Losing 9 Pounds In 11 Days -- Is It Possible?
If you are trying to shed some fat and have been searching the Internet for the right program or diet that will help you do so, it's more than likely that you've been (over)exposed to ads promoting a variety of such plans, some rather bold in their allegations. The big question is: do they actually work? Well, I can't really answer that, but I can offer you my experience with one such program.
To set the record straight, I've never actually been what you'd call an overweight person -- in my teens I had been rather skinny, and up until my mid thirties I was still pretty happy with my physique. Approaching forty, however, I started accumulating fat on certain parts of my body -- mainly on my belly and around my waist. The fact had me mildly concerned (or perhaps annoyed is a better word), but not enough to actually make me do anything about it until one day I just couldn't fasten the top button of my jeans anymore. That triggered the alarm. A sideways look in the mirror revealed a nice little pot belly and a visible spare tire around my waist. The scale showed I was a full 14-16 lbs above what used to be my normal weight. Being (still) vain enough about my body, I decided it was time to do something about it.
My first thought was that I simply hadn't been getting enough exercise
which was certainly true enough, so I'd based my initial course of action on that premise alone, but was surprised that even after a few weeks of (reasonably) conscientious exercise I was left with precious little to show for all the work involved.
The failure prompted me to actually do some research on the subject -- not a simple task, mind you. The phrase "losing belly fat" returned almost 2 million results in my favorite search engine and it's quite a job to sift through all the hype and good-natured misinformation out there. Still, quality info can be found -- if you care to dig a little deeper, many articles on weight loss by experienced professionals coming from highly reputable health institutions will surface.
To cut the long story short, my research basically boiled down to this:
- losing weight is not about starving yourself to death
- losing weight is not about killing yourself with exercise
Losing weight is about eating the right foods at the right intervals each day
It kind of makes sense, if you think about it. This is not a widely known fact, but your body is actually capable of adapting to the amount and the type of foods you intake. What does this mean? Generally speaking, if you consume 3000 calories a day, your body will also burn 3000 calories a day. But if you decide to starve yourself and take only 1000 calories per day, your body will adapt and burn only 1000 calories per day (which is why low-calorie diets aren't very efficient).
However, that's a rather simplified view of the whole picture. The sorts of foods you eat (and drink) also have a deciding impact on fat burning. Some types of foods (refined carbs, sugar) actually stimulate storing fat instead of burning it, while others do the opposite. And therein lies the answer. The key to losing weight efficiently is in consuming the proper foods (the ones that stimulate fat burning) at the right intervals, in which case it is actually desirable that you eat more than 3 times per day for optimal results -- no need for starvation at all.
Armed with this knowledge, I set out to approach my spare-tire issue from a different angle and joined one of the online weight loss programs. Their ads promised I'd lose 9 pounds in 11 days (hence the title of this article), but that is not at all why I chose this particular program: the plan actually has many similarities with the proper-foods theory laid out above, with some clever additions designed to manipulate your body into "thinking" you have eaten more calories than was actually the case -- which prompts your body to start burning calories off immediately. Anyway, the whole thing just made a lot of sense to me and I was really curious as to how it would work.
The result?
Well, I didn't actually lose 9 lbs in 11 days, but that was hardly disappointing -- the whole 9/11 thing is a marketing gimmick and we all know that. I did lose 4 pounds though, in those first 11 days, and that was more than enough to make me happy, as it was evidence enough that my pot belly problem was going away. However, browsing health oriented forums I spotted a few discussions among people who have tried the same program, and plenty of them are reporting better results, some of them significantly so, especially those whose weight problems are more severe -- perhaps not really that surprising a fact considering that stomach fat is notoriously difficult to get rid of.
