Don't Pick a Fight with your Brain

I feel so enlightened by what I'm learning, I just have to share it.  This is from the classes I've started for recreation therapy.

That calculation for the Maximum Heart Rate that I mentioned to Annie is this: 220 minus your age.  Multiply that by .6 and then multiply the 220 - age by .9.  That is your aerobic training zone--when fat is most efficiently used as fuel.
For example, mine is 220 - 22 = 198;  198 x .6 = 118.8;  198 x .9 = 178.2.  So my MHR is between 118 and 178.  That's what my heart rate should be when I exercise.

In a movie we watched in class today, I learned that the moment you start a diet, you begin a battle with your brain (which explains why Fast Sunday is always so difficult, because when I have not made a conscious decision to fast, I can go quite a long time without food).  Anyway, he (the narrator) said that there is no limit to how much fat a person's body can store (obviously), the cells simply keep growing to accommodate for more storage, and fat is the only thing your body will do this with.  Our bodies love fat so much that when anything extra (like protein or carbs) is ingested, your body just turns it into fat.
Anyway, say you stick to your guns and don't eat as much, especially not as much fattening foods.  Well, you don't start losing fat right away.  Your liver has special reserves of glucose, accompanied by water.  Glucose only gives you half the energy fat does, but your body takes it gladly because it doesn't have to get rid of the fat it so desperately loves.  Since glucose is accompanied by so much water, you pee a lot---which also explains why I get that symptom before starting my period, because PMS makes me lose my appetite, I eat less, and my body starts using up the glucose stores. That was a nice revelation.
Well, it seems like you're loosing a lot of weight, because sugar water weighs a lot.  And then your liver runs out of sugar-water...
So, when you stop ingesting as much as your body is used to, your stomach tells your brain that it's not getting filled (because it's used to being stretched further) and then your brain tells you that you're experiencing a crisis: starvation...even when you're not truly starving, you still feel like you are--and that you need to fix it. No more glucose, just pure starvation.
Unfortunately, it takes about a month to lose the amount of weight in fat that you lose in sugar water in like four days.  IF you keep it up.  IF you can mentally withstand the very real feeling of physically being starved... to death (even though you won't really die).

BUT there is hope.  Physical exercise is the only thing that forces your body to use up it's fat reserves without your body feeling like it's slowly dying.  AND the better shape you're in, the more fat your body uses up.  The more muscle a person has, the more calories that person burns... twenty-four hours a day.

I love how much I learn!  This stuff is so much more interesting than my boring life.