If you have been changing your lifestyle, cutting out chemicals and all processed foods, eating more clean fruit and vegetables, eating only free-range meat and dairy and drinking no more sugary drinks, you will likely have seen and felt a change in your energy levels, your body will have an enhanced ability to heal, your hair will be shinier and grow faster and so will your nails and you'll have lost some weight. That weight will likely keep dropping off if you have included exercise in your daily routine, but, if you haven't, there is a chance the weight loss will plateau after a while.
There is a catch to all this healthy eating, as there is with ANY eating. Your body requires a certain amount of calories to function and anything you eat over and above that is going to go into storage. I know you didn't really want to hear that but it's true!
Whenever people prescribe fad diets, 9 times out of ten they end up working for the first few weeks. Why? Because they drastically cut calorie consumption. Think about any diet you have ever been on, or heard of. No diet allows for junk food of any kind, most, if not ALL diets prescribe LOTS of salad and vegetables and less refined foods, and all diets cut the amount of calories you are allowed daily. Anyone who cuts calories, no matter WHICH calories they are, will invariably lose weight because, after their body has used what it needs to function, there are no excess calories left over to store. Your body will start using existing fat stores for energy and, before you know it, you've lost 5kgs. Exciting stuff!
Here's the rub: very few (if any) people can maintain a diet that only allows you a yoghurt for breakfast, a tuna salad for lunch and a skinless chicken breast and veggies for dinner. For starters, it's just boring. Secondly, it's bad for your body because it's totally lacking in any fat at all and thirdly, it's going to end up making you so hormonal and grumpy that your friends and family will beg you to eat again!
When you start eating your "normal" food again, those 5kgs you lost, will come back just as quickly as you lost them. That is the danger of dieting. That is why it is so important to get the word "diet" out of your vocabulary as quick as you can and replace it with "lifestyle".
I've given you most of the tools in all my blogs, to clean up your eating habits, get healthy and lose weight, so all you need to do is keep on doing what you're doing, BUT you also need to cut down on quantity. How do you know how much you need to be eating? You can calculate your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR).
Your BMR is how much energy your body uses when it's at rest. Why does your body use energy while it's resting? Well, you'd be amazed by how much is going on in your body while you are sitting still. Your digestive system is busily digesting the meal you ate an hour ago, sending nutrients to wherever they are needed to build new cells, you are breathing all the time and your blood is transporting oxygen to the cells in your body and carbon dioxide away from the cells in your body. If you are cold, your body is working hard to keep you warm, if you're hot, it's trying to cool you down. Your hair is growing, your nails are growing, you may have a cut on your hand that's busy healing or stiff muscles that need repairing. Your body is in a constant state of change and it needs energy to do that. Your BMR tells you how much energy is needed to run YOUR body on a daily basis.
Every BODY is different. A man who spends his life sitting in a car or on a couch, leading a sedentary life, is going to need fewer calories than a man who spends his life being active, whether its in a gym, or with sports or with a job that involves a lot of moving and carrying. A very tall man will require more calories than a very short man. A pregnant woman will require more calories than a non-pregnant woman (you get my drift!)
The active man will need more calories than the sedentary man, because his body is more active and he has more muscle. Muscle is metabolically active, whereas fat isn't at all. If the man on the couch eats the same amount of food as the active man, he will be eating more than his body requires to function and the excess calories will likely be stored as fat. He will have a lower BMR than the active man so he will need to eat according to his own BMR. The fact that he isn't active is also going to be a factor BUT, interestingly, even the active man will gain body fat if he eats more than his body is using. That is why I say, exercise alone won't ensure that you lose weight. Diet is 80% of it. Everyone needs to eat according to their own metabolic needs and most people don't.
You only have to look around you when you're at a restaurant to know that people eat far too much. They're also eating far too much of the wrong stuff. Most people who eat out will have a starter, mains and dessert. Mains will come with a range of starches and a huge piece of meat of some kind. Dessert will also be loaded with sugar and a gazillion calories because health isn't top of the list in most restaurants. In that ONE meal, most people have exceeded their daily calorie requirements for the entire day. It's no wonder people are getting bigger.
You don't need to starve yourself to lose weight. You just need to work out what your body needs on a daily basis, and eat a little less than that, and you WILL lose weight. How do you work it out? Here is a handy calculator, because the formula is complicated. Once you know what your BMR is, you need to also take into account how active you are. Use this formula to calculate it. I'll use myself as an example. I require 1292 calories a day BUT I gym about 4 times a week, so, according to the formula, I need to multiply 1292 by 1.55. According to those calculations, my body needs 2002 calories to function. Now, if I wanted to lose weight slowly and in a healthy manner, I'd probably cut my calories by about 100 a day, so I'd try and consume ±1902 calories a day. My body will draw on the existing fat stores to make up for the calorie deficit and I will burn fat.
One way to immediately lower your caloric intake is to work out how much protein your body needs daily and try stick to that. As with BMR, everyone is different in terms of protein requirements. Most people eat way too much protein and, contrary to popular belief, it isn't fat that makes you fat, eating excess calories makes you fat so, if you eat too much protein, your body will store it as fat. How do you work out how much protein you need? Sedentary adults need about 0.8 grams of protein per kg of body weight IF they are not active. That means, if you weigh 55kgs, you need to multiply 55kgs by 0.8 and the result is 44grams of protein.
BUT, you also need to take into account how active you are, again. Check below to work out how active you are:
- Sedentary: 0.8
- Recreational Exerciser: 1-1.5
- Endurance athlete moderate: 1.2-1.6
- Endurance athlete heavy: 2.0
- Strength/Power athlete: 1.2-1.8
- Adolescent athlete: 2.0
If my protein requirements are 77grams a day, that is NOT a lot of protein at all. One chicken thigh has roughly 28grams of protein in it. I bet when you eat a chicken curry you don't only eat ONE chicken thigh, do you? You probably have a thigh and a drumstick and maybe some white meat too. One can of tuna has 39 grams of protein. If you eat one chicken thigh and one can of tuna in a day you will have almost met your protein requirements. Protein isn't only found in meat either. Vegetables, fruits and dairy also contain protein. One glass of milk has about 7grams of protein. One egg has about 6grams of protein. Do you see where I'm going with this? Before the day is through you have eaten triple your protein requirements and that is one of the reasons why you aren't losing weight.
I'm not going to tell you to sit and count calories. All you need to do is cut them down really. If you always eat two chops, or two chicken pieces for dinner, cut it down to one. If you usually scramble three eggs for breakfast, cut it down to two, if you have bacon with that, cut it down to one egg. This is a great website if you really want to count your calories and it will give you a good idea of how much you are eating daily. You can record your daily meals and work out just how far off you are from your BMR.
Another way to make sure you don't eat more than you need, is to snack rather than eat big meals. The Japanese have really got it right. They don't sit down to huge meals like we do. Their meals are about quality rather than quantity (think sushi). They "graze" all day on small meals. It's a great way to speed up your metabolism and, eating every 3 or 4 hours means you never get to that point where you are STARVING. You always maintain your appetite and so you end up eating only what you need, when you are hungry. Both me and GLM eat this way and it works really well for both of us. She has lost weight, and I have gotten my IBS more under control. My body is so accustomed to eating small meals every 3 hours that, literally on the DOT of 3 hours, my tummy grumbles for food;) If it doesn't, I know I ate more than usual in the previous meal and I wait until the hunger hits. There is no strict rule when it comes to time. We only eat when our bodies tell us to. For me, that's usually every 3 hours though!
If all of those small meals are made up of clean, organic, real foods, you can't go wrong, really. I have to be honest, I don't count calories at all. I used to be obsessed with it but now I find, if I eat only as much protein as I need, and eat clean, organic, real food, and no processed junk, I maintain my weight quite easily.
You CAN do the same... Good luck!
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