I Hereby Resolve

Okay, so here’s the deal:  I’m fat and I don’t seem to be able to lose weight like I used to do with little effort.  I’ve tried eating only 3 times a day, and I’ve been careful what I eat (although I admit to a fondness for sweets at 10 o’clock each day with my mid-morning coffee), cutting back to about half of what I was eating.  I’m not a stress eater, nor am I a snacker of the salty-fat variety, but I have really bad food habits as I live alone and don’t like the effort involved in fixing a good (healthy) meal for myself three times a day.  I’ve tried protein shakes, healthy-eating diets, upped my exercise, and generally given it the old college try, but my belly is huge and my face is big and round where it used to be lean and narrow.

So, it’s time to do something again and, after thinking about it far too much, I decided to try something I’ve never tried before and see if something new and different works for me this time. I did some searching of the internet and ran across a Dr. “Rans” (phonetic spelling of his name as I don’t recall seeing it written anywhere). I listened to his lecture about “activating the AMPK gene and losing weight.” Didn’t sound any worse than other options I researched so I took a few notes and got this:

To lose weight, one must attack fat on a cellular level, particularly in deep belly fat situations. AMPK is the “master switch” of the body, so if one activates the AMPK gene, s/he can lose weight and live longer. Everyone has the number of fat cells they had from conception, so there’s no gaining/losing weight based on the amount of food one consumes, but on the number of calories and how they are stored.  Fat cells can expand and contract, and if cells are overfed, they lose function. AMPK is the “master switch” of the body, so if one activates the AMPK gene, one can lose weight and live longer.

All right, that’s a brief overview.  I listened for the full 45 minutes and the whole presentation made sense to me, so I decided I’m going to try this approach this year as what I’ve done in the past hasn’t seemed to help. According to this information, exercise improves health, reduces disease, and helps memory, but doesn’t help one lose weight.  I want to continue with my exercise routine, and may even up that a bit, but I also want to lose weight, and that happens on a cellular level. Hence the AMPK.

There are three keystones to this method, focusing on naturally occurring compounds that are available: berberine, which is the roots of plants and usually used as a diabetes treatment; gynostemona, an extract from plants that is an AMPK stimulator; and quercetin, which activates AMPK and reduces general sickness. This can’t be any worse than any of the other dozens of products and methods I’ve used to try to control my weight, so I’ll give it a go and see what happens.  I ordered enough for several months, and once I’ve put my money into something, I see it through.

My ultimate goal: not to stand on a scale and see that I’m down a pound or two, but to stand up tall and straight and be able to look down and see my shoes!  Surely that isn’t asking too much … .