Weight Loss Overview - Keeping A Perspective

If you want to lose a little weight, I recommend that you cut back on all the empty carbs you may be eating. Bread, pastas, crackers, buns, cereals and potatoes. However, you must not go hungry, and you must eat enough proteins, vegetables, salads, fruits, and healthy fats.

You don't want to lose any muscle mass, or visceral fat - the fat that protects your organs. Some dancers weigh too little - oh yes.

Here are some tips to keep this all in a healthy perspective:

How To Lose Some Weight and Keep It Off this article has a link to protein calculator;

What Ballet Dancers Need To Understand About Weight Loss and Calories

What Is Your Protein Requirement

Learning To Develop Lean Muscles

Healthy Fats For Ballet Dancers

What Ballet Dancers Need to Understand About Weight Loss and Calories

To gain weight is still the nightmare of serious dance students, even as they work out hard a few days a week. It doesn't make sense, except in the light of what has become the staple industrialized-nation diet. Too many fats, nutrition-free carbohydrates, and factory made cheeses dominate the fast food landscape. Sugar (if you're lucky) or high fructose corn syrup in every mayonnaise, tomato sauce or BBQ sauce on those sandwiches or hamburgers. Even in salad dressings.

Your body doesn't count calories the way you do. It sorts them out in order to provide you with the energy you need, and to manage your blood sugar levels efficiently. This can seem a little complicated, but just know that when you eat carbohydrates, proteins and fats, your body has a sorting system, not a counting system. Regardless of the number of calories you eat in any given meal, your body behaves in a certain way.

Whether you get a 300 calorie burger or a 1200 calorie burger, the sorting, energy burning and fat storing process is the same.

For example, if you grab a sandwich or burger for lunch, or after school on your way to ballet or some other dance class:

** insulin messages your body (liver, muscles and fat cells) to absorb those carbohydrate calories (a bun, crackers, or slice of bread),as glucose.

** and also messages your body to store any excess as fat.

** and worst of all if you do not want to gain weight, to then stop using fat as an energy source. And to store it instead.

Insulin is like a computerized track switch in a train yard. It routes the carbohydrates, and fats to specific places. You train it to do what it does, by repeatedly eating in a certain way.

The fats consumed in the same meal, healthy or otherwise, will get stored, not used as energy.

Calories from protein foods (meats, fish, eggs, dairy) send a different message to your body. Those calories tell your body "everything is okay". Why? Because your body, which cannot manufacture proteins, can manufacture many things it needs from proteins. Now your body will SWITCH TRACKS.

The BURN FAT button gets pushed! Your body starts running on the protein stores you are giving it and to be more efficient, your body starts getting rid of fat.

Growing children and young adults usually do not need to worry about any of this. But, if they are dancers, I know that they do.

If you're grabbing fast food any day, grab a burger wrapped in lettuce. It's a little messy to eat, and it's way high in sodium. But the proteins and vitamins and minerals and fats will get the front seat for energy burning. Even though the sauces will probably have some high fructose corn syrup in them.... not so much as a bun, and carbs from the fries.

You will digest the proteins, fats, and tiny amount of salad/vegetable better without any carbs. Because it is two different sets of digestion processes anyway.

Thinking outside the bun does not mean add a flour or corn based wrap. Just lose it!

Bringing chopped vegetables and a couple of cubes of real cheese or a handful of walnuts with you from the house.....okay, dream on. But you could.

Building muscle mass will also help you learn how to lose weight for ballet.

Healthy Fats For Ballet Dancers and Other Athletes

Dancers, ballet and otherwise need a balanced diet rich in complex carbohydrates, found in unrefined foods, proteins, and healthy fats.

What are healthy fats? Saturated fats constitute about 50% of your cell membranes. Cholesterol is needed to rebuild cell walls, even more so when inflammation is present.

Learn more about fats.

Once you have stopped growing, maintaining weight means consuming approximately the amount of calories that you burn. If you gain weight while participating in an athletic career, you could review your caloric intake.

You could also have your endocrine system checked for hormonal imbalances and nutritional deficiencies.

A healthy diet does not exclude fats. Saturated fats are good sources of Vitamin A and D, and also help the body utilize omega 3 fatty acids.

Some saturated fatty acids have anti-microbial properties, helping protect you against harmful organisms in your digestive tract.

Fats that you can consume are the following:

Organic free- range animal meats and fats such as lard, tallow, etc. These fats can be used for high-heat cooking.

Wild caught cold water fish can be consumed 2-3 times a week. This rich source of omega 3 oils is polluted with mercury and other contaminants, therefore for daily intake, use a marine oil supplement.

Here's information about a Top Rated Krill Oil Supplement.

Whole, organic free-range eggs. Keep the yolk intact and soft while cooking, to prevent ruining the cholesterol in the yolk.

Raw nuts. Some nutritionists recommend pre-soaking in water before eating to release the phyto-nutrients and make all the nutrients in the nuts more bio-available.

Avocados are an excellent source of monounsaturated oleic acid.

Olive oil may be used for cooking at medium temperatures.

Butter has benefits such as fat-soluable vitamins, and equal amounts of omega 6 and omega 3 fatty acids.

If the butter is from grass-fed cows it will also have conjugated linoleic acid, which has strong anti-cancer properties.

Coconut oil is good for cooking at a high heat.

Pumpkin seed oil - but do not heat it.

Cod liver oil, an excellent source of Vitamin D. (get it purified).

Walnut oil, olive oil, sesame oil, and flax seed oil are all excellent sources of omega 3 oils. You can use them to make your salad dressings with.

Personally I am not a fan of frying foods, but if you do, choose a small amount of the fats that are recommended for high heat cooking.

Athletes and dancers are constantly breaking down and repairing damaged soft tissues. Therefore their bodies will produce inflammation, and therefore more cholesterol. This is natural.

Cholesterol is a pre-cursor to corticosteroids, hormones which help us to deal with stress and protect the body against heart disease and cancer. Estrogen and testosterone are made from cholesterol.

Cholesterol acts as an antioxidant and is required for the proper activity of serotonin in the brain.

Low levels of serotonin are associated with depression and suicidal thoughts. So cholesterol is not such a "bad guy" element as it has been promoted for a couple of decades.

Omega 3 oils reduce inflammation, water retention, platelet stickiness, blood pressure and tumor growth. Some individuals do not assimilate the omega 3 oils from plant sources as well as from meat, egg and fish sources.

Omega 6 oils are not "bad guy" fats, but out of balance with omega 3 oils will produce inflammation, high blood pressure and cell proliferation (as in cancer).

Wild game meats contain a close balance of omega 6 to omega 3 oils, but domestically raised meats are predominantly omega 6 fat containing.

A dancer's diet can be 20-30% fat. Fats are burned for energy during long work sessions, contributing to endurance.

"Fats and Oils" by Paul Chek published in "A Grain of Salt" gave some of the above details on fats.

To stay healthy as a ballet dancer, eat healthy fats, lots of leafy greens, vegetables and good quality proteins.