So, the point of this video is to really point out things outside of just food and exercise and what could impact your success in weight loss. Next up, I will be focusing on that really difficult component, which is keeping the weight off. See you on the next video. If you missed the first video in the series, you can find it here.
