Fat loss is a fickle thing.
It can come very easy at times but then never seems to stick around and at other times it just never seems to want to get going.
Most fat loss diets fail before they even begin.
Simply because the person doesn’t comprehend the fundamental principles of how to lose the fat and keep it off. This is why I see so many Yo-Yo dieters who are frustrated and fed up with seeing progress only to slip back to their old self a few months down the line.
Once you have a set of principles you can use a whole host of methods to make something work (I should know, I have been up and down on that Yo-Yo a few times myself).
You must have heard the proverb – give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him to fish and you feed him and his family for life”?
Well, it is the same thing. Give someone a diet plan, they follow it with success only to struggle when they return to their normal habits. Teach someone principles to guide their eating habits by and they can adapt their habits to ensure prolonged and sustained fat loss, health and well-being.
I could ramble on all day about things you need to know. However, all that would achieve is you getting lost in a swamp of information, you wouldn’t know where to turn and I end up pushing you further away from where you want to be.
Therefore, what I have here are 4 basic principles that can certainly set you off on the path to your goals and desires. These are the things I wish I knew when I started trying to lose fat:
#1 Forget the good food vs bad food, organic food, gluten free and sugar-free hype
You need to be in a calorie deficit to lose fat.
I am assuming you understand what calories are. We hear about them all the time. TV shows seem to go on about them almost relentlessly. But how does a calorie fit into the bigger picture? Surely you just need to eat all these healthy foods to lose weight right?
How does the amount of calories compared with eating healthy foods during the day influence if we lost fat? To understand this we need to understand energy balance:
Energy Balance (Calories in versus Calories out)
Calories = fuel.
We burn Calories to fuel our daily activities and this includes eating, sleeping and loafing around on the sofa watching TV. Everything we do in life burns calories. It gets more complicated than this but for this article, I am just going to say that if you use more calories than you consume then you will lose weight (ideally fat).
Put another way, this means if you eat less than your body requires then it will use its own fuel reserves to provide energy.
A topic for another time, but participation in a well-structured strength training program will go a long way to raising the level of calories burned during a day/week/month/year.
Eating healthily just doesn’t cut it
When a lot of people go on a diet they try to eat healthily. What this means is that they drink coconut water and almond milk, swap butter for coconut oil and eat things like nuts, dried fruit and lots of cracker breads. These all still contain calories and some of which are extremely dense and can be over consumed.
What this results in is you actually consuming more calories than your body needs. You believe you are eating healthily but in fact you are just staying where you are or worse, you are gaining weight.
Has that ever happened to you?
#2 Fat loss is never linear
So many people start a diet and plan to lose ‘X’ amount of weight each week.
Unfortunately, fat loss doesn’t work like this for a whole host of reasons. What most people experience is a sudden drop in weight over the first few weeks followed by a few weeks steady weight loss and then a stall on the scales 6-8 weeks into a diet and maybe even a rise in weight.
The immediate success followed by periods where nothing happens or there is an increase in weight often leads to frustration and succumbing to temptation. Here is an explanation of why this happens:
Don’t be fooled – Initial weight loss is almost always water
When people go on a diet, they go ultra strict with their eating and they tend to cut out the junk food, bread, pasta, rice etc. These foods all contain carbohydrates, commonly known as carbs. Carbs require water to break them down to be used by the body (approximately 4 grams of water for 1 gram of carbs).
Therefore the body can use 300 – 500 grams of water to break down the average bowl of pasta consumed. That’s a quarter to half a kilo of retained weight to break down that Spaghetti Bolognese you had the other night. And that’s not including the garlic bread!
Because we routinely eat carb rich meals, the body will keep hold of the water to break the meals down (it is clever like that). When we start a diet we predominately get rid of these food types so after a week or so the body will also get rid of the excess water it uses to break down (I did say it was clever like that). The result is rapid weight loss in a short space of time.
A lighter body requires less energy
When you lose weight, the body then requires less energy to maintain itself. If you keep eating the same amount of food the chances are the body will adapt and you will end up eating at your energy maintenance, resulting in no weight loss.
Therefore, the amount you eat should be staggered so it can be reduced over time. Liken it to walking down a flight of stairs. The decrease should be one step at a time.
There are also unexplainable factors that we need to consider. Having spent countless months in the trenches with fat loss myself I have been frustrated on many occasions by things that science has no explanation for. For example, I went 5 weeks without a budge in scale weight, which frustrated the hell out of me.
Trusting the system I was using, I was patient. My strength numbers were fine, I had good energy and I was not being tempted by sweet treats so all was good.
On the 6th week I stepped on the scale to find I had lost almost 1.5 kilos overnight! I cannot explain how or why this happened. All I know is that the body acts in strange ways sometimes and we need to show patience and trust in what we are doing.
You need to be patient. You need to accept the bad with the good. You need to trust the system you are on and give it time.
#3 It is normal to be hungry when on a diet
You will see adverts these days informing you that you can stuff yourself silly whilst losing weight. These people are either trying to sell you something or they are idiots…usually both! To lose fat you need to be in a calorie deficit, period. This often means eating less overall, resulting in feelings of hunger. However, there are ways to combat this:
Use strategies to take your mind off being hungry at that moment in time
Hunger as we know it is not true hunger. To be truly hungry we would have to go a long time without food. Ask some of the people in 3rd world countries about real hunger. Our hunger is more to do with routine and hormones.
The brain expects food at midday because that is what you have done most of your life, therefore come midday your brain signals the stomach to get into gear and expect food. That is the hunger we feel and this is easily suppressed through simple tactics. Now, the purpose of this email is not to provide you with a boat load of tactics.
This article is about bigger picture principles and strategies. That way you can implement some of your own tactics that work for you. Not wanting to be a cop-out however so here are a few I have found to work for me:
- Drink a glass of water – feelings of hunger are sometimes a sign of dehydration
- Get stuck into some work – your mind will often tell you the body is hungry simply because it is bored. Occupy your time and you will likely find the hunger disappears. Have you ever lost track of time and not even realise you have missed a meal?
- Go and train – when training your body will stop thinking about ingesting food.
- Have a low-calorie snack that you can use as a last resort – if you cannot stand to stay away from the fridge or cupboard any longer, you must have strategies that minimise the damage of snacking and allow you to stay on the right side of your energy balance.
Look at low-calorie food types that will fill that gap if you can’t wait any longer
The video below shows the difference between 200 calories in a few different food types and the difference in volume. Just look at all those strawberries. Who is telling me they won’t be even slightly satisfied eating all of those. There are other food types, which are amazing too. Vegetables of any description are usually a great choice. You can add herbs and spices to them to really make them taste amazing.
If you think veg is bland and boring, go and get yourself a meat-free cookbook. These people are masters of making veg sexy.
#4 You will stall from time to time so be patient
This one kind of speaks for itself but is worth a mention as this is the reason why so many people give up on their fat loss goals. Basically, they stop seeing results after only a few short weeks and no longer trust the system without giving it sufficient time.
Fat loss should be a slow burner but modern society means we are no longer willing to wait for anything these days. We want it all and we want it now (I am definitely guilty of this by the way)!
A stall in weight during a diet is a very normal thing and no movement in fat loss during a diet over a period of time usually indicates that the body has adapted to your current situation. This is what the body does and after millions of years of evolution, it has got very good at it. What you need to do then is change things around a little and keep the body guessing.
However, what we actually do is we lose patience. The cast iron plan that we have followed for a few weeks now has suddenly stopped working, therefore we deem the plan is rubbish! Clearly the plan can’t be that bad as it has got you some results. It is simply a case of the body understanding the rules of the game. This means you change the game slightly. Keep progressing and be patient and results will come. Those that lose patience are likely to give up and therefore not gain the results they desire.
Well, that’s about all for now.
Keep things simple and concentrate on nailing these principles. If you do then all the smaller things will all fall into place.
You won’t need the next best instant results FAD diet.
You won’t need all those ultra-expensive supplements.
We all have a habit of concentrating on the smaller things in life, which hardly make a difference when our strategy is not in place.
Remember:
- You have to eat/consume less than you burn….period.
- You will not lose weight/fat every week…accept it. It is the long term progress that counts.
- Expect to be hungry at times and know how to deal with it. When you succumb to the snacking bug, have low calorie go to foods you can have without ruining your calorie intake.
- Be patient! Accept stalling is part of the process and look to make subtle changes over time.
Get these 4 things dialled in and I guarantee you will see results you can maintain.
If you are struggling with your fat loss and have become frustrated with your continued lack of results then get in touch for a clarity call and we can chat and see what is going wrong and what you can do to make it right.
What are you waiting for? Get to it!
Speak soon,
Gaz
