The amount of fat you carry around is not determined by your genes, but by what you do and what you eat. Recent scientific studies has shown that neither the number of fat cells nor their seize is genetically fixed, but body fat is dependent on lifestyle. Your body has no internal reference for a permanent level of fat, only for a habitual level. When you remain at a particular fat level for a year or more, your body develops all the adipore cells, capillaries, enzyme counts, peripheral nerves,hormone levels and connective tissues to support it. It becomes to recognize that level of fat as self and will defend it vigorously. That’s called your fat point.

You body constantly monitors its fat point with hormonal messages, such as glycerol, which warns the brain to take defensive action if even the smallest quantity of fat is suddenly used for fuel. That’s why usual forms of dieting can’t possibly work. By slowing metabolism, increasing fat storage and increasing appetite, your body’s fat point defenses will defeat you every time. Then how can you treat it? Easy! Reliable studies show that it takes years of overeating to grow fat. Body fat accumulate very slowly, an ounce or so per day, a pound every two or three weeks. In a year you are 20 lbs over. In 3 – 4 years you gain 60 lbs of flab. As your body shifts its habitual fat point up very slowly, you have to operate down the same way, very slowly. Otherwise your body will cannibalize your muscle, excite your fat storage enzyme and boost your appetite to ravenous. It’s important to reduce you total daily calories by no more than 20%. That’s 400 calories off a 2000 calorie diet. That’s 2800 calories or 0.8 lbs of fat per week. Because of increases in body efficiency, you will not lose 0.8 lbs of fat but only about half a pound. That’s the most you can lose without triggering body defences. Step 1.: Lose no more than half-a-pound of fat per week.

Get your body composition measured once a month, including fat weight, lean weight and body water. A newly available alternative to underwater weighing are the inexpensive skin-fold calipers for self-use at home. These calipers have a tension device on them to ensure you get the same pressure on the fat each time you measure, provided you take the measurements in exactly the same spot every time. Step 2.: Measure your body fat once a month.

The calories you cut from your diet have to be the right calories,importantly from all kinds of fat. Contrary to the calorie-counting strategies of much of the weight-loss industry,we know that fat calories are fatter. When excess carbohydrate or protein are eaten, the body makes complex metabolic adjustments to promote glycogen storage in muscle and increase the use of protein or sugar for fuel. It also has to use a lot of energy to convert these foods to body fat. Hence you have to eat a bigger excess of carbs and protein than you do of fat before they end up on your hips. But when excess fat is eaten, metabolism remains unchanged. Virtually all the excess is promptly layered onto all the wrong places.

Now you know why calorie counting doesn’t work. Numerous recent studies show that you put on much more body fat by eating fat than by eating the same number of calories from carbs or protein. Fat calories pack on more body fat than calories from any other food. Step 3.: Eat a low, low fat diet.

Look on the nutrition facts label when you buy food. Divide the total calories by the calories from fat. If the answer is less than 5, don’t buy the food. In a diet of 2000 calories, that’s a maximum of 400 fat calories. Step 4: Don’t eat foods that contains more than 20% fat calories.

Many dieters think that they are on healthy, low-fat nutrition, when in fact they are misleaded by false food labeling. Many apparently dry foods like cookies, baked goods, crackers & chips are higher in fat than ice-cream. Even low-fat milk is really high fat. How does low fat milk get away with its name? By jiggery-pokery lobbying power, the dairy industry got an exemption from the new labels. Nevertheless, an 8 oz glass of low-fat milk (2%) serves you a hefty one-third of its calories from fat.

Food industry lawyers have filed exemption claims for all kinds of foods. So if you want to avoid hidden fats, don’t trust anything on food labels except the Nutrition Facts panel. That has to be accurate if it’s legal. Especially beware of “reduced fat” products. Under the label law “reduced fat” means 25% less fat than the original product. So it goes with everything from reduced fat bologna, high can still be 60% fat, to “light” and “lite” variants of foods, that have to be one-third less fat than the original, but can still be 40 – 50% fat. Step 5 : Trust only the Nutrition Facts panel on food labels.