Hello again everybawdy!

Last time I talked about how I gained weight, what was the actual cause of it.
This time, we're talking about what happened after the first three months of baffled weightloss, after I began training as an acrobat in those first three months.

After about three months of training, I started to have problems with my right shoulder. To begin with and for a long time, I thought the injury was a result of my training, but it turns out it was a result of RSI injury from my job at the time. I was told by a few doctors that I'd have to give it up if I wanted my shoulder to improve. (I did give it up, and have shoulder surgery on my birthday as those doctors were wrong and it didn't improved. I am please about this, as I've now been living in daily pain for well over a year =/)

So at that point, I stopped working out completely. Not even jogging or lower body, since everything seemed to hurt it. I stopped doing everything but going to work every day.
This is important, and significant- because I didn't stop losing weight. At the time, I had already realised that the change to my diet was having significant effects on my weightloss, but had really believed that it was my daily regime of muscle workouts and exercise that had effected it the most. I now believe that this was not the case.

I'm actually pretty convinced that exercise isn't that essential to weightloss.

Maybe that's not the healthiest long term view, but not everyone has time to work out every day. Its pretty hard to get up the motivation to change your diet, let alone change your diet and work out every day too, so I think it helps to know that you CAN still lose significant amount of weight without lifting a finger. Besides, just walking around your home and workplace everyday uses a surprising amount of energy. Using your brain does too.

I'm going to mention Ketosis at this point, as I think its relevant. Ketosis is a state in which your body releases a substance called Ketone, which allows your body to rapidly break down fats to use it as energy when the body is starved of it. Diabetics go into a state of "Ketoacidosis" when they don't get enough insulin, since their body can't produce it.
Ketosis Diets are often used with heavily obese persons, in order to assist them with losing their bulk fast.
Here's the important part: Ketosis is dangerous. Everyone will tell you this. Using it long term can have disasterous effects. But you don't NEED to use it long term.
Asides from that, being heavily obese is also dangerous- and I don't think I've ever heard of anyone dying of a ketosis diet, I've sure heard of people having obesity complications and dying from those though!
My point there is that fat loss can be dangerous, but it is worthwhile for your long term health. I know people who've used the ketosis diet to lose rather significant amounts of weight. If you're below or just above the line of "obese" for your height range, you probably don't need to use this kind of diet, lowering your carbohydrate should be enough.

The average recommended daily intake of carbohydrate advertised on Australian food labeling is about 4 times the amount I'd say I needed in a day. At most, double that for a larger boned person, say a man or taller woman. We're mostly interested in the insulin production here, so that doesn't mean starving yourself- it just means eating more of other foods. And that really isn't so bad!


The other thing I wanted to mention was something I noticed when I moved over to higher protein/fats. I stopped feeling hungry all the time. I'd have a big protein shake, low carb, in the morning, and wouldn't feel hungry until well into the afternoon, like 3pm- and I'd have had the shake before 8am. It took a little while for that to really sink in, but when I realised, I did some more research. Apparently if you sate your hunger with Carbohydrate, you will be hungry sooner than if you'd sated it with mostly proteins and fats. They just last longer, take longer to digest. You stay fuller longer and end up needing LESS food in total than you use to. Stomach shrinks, you feel hungry less. Can't see how that's anything but win!


Thats all for now. Next time I think we'll talk about my actual diet, what I eat and when, and why. I'll probably include information about diabetes too, because I think it helps to understand that stuff. Diabetics are used to questioning everything we eat, because we have to, so I wonder if a normal person applying the same theory of "what am I eating" every time they eat, would help them control what was going on.

As always, please do your own research and discover for yourself what you believe and if I'm right, or just a super skinny betch talking it up ;)