“Help, I’m losing too much weight and my friends comment how skinny I look!”
Please cool down, you are not going to fade away : )
This is one of the most frequently asked questions I get from Clear for Life customers. Perhaps it’s on your mind also, so I wrote a detailed reply to it.
Let’s start with an ABC of body composition and weight control.
Three elements make up for your body weight: water, lean tissue and fat. Water makes up as much as 70% of our total body mass.
Water has many important functions in the body. One is that it’s used to dilute toxins to bring down their concentration to less harmful level.
When the body cannot eliminate all the toxins it has to store them. But it doesn’t store just the toxins, it also stores the water they are diluted in. Solution to pollution is dilution.
Once you stop putting toxins in the organs of elimination have a chance to catch up. The load of toxins in the body starts to go down. As the body gets rid of the toxins it also releases the extra water.
Any rapid weight loss is always water loss.
That’s one part of the weight loss issue.
Second, and this may make you a bit uncomfortable, nearly all of us are under muscled and over fat.
Here’s a quote from Dr. Graham:
“When thin people have a desire to gain weight, they usually fail to recognize that they need to gain muscle, not fat. Almost every client who has even come to me wanting to curtain their weight loss because they thought they were getting too ‘skinny’ actually still needed to lose some fat…
One client, a high-end fashion model, came to me saying she would do whatever I suggested in order to extend her youthful beauty, but she could not afford to lose any more weight. She was long and lanky and looked skinny to be sure, but she was under muscled. When we measured her body fat, she was shocked to discover that it was almost 29% – at least 10% above what I would consider healthy. She did not need to lose weight; she needed to lose fat while gaining muscle.”
Dr. Graham
The 80/10/10 Diet
For most people it only looks like they have muscle because of water and fat. Water inflates their muscles. Within the muscles there’s also lots of fat, and there’s a padding of fat around the muscles.
Once the body starts to release water and fat it looks like our muscles are shrinking. But in reality we have only been stripped off our illusion of muscles. Perhaps for the first time we have to face the fact of how under muscled most of us really are.
Muscle loss happens only in two cases: you don’t use the muscles or you starve yourself. Starving is not an issue, because the body first burns off fat before using muscle for energy. If you purposefully leave yourself calorie-deficient for long periods of time (months) it may happen, but for the vast majority it’s not an issue.
So the only way you can lose muscle is not to use them. Use it or lose it. And as you start using them your muscles gain their size back quickly.
That’s another part to weight loss mystery.
As you can see it doesn’t really make sense to look at your weight and ‘skinniness’ as an indicator of how well you are doing. Rather focus on how you are feeling. Do you still have energy? What about your athletic capabilities, are they still the same/improving/declining?
As long as you feel great and can perform athletically (the way you used to) you have nothing to worry about.
Initially, you may experience a drop in your athletic capabilities. That’s a result of detoxification.
Initially the body may break down more tissue than it can rebuild. So you may lose a little strength. That’s ok. It’s temporary and you will gain the ‘lost’ muscle back.
It doesn’t happen to everybody, but if it happens to you it’s important to be aware of it, and keep an eye on it. This ‘weak’ period should not last for more than a month or two. If it goes on for more than two months, you may have a problem with your diet.
With strength training you can minimize or completely avoid this weak period. I’ve noticed and heard from other people that by training your muscles you can prevent the temporary muscle loss.
On a personal note I can tell that none of this happened to me. Yes, I’ve lost some weight, but I was carrying few extra pound that I was happy to get rid of. Instead of looking skinny I have far more muscle now than I did when I was eating a more standard diet. Putting on muscle has become much easier than it used to be. I get bigger gains from doing less work – you just can’t beat that.
My body builds itself almost automatically. And all I’m doing is to follow the diet guidelines in Clear for Life and the exercise routine I learned from Roger Haeske’s Lightning Speed Fitness Program.
I never go to the gym anymore. My strength training routine takes only 5 to 10 minutes a day. I only do exercises that I enjoy – I just can’t stand boring and repetitive stuff. And I do it all in my home.
When exercise is so simple and fun there’s no need to look skinny. That’s why I recommend Roger Haeske’s Lightning Speed Fitness Program.
So to sum things up, ensure that you:
- Do something with your muscles
- Eat sufficient calories
- Keep your fat consumption under 20% of total calories, preferably under 10%
- Eat a pound of greens a day
- Drink enough water; even a slight dehydration can lead to reduced capacity for muscular work
Isn’t it funny how good things just stack up when you do the right things? The same advice that helps you to get clear also gives you a great body. It’s a total transformation from skinny and acne ridden to clear, athletic and sexy. And that really sucks when everyone else is getting fatter and lazier : )
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Clear for Life – The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin
Share your views and experiences about acne, getting clear and weight loss at Clear Skin Space forums: “Help, I’m losing too much weight!”
