ROTATION DIET: ACTIVITY PLAN

As they say, let's call a spade a spade.

I know that, if anything is likely to put people off about a weight-management program, it's the suggestion that they need to get physically active. That's why the big money-making commercial weight-loss plans tend to play down the need for physical activity. The advertisers for these programs know that it is difficult for an overweight person to enjoy physical activity. I have one of the advertisements from a major commercial program on my desk right now. You may have seen it, and many others just like it. It reads: "Lose weight easily, without uncomfortable physical activity." If these large commercial programs put the emphasis on physical activity that is truly needed for permanent weight management, many people would not buy their programs.

But I know both the absolute necessity for physical activity in weight management as well as how you feel about it at this time.

Talk about what it feels like! When I was a fat child and a fat man, I felt like a klutz. I didn't walk, I waddled. I was embarrassed to try anything physical because I was convinced that I would be awkward and lousy at it. If I so much as walked on a curb along the street when I was a kid, my mom used to scream, "Watch out, Dick! You'll fall off." (Dick is my nickname.) Throughout my entire life I avoided gymnasiums. I certainly did not want to let anyone look at all my fat in its naked form. And, up until I was thirty-five years old, there was no way that anyone could convince me that it could possibly feel good to be physically active.

I assure you that you can do away with all of these negative feelings about being physical. Follow my advice and I can also assure you that nothing will ever make you feel thin in the way that being an active person does. If you are at all like me, losing weight by itself does not make you feel like a thin person. No matter what the mirror says, there is still a sense of being fat. All of this changes when you become an active thin person.

To begin with, you may feel an increase in your motivation to become more active if you face the facts: if you are a sedentary person, it will be almost impossible for you to manage your weight without finding some way to increase your activity level to the point that nature intended.

Up until the invention of the automobile, and the availability of electricity in our homes and places of work, the average person had to walk seven or eight miles each day. And those people who didn't have to walk quite that much still ended up expending just as much energy because their work required standing, moving around, and a lot more muscle! For the first few million years of our existence as a distinct species of animal, up until about a hundred years ago, human beings had to burn up about 500 calories more energy each day in our work, in maintaining our homes (chopping wood, shoveling coal), and in obtaining food, since there was no electric refrigeration. Our bodies were designed for a high level of physical activity, and our appetites are matched to that level of activity. Because of the nature of life in previous times, we used to be able to eat about 500 calories more each day a hundred years ago, and we were not as likely to get as fat as we are today because we had to burn up all of those extra calories working to stay alive.

Although the need for energy expenditure has decreased significantly in our technologically advanced society, our appetite for food has not. In fact, there is a tendency for inactive persons to eat more than moderately active persons. This may occur, perhaps, out of boredom or as a result of tensions that would normally be lowered through physical activity.

Physical activity is a great regulator of appetite. When sedentary persons get active, they actually tend to eat less than before.

Then, as activity levels increase, food intake seems to increase only to the extent that it matches output.

In addition, as long as you remain an active person, Mother Nature puts a special fat-burning mechanism to work to help you stay thin. If you happen to overeat, but get immediately active without missing a day, your body will rev up even higher than it normally does in physical activity, as though it were trying to help you burn off the extra calories you ate the day before. Nature appears to be working to help you stay thin in order to be better at whatever physical thing you ask yourself to do. But consistent physical activity is required. The mechanism will not work as well if your activity becomes sporadic.

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