I have told this before, and there is never a harm in repeating the fact that there is no profession called a dietician, it’s an on-demand, self-made profession. The profession is always a clinical nutritionist which caters for pediatric cases, serious medical conditions, post-surgery diets, etc. and are employed by the major hospitals in the country, or have an independent practice. Then there is the Sports Nutritionist, who designs dietary protocols for top athletes depending on the sports. But weight loss dieticians, what the hell do they do? Make you stupid like them.
People know what they do. But somehow they are either not ready to accept the facts, or simply they don’t know about the facts. Going to a dietician has become more of a fashion trend than a requirement today. Sitting among a group of friends, gossiping about the weight loss dietician you go to, or how that friend of yours who lost 10kgs in a week from that dietician in Greater Kailash, is a common topic of discussion. Of course, when you sit among a group of people, none of whom an iota of an idea about a particular topic, and you start discussing the same topic, you would find all will act as an expert, and try to add on the already complicated stupid discussion.
Now, there are a lot of issues which come into play, when you discuss this topic. But let’s discuss an issue which acts as a common bridge of advice between the dietician and the slimming centres. Whenever you go to a slimming centre, or a dietician(or weight loss dieticians), there is a common statement which is often thrown at you with full force i.e. “Don’t do weight training, or you will never see weight loss.” Though the stupid advice itself is doubtful, but then who can question the authorities. You have to trust them. It’s not your fault. If a doctor or a lawyer plans to cheat you, then trust me it’s very little you can do, until you really come to know that they are doing so.
Do you know why the dieticians or stupid weight loss dieticians tell you not to lift the weight? This is done so that your muscle mass does not increase. An increase in muscle mass will make you weigh more, as muscles are denser than fat. Also, as your muscle mass increases, your natural appetite increases, and you start eating more.
There is a difference in getting thin and shrinking, and getting fit and strong. The latter requires pain and hard workouts. Diets are like good books in your school, but to get good grades, you need to go through the pain and sacrifice of studying hard, and that’s what children shirk from. That’s the same for almost every field in life. Be it your professional career or your fitness. To get the glory, you have to go through the pain. There is simply no short cut, there never was in history, and there never will be.
If you take an example of children in a class who don’t score good grades, most of them have a number of reasons for it, like the school or teachers don’t teach well, they don’t understand the subject, there is no time, family issue, health issues, etc. except for one fact, that these all are just simple excuses. They are not ready to sacrifice and go through the pain involved in studying for long hours consistently. That’s what makes the difference. A person who gets fit is the one who is ready to bear the pain and sacrifice in order to achieve the results. Because you have excuses for not working out hard, there are people ready with all stupid shortcuts for you outside in the street, because they know one thing very clearly, which you are not ready to accept, that you don’t want to work for it, you want it overnight, without any effort. And this is the world’s biggest lie. Humans never did, never have and never will achieve anything with a shortcut.
Because you are focussing on the wrong word i.e. ‘weight loss’, the weight loss dieticians and slimming centres are there to show you that, and the best way is to make you lose water and muscle. Because this happens in a matter of hours and days. But you are destroying yourself in the long run. There is a lot of difference in fat loss and weight loss. The weight doesn’t matter, its fat, and even that’s a result. Fat loss or weight loss is like getting good marks in your school, but to get that you need to study hard, i.e. workout hard, eat a clean diet and take proper rest. It’s a simple equation until you are suffering from a medical issue, where further interventions come into play.
Now when you take a kg of muscle and a kg of fat, they weigh the same, but they differ in volume or size. Your body weight is never a clear indicator of anything. A person of 90kg can be all fat and chubby, and other people with even heavier weight, can be extremely muscular, lean and ripped. The more muscles you build, the higher would be your metabolism. That’s why BMI is often a useless measurement. It is not related to your body composition, but just your weight and height. Resistance training and high-intensity interval training should form the base of your workouts. If the base is strong, you can build anything over it. That’s why for all sports, strength training forms the base.
A 2016 study in the Annals of Internal Medicine, by a Canadian research team, tested over 49,000 women and 5,000 men and found that in women and men low BMI & a higher body fat percentage were associated with higher death rates. In simple terms, if your body fat percentage is higher, then regardless of your body weight or BMI, your chances of dying increase. Various diseases like heart issues, diabetes, hypertension, etc. are linked to a higher body fat percentage.
Losing fat takes time. It doesn’t happen overnight or in a week. So whenever a dietician or weight loss dieticians tell you not to go to the gym and lift weights, she does so because when you will follow her stupid crash diet, you will lose more water and in the long run the precious muscle mass. This means that in your second visit to the dietician’s clinic, you would weigh less on the weighing scale, looking at which the dietician(or weight loss dieticians) will tell you proudly, “look you have lost weight. Just keep following the diet I am going to give you.”
