Just when you thought all you had to do was eat healthy food to be healthy and to lose body fat, (which, let's face it, is most people's main motivation!) I'm going to tell you that that isn't really all there is to it!
Eating real food is, without a doubt, going to keep your body healthier and functioning better and you will likely lose weight as a result but, after a while, you may find things plateauing and possibly even reversing direction. You start gaining body fat and it makes very little sense because you're eating so WELL!
I've said before, in
this post, losing body fat is about 80% diet and 20% exercise. Everybody's needs are different. It depends on how much you weigh, your age, whether or not you're pregnant, whether or not you're sick, what medication you might be on and how active you are. (that includes everything from how much walking you do at work, in other words, "unconscious exercise", to how much time you spend consciously exercising) That's a lot to think about. There is a way to make things simpler though, for those who really don't have time to think too hard about it and I'll tell you about it in a bit.
If diet is such a big part of it, it makes sense to focus a bit more on that but, as I've said before, every person's needs are different. Your BMR or Basal Metabolic Rate is going to be determined by all the factors I listed in the above paragraph. Children have a higher BMR than adults (generally) because they are constantly growing and so they need constant fuel. But an adult who spends 6 hours of their day sitting in front of a computer, who doesn't exercise, will almost certainly have a lower BMR and therefore require less fuel to keep their body functioning. Most people know this as their metabolism. If a person eats a lot but never seems to gain weight, we often say they must have a fast metabolism. In actual fact, they have a high BMR.
The key, then, would be to eat less than your BMR actually requires. That way, your body will need to turn to fat reserves to fuel all your bodily functions. Seems easy in theory right? It's not so easy in practice, I know. When you go out to dinner and there are starters, mains and desserts, it's SO hard to eat less than your body needs. A woman of average height and weight will probably only require approximately 1200 calories a day. Divided up into the usual 3 meals a day, that leaves you with 400 calories per meal. A dessert at a restaurant is likely going to be about 350 calories alone, if not more! It's likely your stomach is going to think your throat has been cut if you are used to eating more in one sitting!
A way that WE get around it is by eating small meals throughout the day, and only when we get hungry. This method doesn't work for everyone and it's not a surefire way of losing weight because what sometimes happens is that overweight people then eat the same size meals, several times a day! You do need to keep an eye on your calorie intake if you are trying to lose body fat.
The pros of eating small meals is that you never get to the point where you are STARVING and you can keep your blood sugar stabilised. If you suffer from IBS it is also much better for you because you give your colon time to work with small amounts instead of bombarding it with 3 heavy meals. I find that, eating lots of small meals has definitely sped up my metabolism and it's improved the running of whole system. Eating small meals keeps my body busy digesting throughout the day and digestion needs energy. If you have extra body fat, that will be used for energy (if you are eating below your BMR) and you will lose body fat. The cons ARE that you may end up eating too much in your "small" meals and you may also end up eating the wrong kinds of things.
When I say that, I don't mean that you are eating unhealthy things. I mean that, because it's such a small snack, people seem to think that it doesn't need to be a balanced meal. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even your small snacks need to be balanced. Let me explain a bit more about balancing.
For most people, a healthy snack between main meals would be a fruit. Why would that NOT be considered balanced? Well, because it's mostly a big dose of fruit sugar. What happens when you eat sugar? You have a sugar spike, followed by an insulin spike and then you crash and suddenly you are STARVING and you will likely want to eat everything in sight! While a piece of fruit is a much better option nutritionally, than a chocolate bar, it's still mostly sugar.
So, how would you balance that meal? Well, I'd add a small yogurt, or a glass of milk, or a few sticks of biltong and some nuts. All of those options contain protein and fat. Are you starting to see where I'm going with this? Protein and fats are ultimately what are going to fill you up in a meal so that you will feel satiated enough to be able to last a few hours and NOT feel tempted to devour anything and everything.
You don't need nearly as much carbohydrates as people are telling you you need. Your body generally contains enough stored glycogen to keep you going without having to add too much more unless you are an elite athlete. Fruit, vegetables, sugar, grains and starch all fall under carbohydrates and with the odd exception, most people eat these things at various times of the day already. Remember also that things like milk contain sugars too, so even having a cup of tea with milk and sugar is providing your body with carbs.
All the excess carbs you eat are therefore going to be stored as body fat if your body doesn't need them, and this is what you are trying to avoid. What your body needs, more than carbs, is protein and fat. I'm not saying skip the apple. Fruits and veggies are good for you, but I'd say veggies are far more forgiving in terms of calories, than fruit. It's really hard to eat excess vegetables because they contain minimal sugar, but it's very easy to eat too much fruit and cause an insulin spike and have to deal with excess calories as well.
Raised insulin is bad. You need to avoid it happening and, with the diets that people follow these days, most people AREN'T avoiding it. Carbs are in EVERYTHING. They are the foundation of EVERY meal you eat, be it fast food, restaurant food or at home. For most people, their meal just FEELS wrong without rice or potatoes or bread, right? GLM feels weird eating chicken curry on a pile of vegetables instead of a pile of rice. I don't think that will ever change for her. Most people ARE like that. We're conditioned to it throughout our lives, and it's because our parents were told that carbs were good for us. It's time to start getting yourself out of that mindset. Eat as many vegetables as you like, but, if you must have rice or pasta, limit it to a tablespoon or 2 at the most.
This meal to the left would be just fine without all that rice. Instead, what should happen is that the vegetables should be doubled in place of all that rice OR they should have a salad in place of it. The person who eats this is going to have a sugar spike because the rice is refined and very high in sugar and there is simply TOO MUCH of it. Some people can't eat starchy carbs at all. They just immediately go to their hips and thighs. If you are eating well, but gaining weight, you could be one of those people. A way to find out is to cut them out for a month or two and see what happens.
The most important thing to remember, as you eat throughout the day, is to get enough protein and fat with EVERY meal, even if it's a small snack. We love to go to the movies. I am a popcorn addict and so, my one vice is ordering a big box of movie popcorn (It's popped in vegetable oil, so I know it's terrible for me, but as I've said, if you have a 99% clean diet, these little pleasures are ok!) but I try and make up for all of those carbs in one sitting by taking along a bag of biltong and I make sure I eat some of that with the popcorn. The biltong is full of protein and fat which balances out all the carbs of the popcorn and prevents me from having a sugar and insulin spike. It lowers the
GI of the whole meal.
If we're at a restaurant and we only go there for dessert, we will order a starter that's just protein, like chicken kebabs for example, and we'll eat that just before we eat the dessert to keep the meal as balanced as possible and prevent a sugar spike. We don't do it often, obviously. Some of our friends have a good giggle at us but we're used to it by now;) It looks odd, granted, but I don't see anything wrong with that if I know I am helping my body cope with the heavy dose of sugar I am about to give it.
Another thing that I consider essential when eating every meal, is eating something raw with that meal. Too much cooked food strains the digestive system and your body. The body needs some "live" food to keep it functioning properly. For that reason, we will either have a salad with dinner, or a fruit for dessert, or a glass of raw milk, for example. You can never eat enough salad as far as I'm concerned. I don't just mean lettuce, tomato and cucumber. Add as much as you can to a salad to get the real benefits. A
salad can be a wealth of nutrients if you allow your imagination to run wild with it. Add herbs, seeds and nuts, sprouts, raw veggies, fermented foods, whatever tickles your fancy, to get as much goodness out of it as possible.
A salad can actually be a meal on its own if you put enough effort into it. I make sure I eat at least one big one, once a day. Again, making sure it's balanced. I always add some cheese and avo or nuts and a couple of boiled eggs, or some chicken or other meat because I believe the protein and the fat is what really makes that meal so satiating for you. A salad without protein is not going to contain lots of sugar like a piece of fruit would, but it will mean you will be starving in about an hour because there is not a lot to a salad, calorie-wise, unless you add some protein and fat to it and make it balanced and substantial enough to sustain you. It's one of the reasons most diets fail. They keep you living on green salad which, on its own, is never going to sustain you in the longterm.
At the end of the day, what keeps your body going, is protein and fat, NOT carbs. Protein and fats are used to repair and replenish your body, not carbs. Your body has enough stored carbs to keep you going for a long time. You don't need to fuel up with them unless you are doing the 94.7 cycle challenge!
So, to recap, start out by calculating
what your BMR is. Then just make sure you consume fewer calories than that. Eat only when you need it. Don't follow a strict 6 meal a day or 3 meal a day routine or you will probably eat too much. Eat as your body needs it. That's how it was designed and that's how it has functioned for thousands of years. Make sure that every meal you eat contains proteins, fats and carbs but keep the starchy, grainy carbs to a minimum and focus far more on real food in the form of vegetables and salad. Work out how much protein your body actually needs by following the instructions in
this post. Everyone is different. Finally, make sure you eat something raw with each meal or snack. If you can avoid it, don't eat a fruit on it's own, or any carbs for that matter. It won't keep you going for long. If you are vegetarian, find out which foods contain protein like lentils or quinoa, for example. I'm sure, if you are reading this blog, you know that you need to cut out all processed, packaged foods and only eat real food while you do all of this;)
Do that and your body will respond positively in every way:)
Good luck!
