By now, everyone should realize that we are in the middle of an "obesity epidemic." What most of you don't know is that the people getting richer while we get fatter are the billion-dollar companies. While there are many so-called "solutions" for losing weight that are available to consumers, we are still in the worst shape in the history of modern civilization. Truth be told, there are many people profiting from our sickness and fatness. Why is it so easy for us to be tricked into buy fitness products that won't help us? Commonly, we go from one failed solution to another, yet we don't understand why we're in such poor shape. Look, you have to start by understanding why we are so fat before you spend another dime on diets, and weight-loss and fitness products.

The desire to lose weight without any work drives over 70 million people to go on a diet each year, and funds the $58 billion dollar diet- and weight-loss lie. Thousands of diets profess to have the solution for weight loss, yet the long-term positive results from dieting falls below the 5 percent margin. After ending the diet, most dieters will regain their weight they might have lost and more. There are three simple reasons that diets alone will not give you the solution for sustained results:

1. The concept of "going on a diet" means you are changing your eating habits for a specific period of time to effect a change in your body weight. Whatever changes you make to your diet have to be sustained for the rest of your life, or they'll only provide short-term results.

2. Dramatically reducing your caloric intake slows down your metabolism and causes your body to burn fewer calories at rest. An innate response to a slower metabolism is that it causes your body to preserve fat to avoid starvation.

3. When you reduce your caloric intake, you also reduce the energy source your body needs for physical activity. Most diets make you tired and lethargic, which make it difficult to increase physical activity. Unfortunately, increased physical activity is the most effective way to lose weight.

Forget about the glycemic index, food combining, low-carb or high-protein diets. Don't buy into the grapefruit or cabbage diets and don't think for a second that French women and Japanese women don't get fat. Every day, you burn a certain number of calories just by walking, talking and breathing. This is called your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR). The more you move through physical activity, the more calories you burn beyond your RMR. The difference between the calories expended through your combined RMR and physical activity compared to the number of calories you consume equals your caloric surplus or deficit. A surplus of 3,500 calories equals one pound of fat gained and a deficit of 3,500 calories equals one pound of fat lost. When it comes to gaining or losing weight, calories are THE most important factor. We've been led to believe that we can weigh less if we eat more, and that's by the diet and weight loss industry. That is a big, fat lie. If you want to weigh less, you have to eat less and move more. If your goal is to lose weight permanently, stop dieting and start moving.

Copyright (c) 2008 Craig Pepin Donat