Tina's Story, Part 2

A week later, Tina came back, food journal in hand.  We did an official weigh-in to see how much she weighed at the time, and then I sat down to look it over. As I did, one thing jumped out to me more than anything.

"Tina," I said, "you're not eating enough."

Not eating enough?!  But she was trying to lose weight! Isn't that what you're supposed to do to lose weight, cut calories?!  Yes, but she had cut them too drastically.  Not to the point of anorexia, but to the point that it was causing her body to store as much energy as possible.  This news floored her, so I explained a little of how the body works, as it had been explained to me.

The human body is an amazing thing; it can adapt and change, while still remaining constant.  Thousands of years ago, humans were hunter-gatherers.  One thing this meant was that people didn't always know when they would have their next meal, nor how big that meal would be.  So the body adapted; it began storing food so that it had the energy it needed until the next meal came. And how does the body store food/energy?  As fat.

This adaptation has remained, though our eating habits have changed.  Now, we can get something to eat on almost every street corner, and almost everywhere in between.  Whether it be a fast food restaurant, a sit-down restaurant, a gas station, a grocery store, or our own food storage, we have an abundance of food sources.  If we want something to eat, we go get it, usually with very little effort. However, our bodies have not fundamentally changed.  We can train them to adapt, but Tina was eating so little that her body was saying, "Ok, I don't know when I will get my next meal, nor how big it will be.  I better hold on to what she is giving me now."

So, Tina and I sat down and wrote out a weekly meal plan.  I told her I wanted her to eat 1200 Calories a day.  I also wanted her to be eating every 3 hours, which worked out to 5-6 times per day, rather than the 2-3 times she was accustomed to.  This would train her body that it was getting food on a regular, constant basis, so it could use, rather than store, the energy she was feeding it.

Her eyes got wide as she saw "how much" I wanted her to  eat, especially when she saw I was allowing her to eat a Skinny Cow brand ice cream bar every night.  She expressed to me her fears that she would be eating so much, and that there was no way it would translate into weight loss.  I asked her to try it, just for one week.  She said she would, and went on her way, armed with her weekly meal plan, as well as a moderate exercise plan we had written out that included two days of weight training and three days of cardio.  She was a little apprehensive, but she trusted me and was excited to give it a try.

To be continued...