In all honesty, most days I'd skip my breakfast all together and have my first meal around 2-3pm, (some days not eating anything until supper!). It was perfectly normal for me to survive on only a cup of coffee until then.
My logic was, that eating less often meant consuming less calories... which would result in weight-loss. Right?!?
WRONG!
Over the years, the extra pounds kept coming. Even exercise wasn't shaking them. (And a times I was clocking over 25 miles a week!) I was running 5ks and completed a half marathon, but continued to still steadily gain weight! What the what!?!
I'd get so discouraged, that I'd either binge on fatty, greasy food OR quit exercising all together thinking, "What is the point?!?" feeling so completely defeated.
Well it turns out that what I was actually doing was keeping my body in "starvation mode" or what some call "fat storing mode" AKA shutting down my metabolism because my body thought I was in the middle of a FAMINE so it had to store up and hold on to everything in order to ensure that it could properly function.
YIKES!
To help explain it better, think of it like this:
My body is a bathtub...
Food is the "water" and the "drain" is my metabolism.
Being in "fat storing" mode for so long caused my "drain" to get SO small that almost no water passes through. Meanwhile, my faucet remained ON, causing my "bathtub" to not only fill up...it has overflowed!
(In other words, I continued to eat, but my metabolism was so low that instead of burning food for fuel, my body has been storing it as fat.)
SO HERE'S THE PLAN...
First, I need to turn my faucet down, which will help bring the water level in my "bathtub" down.
I'll do this by eliminating complex carbs, sugar, fruit and dairy for 2 weeks.
Instead I'll enjoy clean eating (consisting of 3 meals and 2 snacks) using only lean proteins, veggies, herbs + spices and most importantly, staying super hydrated! (I'll share a separate post on hydration later.)
Next, during weeks 3-8, I'll turn my faucet up a little bit (allowing some more foods back in, in moderation like: legumes, dairy and fruit), BUT I'll have to keep working on widening the "drain" (increasing my metabolism), which I'll accomplish through increasing my total exercise time + intensity. This will ensure that the "water" keeps going in the tub a little slower than the "water" going out the "drain." (Because remember, I'm dealing with about 100 lbs of extra "water" in my tub.)
Finally, after the 8 weeks are up, my focus will be on widening my "drain" (metabolism) to its maximum (by exercising at least 70 minutes a day, six days a week) AND adjusting my "faucet" back to a normal level, allowing back ANY foods in moderation, as long as they're unprocessed + clean.
My hope is that by then, my body’s metabolism will be so much more efficient, and my activity levels will have increased so much, that I can maintain them both for the long-term!
Wish me luck!
xoxo -Kara
