Eating 101
As you probably know, when you’re trying to lose weight, a regular fitness routine is only going to get you so far in the weight loss game unless you make some dietary changes at the same time. A healthy diet accounts for probably 90% of all the weight you’ll lose. If you don’t change your eating habits those countless hours you spend doing cardio and working in the weight room might not mean very many pounds lost.
Poor eating habits can quickly sabotage any hope of losing weight and looking great. In the best of cases, you might not gain any more weight but you might improve your health and energy. But, you probably won’t be able to lose weight if you need to and fully achieve the best body of your life.
Change Your Eating Habits
As you go from poor eating habits to a completely clean diet, you’ll probably begin to see results in a very short amount of time. Then if you couple the healthy diet with regular bouts of exercise, your progress will be much better.
This could go farther than just fitness. A smart and solid eating plan can help your immune system keep you free from disease, maybe give you better brain function and prevent inflammation through your entire body. These are the intrinsic values that you should help motivate you to stay on track.
A little considered fact is that every cell in the human body regenerates in about one and a half years. These cells grow from the food you consume, so you definitely ARE what you eat. Keep that in mind the next time you reach for a bottle of pop or a double chili cheeseburger with a large order of fries.
Winning At Losing
For some people, keeping the ideal weight is a lifelong struggle. For others, weight loss just a quick-fix before a major event like a wedding, class reunion or a vacation.
No matter why you want to lose weight, the process is always the same. Success involves a detailed approach (a plan) that will help you arrive at a positive outcome.
What is Body Fat?
Your body contains two types of fat, subcutaneous and visceral. Subcutaneous is the type found right under the skin. It’s the most visible and you can easily make it jiggle with your hand. This is the type that most people are interested in losing.
Visceral fat is the kind that raises your risk for heart disease, diabetes, cancer and a number of other medical conditions. It’s found deep inside the abdomen and surrounds the organs. We don’t see it, so we don’t think about it very often.
Although subcutaneous fat might make you feel self-conscious, compared to visceral fat, it is relatively benign. The really good news is that your body can’t tell the difference. When you burn fat for energy and lose weight, it happens throughout your entire body.
What this means is that fat reduction (and lost weight) includes both subcutaneous and visceral fat and occurs everywhere in your body the at the same time. You now have a win-win situation where you start to look great and lower your risk for fat related medical conditions.
Burning Fat
Losing weight is really a game of numbers.
If you burn more calories than you consume on a daily basis, you will create a caloric deficit. When you have a caloric deficit, your body has no choice but to burn stored fat for energy. The end result is weight loss.
On the flip side, when you eat more calories than you burn, you just created a surplus and your body stores it as fat. The end result of this is weight gain. That’s all there is to it.
Counting Your Calories
Just the thought of calorie counting brings on a groan. You might shudder at the thought of counting calories, but it’s not as hard as you think and it’s definitely effective when you’re controlling your food portions. And, you have to know what your starting point is.
When you start, you should keep a journal for about five days and track everything you eat and drink that contain calories and how many calories for each day. Add all the daily sums together and divide by five to get an average.
How Many Calories?
There are many calorie calculators available online that will help you calculate a calorie deficit and determine how many calories you need weight based on your age, height, weight and activity level. The more active you are, the more calories you need to provide nutrition and maintain your weight.
The Mayo Clinic has a good one: www.mayoclinic.org/calorie-calculator/itt-20084939.
Calculating The Deficit
The number provided by the calculator can be used to determine the calorie deficit needed for weight loss. Things are get a little difficult now, but it’s not mind-blowing.
Example = The calculator gave a number of 2,600 calories (based on 7 year old 220 pound female with a low activity level). This is how many calories this guy needs to eat every day to maintain 220 pounds.
Now, say this same guy wants to lose 40 pounds. Use the same calculator and put in 180 pounds and the calculator gives a number of 2250 calories. That’s a difference of 350 calories to lose weight.
A rule of thumb is that one pound of fat is equal to 3,500 calories. If you want to lose one pound of fat, you need to take 3,500 calories out of your food consumption and not replace them. If the guy in the example removed 350 calories from his diet, he could potentially lose one pound every ten days. This should be easily doable.
Another way to get this calorie deficit is by reducing your caloric intake by 500 calories a day. If you would subtract 500 from 2,600 in the example above, you’ll be left with 2,100 calories. Multiply that daily 500-calorie daily deficit by seven and that equates to one pound of of weight loss in a week. If you want to lose two pounds a week, you need to create a 1,000-calorie daily deficit.
The easiest way to get that 500 calorie deficit is to eliminate 500 calories, not try to work it off by exercising.
Whole Food
Most packaged and processed foods have calorie information listed on the label, but other foods like produce, grains and meat don’t. In these cases, you may need to be careful judging your portion sizes and finding out how many calories they contain. There are a lot of good resources online that shows the calorie contents of many foods.
A great resource for finding calories in food is WebMD (www.webmd.com), it’s free and it allows you to search by food.