Texas Lap Band Surgeons Talk With You

I had an epiphany the other day while talking to a LapBand patient.  It was the end of wintertime, so she didn’t exercise because it was cold outside and walking outdoors was her preferred aerobic activity.  And of course since she was inside with nothing to do, she grazed on junk food for snacks much more than she used to.  Naturally, the scale gave her the evil eye when she came in for her follow-up appt.

We started talking about ways to address the weight gain and I stated the obvious: stop eating the junk, no more snacking and get back to exercise.  And therein lies my epiphany.  The weight comes on easily because all it takes to gain is eating too many calories or eating too much of the wrong thing (high fat, high sugar, low anything-good-for-you).   Know what? That’s awfully fun and pleasurable to do, too. 

But losing that weight once it’s in place is a completely different process.  It’s difficult to lose with food restriction alone.  Some will come off, definitely.  But at some point you will stall.  Why? Because when you gain weight you gain fat (unless you’re lifting copious amounts of heavy weights like a bodybuilder).  But when you lose weight, you generally lose a combination of fat and muscle, not just fat alone.  And muscle is what burns calories – it’s what makes up the majority of your “metabolism” in terms of calories burned each day.  So every time you diet, potentially you (a) actually become fatter even if the scale goes down since a larger percentage of your weight is made up by fat and (b) you slow down your metabolism making it harder and harder to lose any more weight without severe calorie restriction.

So is it hopeless? Of course not!  The antidote is exercise.  Weight bearing exercise, whether it’s walking/running/aerobic dance/weight lifting, will halt the loss of muscle while you diet, helping to maintain your current level of muscle (aka lean body mass) and maybe even build a little more.  Every pound of muscle burns extra calories each day- even while you sleep!

So while eating alone will put the fat on, only eating right and exercise together will take it off.  The combination allows you to lose the fat but still maintain your metabolism (your ability to burn calories) as well as maintain a lower body fat percentage (how much of your weight is made up by fat and how much by muscle).  Remember: the higher your body fat percentage, the higher your risk of high blood pressure, heart disease and cancer.  So don’t be a “skinny fat” person – don’t just lose a bunch of weight on the scales, but end up more unhealthy than when you started.  If you do it well, all the benefits of weight loss will be yours and are much more likely to last a lifetime.