14. Water Retention and False Fat

Did you know you may be carrying up to 15 pounds of water trapped in your body tissues?Waterlogged tissue is known as "False Fat" and is usually found under the eyes, around the face, the abdomen and thigh areas. A reduction diet will not help release this fluid, instead you will need to look at your current nutrition and hydration.             

Drinking Too Little Water
Surprisingly, drinking too little fluid can make your body retain fluid! Look at post 5 "Water and Weight Loss" for advice on fluid intake. When your fluid intake is low, your kidneys start to "panic store" fluid so that it may have an adequate supply to flush your body of waste products. Also, too little fluid intake slows down your lymphatic system (system that monitors fluid levels in the body as well as filtering toxins and bacteria) fluid is not excreted and as with the "panic storing", the fluid is stored in fat cells, swelling the cells to bursting point whereupon the fat cells multiply.  It is widely believed that this is what causes cellulite.

Not Enough Protein
The protein that we eat plays a very important role in effective water balance between the cells and the blood circulating around your body.   A diet low in protein causes fluid to leak through blood vessels into cells, where it becomes trapped. Sadly we have all seen the images of  severely malnourished people, with their bloated abdomens.  This bloating is caused by an extreme lack of dietry protein.The daily Recommended Nutrient Intake of protein for adults is 45g for women and  55g for men, more if you are athletic. 

Vitamin Deficiency
Vitamin B1, B5, B6 and Potassium are known to reduce the effects of water retention. These nutrients are food in fruit and vegetables - another reason why our bodies need a balanced diet.  Please refer to post 8 "Essential Vitamins for Life"

Food Sensitivity
Some of the symptoms caused by food sensitivity are water retention around joints, abdominal bloating and facial puffiness.  If you suffer these symptoms in conjunction with the other common symptoms of sensitivity, you should seek advice from your doctor.

Hormonal Cycles
Most women experience water retention or an increase in retention, just before their period, but this usually corrects itself within days.

Massage and Lymphatic Drainage
If you have addressed nutrient and fluid intake and would like to help things along, a little massage will certainly help.  These 2 instructional videos by Vichy are certainly worth a viewing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4qbnQQLg_M   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7EVsjabKn8

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13: Slow and Steady or Fast and Furious

If you want some motivation for healthy eating and weight loss read this;

How you behave in the first 6 weeks of diet change will determine your success at adhering to these changes in the future.  Clinical studies show that people who experience a greater weight loss in the first 6 weeks of healthy eating, were 5 times more likely to have successful weight loss at 6 and 18 months, than those who lost weight at a slow rate. Statistics showed that they were also more likely to keep the weight off, long term.

So the theory that slow and steady is the best way to lose weight has been disproved.

"Across the world, guidelines recommend gradual weight loss for the treatment of obesity, reflecting the widely held belief that fast weight loss is more quickly regained," study lead author Katrina Purcell, a dietician at the University of Melbourne in Australia, said in a journal news release. However, the new study shows that "achieving a weight loss target of 12.5 percent is more likely, and drop-out is lower, if losing weight is done quickly," Katrina Purcell. The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology.

How much weight you need to lose weekly very much depends on your starting weight.  A very obese person may lose up to a stone per week, initially, whereas an overweight person may find it difficult to lose 2 pounds.  Please contact me if you would like some free advice on how much you should be losing initially and how long it will take you to reach your ideal weight contact me at  terri@clubmotivita.com

The 10 Rules of Healthy Eating

1. Drink at least 2 litres of water a day.
2. Eat plenty, plenty vegetables and salads, they will fill you up and are so good for you with vitamins, minerals and fibre!!
3. Try and avoid  "fast carbs" white bread, white rice, pasta
4. Eat beans, oats, barley and wholegrains for fibre, vitamins and minerals.
5. Eat at least 2 pieces of fresh fruit a day, not juiced. Your gut needs to break the fruit fibre down itself, it needs the "digestive work out".
6. Avoid sugary drinks - fruit juices and drinks containing sugar and fructose.
7. Avoid sugar, fructose, cakes, biscuits, desserts and pastry " the carbofat timebombs"
8. Avoid animal fats, hydrogenated fats - these fats leave hard deposits in your arteries.
9. Avoid processed meats - sausages, deli meats, smoked meats "Part Foods" these contain so much saturated fat, chemicals and additives and are toxic on your liver and deliver a package of fat straight to your body fat cells!
10. Alcohol, no more than 1 alcoholic drink a week, if you must.

If you need a little boost to rethinking your commitment to healthy eating, please read post 12. "Why Do You Want To Lose Weight?"  Any questions, please contact me at terri@clubmotivita.com



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12. Are You Ready To Lose Weight?

Everyone who has changed their eating habits in order to lose weight, has been right where you are today.  What are your thoughts on healthy eating?
You need to explore your thoughts and feelings about why you are going to make these changes. These changes will be for your benefit, it must be your decision to commit to a plan as you will be in ultimate control.

Ask yourself;

• How do you feel about your weight, size, shape?
• What is the most difficult thing about being this weight?
• What do you think your "healthy weight" should be?
• How are you going to change your weight?
• Are you ready for change? 

Write your answers in a journal.  Refer to them for reassurance and motivation.  Write down your goals and aspirations.

What if you're not ready for change?

You may not need to make changes to your eating habits or weight.  You will be the best judge of that.  We don't live in a blinkered world, so you will know if change is really necessary for you, sometimes we can be in denial, in which case you need to do a little soul searching from time to time, ask yourself the right questions and do what's right for you, be your own best friend.

Sometimes the changes that we adopt don't feel right.  Look at your reasons for change and maybe you might have to find a new way of helping you through this journey.  Reflection and changing of methods when previous methods failed, is a perfectly normal and necessary route to success for all of life's challenges.  All the big successful global businesses do this, you can do this for yourself using this tool;

The Reflective Cycle

Write each step down in your journal.  You may need to do this a number of times, but only through reflection and thinking of solutions that best suit you, will you find a result that you are comfortable with and that you are more likely to stick with.

1. Description: What is the difficulty?

2. Feelings: How does it make you feel and why?

3. Evaluation: Judge how important this difficulty is and it's affect on your plans.

4. Conclusion: What changes will you make?  Ask advice from others. Come up with a plan.

5. Action: Do it! Put those plans into action.  

If you action the plan and it proves that it's not the right plan for you, revisit stage 4 "conclusions" come up with an alternative plan and go to "Stage 5: Action" and give that a good go!  

We learn from our mistakes, so be prepared to be a master of this subject, before you're done!

Please contact me if you have any questions or tips that might help others, I want to hear from you.  Contact  terri@clubmotivita.com

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