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The 3 key things I tell all my clients about weight loss:
1. You have to eat to lose weight. This rule is of the utmost importance for two reasons.
A. In order for your metabolism to work to it’s best ability- it needs to always be working in some form. Once it rests, it get’s a little lazy. Starting up again is slow- meaning you’re working through calories at a slower pace. Think of it like this: Your want to use a treadmill – it’s way easier (and better for you) to go from a walk to a jog to a run then to go from standing still straight into running.
B. If you don’t feed your body enough food, it begins to think you’re in starvation mode. What does that mean? Your body is terrified it won’t get enough fuel to make your essential muscles and organs work. So it will take whatever you feed it and HOLD ONTO IT. It will store it as fat (yup, even if it’s fat free) in case such an emergency arises. I’ve seen people who eat 1000 calories a day GAIN weight.
2. Your body’s # 1 source of energy is carbohydrates. When you eat, your body grabs the easiest thing you ingested and turns it into usable energy. This is normally the simple carbohydrates like white breads and sugars. Now imagine you did not feed your body these things- what would it use ? We’ll if it’s doesn’t have carbohydrates to draw from it moves to fat. Your body will work hard to convert fat (that you have eaten and that’s stored in your body) to usable energy. You want your body to reach for stored fat. This is why many diets take away a lot of unnecessary starches.
3. As soon as you eat a food high in sugar (and fake sugar) you’re setting yourself up for faliure. It’s not YOU personally- but your bodies reaction to how it digests what you have eaten. The food (be it white bread, cereal or a cookie) is going to tell your body that it feels REALLY great to eat this UNTIL you crash, however many minutes later. And then your body is going to want more – regardless of whether you are still hungry- so it can feel good again. Yes it is like an addiction. So although these foods don’t HAVE TO BE off limits while you’re trying to lose weight, know that they are invertible setting up roadblocks for you. Turning down something that looks delicious is a hard enough struggle with your brain, why get your body involved too.
Tags: feeling good, healthy eating, healthy living, self control, weight loss, Will Power
I have heard quite a bit about this “starvation mode” where the body holds onto calories. How do you balance this? It feels like if you stay at, say, 1200 calories to lose weight it will stop working because your body will just get “used” to having only 1200 calories. That becomes your new ‘normal’ setpoint and your body won’t drop the weight anymore.
Can this be true?
I also read about a regime where you basically eat low low low calories for several days and then a day of binging (ok, not a true binge – but many more calories) to trick your metabolism into waking up. So you binge for the day and then go back to low low low calories. Supposedly it keeps your body in check and your metabolism never “adjusts” and goes into starvation mode.
Do you have any thoughts on this? I know the sensible thing to do is stick to consistent and healthy lower calories – but it sounds like at some point your body will just get too used to this.
These are great questions! Thanks for writing in!
1. The trick is not to drop to 1200 calories right away. You want to ease off the amount of calories you are eating – so If you normally eat 3000 calories a day and you want to lose weight, the first step might be to cut 1000 calories a day and add exercise. Once you stop seeing results, you may cut another 200 and so on. Doing it slowly this way will help you find the right amount of calories for you to maintain a healthy weight and still feel like you can eat. But yes, as you lose weight, your body needs less and less calories to sustain your activities. It’s way harder and more work for you body to move 195 instead of 140.
2. I am not a fan of these starve yourself and then binge diets. I Am not a fan of cheat days. ( I will post about cheat days next week to go into more detail about why I hate them) 1. You have to be SO Good 100% of the time in order for a “cheat day” to have that kind of an effect on your metabolism (and to be honest I don’t really think it does have that kind of effect on your metabolism). 2. Most people go WAY over board on their cheat day and eat WAY too many calories. When people say “cheat day” they mean have ONE slice of pizza, not the whole thing. I also think this sets REALLY BAD habits that will result in putting weight back on. You’re essential rewarding yourself for staring your body with junk food. Unfortunately I have NEVER seen anyone lose weight this way and keep it off. Very quickly those “cheat days” get way out of hand and they get more and more frequent. I have read about some eating plans that have you eating 1500 calories one day, 1300 the next, 1200 the next and 1600 the next. Keeping your body surprised. But I guess I personally (my opinion) don’t think that this kind of eating is necessary. If you lose weight by changing your lifestyle habits for good- you should just be able to eat healthy and see results. Slow results yes, but they are lasting ones.
Hope this helps!