Power of prevention

As I sit here with a raging case of Poison Oak, I’m reminded of how some problems are much easier to prevent (scratch, scratch) than to cure!

This is surprisingly true in the case of weight gain. You might think that losing a pound of fat involves simply burning off the excess calories that you overate in the first place. Not so, unfortunately. Burning off a pound of fat is much more work than preventing it.

Recent research is showing that once new fat is stored on your body, it can be reluctant to leave. It may release hormones that increase your appetite and destabilize blood sugar, making it tougher to eat right. In addition, when you burn off the extra fat you are likely to lose some lean tissue along with it, which lowers your metabolism.

This is not to say that weight loss is futile! Everybody backslides sometimes, but you’ll save yourself some work if you minimize the number of times you let yourself pig out today with plans to burn it off tomorrow.