Friday, February 13, 2009

Mardi Gras and Weight Loss

In New Orleans, it is Mardi Gras season, two weeks of parties, parades, and Mardi Gras balls. What a festival. We live on the parade route of Endymion, Mardi Gras’s largest and most brilliant. We annually host a gigantic party, six hours of catching throws and screaming “throw me something mister!” The food table will be filled with Popeye’s Chicken, red beans and rice, king cake, and huge portions of parade foods brought by our guests. And then there are the beverages. Wow, what temptation for the MoneyWalker.

Moreover, Valentine’s Day is tomorrow. Eat three ounces of those treats each day for a year and you will gain 50 additional lbs. Then Easter and more chocolate; and don’t forget the just completed the Super Bowl and Christmas holiday feasts. How can we MoneyWalkers fight such temptations?

Why not the YoYo diet! Binge eat, add lbs, then go on a bout of starvation, and lose it all back. Unfortunately two bad things happen. First, the body adapts and shifts into survival mode. The body assumes a starvation metabolism and slows in order to preserve the body’s fat stores. After a few quick loss of lbs, weight loss slows, plateaus, and then stops. Then depression and food hunger sets in. We give in to cravings for sweets and high carb favorites—the YoYo’s disastrous up cycle that results in even higher weight gains than when the YoYo diet began.

What can the MoneyWalker do? First, stay true to the big three—unfailingly continue daily weighing and logging the results, walk, and eat a healthy breakfast. The rigor of the walk and the cold reality of the logged weight data will give you the psychological power to eat and drink moderately. A MoneyWalker can’t waste all that effort and achievement on King Cake. For more information on the YoYo diet visit the link: http://www.freedieting.com/yoyo_dieting.htm

Happy Mardi Gras, ya’ll!

MoneyWalker

1 comment:

  1. I can skip all the goodies you mentioned except King Cake!

    From purple-, green-, and gold-sugar-starved in Venice, FL

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