What is the formula for losing weight?
Food + Exercise = weight gain/loss
Exercise builds muscle but allows our bodies to burn more fat stores or use the food we eat faster so it doesn’t become stored fat. Sometimes people that start exercising get discouraged because they gain weight but this is due to the exercise. Solve this issue by tracking you Body Fat Percentage! We have a home scale that analyzes my body fat it may not be exact but it should allow you to track changes.
Eat less food to lose weight correct? Wrong!
You need to eat the correct balance of food MORE times per day. Get yourself on a balance diet that is about 40% protein, 30% unprocessed carbs & 30% healthy fats. This will help prevent cravings for processed carbs like junk food and pop.
Eat at least 4-5 balanced meals per day; women 4 and men 5. Make each of the 3 main meals about 400-500 calories. Each snack should be about 200 calories. Try to eat about every 2-3 hours you're awake. Try to eat your first meal within 30 minutes of waking up to get your machine running.
Why eat so much on a regular schedule? You body is a machine that processes food. When the machine is not working you are not burning extra calories to process your food. The longer you go without food between meals the more your body will think it's in a famine situation and start working slow to help save processed food as fat. Your body stores fat to use at a later famine. I use to never eat breakfast and not eat till 4pm. Anything I eat at that time would have been stored as fat even if I had a balanced meal.
You can also follow the Slow Carb Diet or a Low Carb diet to help you lose weight. I have never tried the Slow Carb Diet yet because we're still following our weight loss clinic balanced diet approach. The Slow Carb Diet encourages the same meals every day and allows one Cheat Day every week to allow you to deal with cravings and to reset your body. Low Carb Diets don't seem to allow for this reset but if you try to keep your meals varied and not the same thing every day then it should lessen the possibility of a weight loss plateau.
If you hit a weight loss plateau on any diet...have a cheat day! Get your cravings out of your system and don't worry about anything. Within two days of the cheat you will be back on track and losing the weight again.
Guilt and humiliation can be a very dangerous thing when it comes to long term dieting. It will only hurt you so give your self some slack. Plan to have a cheat day! Try one a month or one every two weeks. Changing your eating habits is a life changing situation and is harder than we think. Give it time don't feel guilty when you cheat just try not to cheat more than one day per week!
Look at that...I'm sounding all weight loss guru in this post! Lol I think I'm writing like this to encourage myself more than anyone. Over the last three weeks we have been cheating about every two days and that is not enough good days in between the cheat to keep losing weight. This is just enough to stay the same or gain just a little. Very demoralizing in any case.
We need to get back on track! I need to get back on track! The train has not crashed but we are slowing down to pick the fruit off the trees we pass to often.
-Ian
