More than 100 million Americans don’t need another person to tell them that a cheeseburger and fries were the wrong choice, that they need to stay away from processed, prepared foods, or that they need to exercise regularly. What they do need to know is that their bodies are predisposed to being fat-storing machines.
Metabolic syndrome is the technical term for a condition that applies to one-third of all Americans. These people are constantly blamed for not being able to eat or exercise correctly – and it’s not their fault. The truth is far closer to this: they simply need to identify how to flip the switch to transform themselves from fat-storing machines into fat-burning machines.
So if you want to gain weight rather than lose weight, embrace these 13 diet myths, and keep taking this advice from the media and the trainers at your gym.
The 13 Best Ways to Gain Weight, or How to Become a Fat-Storing Machine
1. Relax—it says: “organic, “whole grain”, “gluten-free”, “fat-free” or “natural.”
The words “organic, “whole grain”, “gluten-free”, “fat-free” or “natural” lull us into the belief that someone has done the work of taking care of our health. Unfortunately, these words don’t guarantee that certain foods (and the ingredients they contain) aren’t working against us to store fat. Most fat-free products barely deliver any nutritional value.
2. Eat sushi
Truth: Subtract every other ingredient from what goes into the sushi and just make a pile of the rice you’re eating: too many carbs, even if you substitute brown rice. Then look at the food that remains. Would that be enough to nourish you otherwise?
3. Work up a huge sweat at the gym.
Truth: Simply put, most of us have been pushed into exercising incorrectly and working up a huge sweat as exercising breathlessly became the badge of honor. Olympic trainer Gale Bernhardt has devised “miracle intervals” that get you more results from less exercise.
4. Make bananas your go-to snack.
Truth: Bananas are one of those fruits that cause many of us to store fat and make it more difficult to burn off.
5. Stick to foods that only a caveman could club.
Truth: Stanford University nutritionist Dr, Stacy Sims has stated that a Paleo style diet is a faulty reading of the science and has the potential of changing a woman’s hormonal activity in ways that increase fat storage and menstrual dysfunction.
6. Have a smoothie.
Truth: For the most part, smoothies are fruit sugar bombs, even if you choose to eliminate frozen yogurt and go for a low-fat milk or milk substitute.
7. Spend your dinner calories on light beer or “skinny” cocktails.
Truth: Alcohol of any kind or in any quantity triggers our fat-storing machines and it can take days to reverse the process to burn fat again.
8. Always choose low-fat or no fat.
Truth: Your body needs some fat to burn fat. Non-fat dairy options contain 13 grams of carbohydrates per cup and 12 of those grams are sugar (roughly three teaspoons). The sugar is naturally occurring in milk, lactose, but when it reaches your small intestine, is still processed by your body in the same way as other sugars.
9. Choose ketchup over mayo.
Truth: In reasonable quantities (a tablespoon or so), mayo helps you burn fat. Ketchup is sugar that motivates your body to store fat. Sorry: large gobs of mayo in a tuna fish salad or coleslaw aren’t a reasonable quantity.
10. Eat cutesy mini cupcakes and 100-calorie cookies, they’re small!
Truth: Even in these smaller quantities, cutesy cupcakes, mini-cookies and snack crackers contain ingredients that trigger fat storing.
11. Relax—you can always work it off at the gym.
Truth: Michael Phelps can work off what he eats. You can’t.
12. Stay a little hungry.
Truth: When you don’t eat enough food, you can trigger your body’s fat-storing mode.
13. Go “no carb.”
Truth: People who skip carbs get tired and sluggish. Cut down on them—but don’t cut them out.
So if your goals is to gain weight instead of losing weight, follow these 13 tips and you’ll flip your Fat-Burning switch off – guaranteed. But if your goal is to lose excess weight to be healthier, more active, sleep better, improve skin tone and overall well-being – and we know it is – don’t follow these 13 diet myths. Arm yourself with the kind of support and information you need to become a Fat-Burning Machine.
