Are You Fasting? ...Or Are You Starving Yourself?

I've always said that fasting should NOT be done for weight loss, just that weight loss can be a welcome side effect of fasting.

But there's a big difference between starving yourself (huge calorie deficit), and fasting done properly.

You see, fasting doesn't simply mean not eating, it's not eating for a specific period of time.

It doesn't necessarily mean eating fewer calories, it just means you eat them within a specific time window.

Many people jump on the fasting bandwagon and just start skipping meals, but they still pick at things between meals (especially calorie-containing drinks).

This is not fasting. It's just calorie restriction, and it can be dangerous.

If you want to start fasting, you need to pick your time period and not consume ANY calories (food or drink) within that time window.

The caveat though, to ensure you're not just starving yourself, is that you need to consume your regular daily calories when you do eat (though usually not all in one go).

This is where many people get it wrong.

Yes, you can save yourself a few calories by fasting because usually it's quite difficult to over-eat in a short time window (*if eating the right foods). 

And you can deliberately eat fewer calories (if hoping to achieve weight loss) whilst practicing fasting, but that's not the goal of fasting.

What you need to focus on when you do eat, is quality of food and nutritional content.

If you're eating fewer calories, you need to make sure you're getting all the nutrition you need from those calories.

Traditional "Diets" (and many of the "Diet" based clubs) have focused purely on calories, which will work to an extent, for a while... until it doesn't any more; but they don't focus on health.

During your non-fasting periods, you should:

1. Ensure you're getting adequate calories (set your calorie target based on your goals)

2. Prioritise healthy, nutritious foods over junk foods

3. Make sure you're hitting your Protein target - protein literally means "first place" or "primary" (derived from the Greek word Proteios)

4. Split the remaining calories (after protein) between carbohydrates and fats - again, your personal nutritional requirements will determine the ratio for this.

Whilst fasting, you should:

1. Not consume ANY calories, or "calorie-free" drinks (like "Diet" sodas etc.)

2. Drink plenty of water to stay hydrated and help with hunger

3. Keep yourself busy - often it's boredom that gets us, not actual hunger

I see too many people starving themselves all day only to come home and gorge themselves with junk food, because we tend to make poor food choices when we're hungry; certainly opting for quicker, easier, more convenient options, which are rarely the most nutritious.

So, if you're planning on using one of the the many fasting options out there (for most it will generally boil down to intermittent fasting of varying time windows), ensure that when you do eat, you're eating good, healthy foods, and not stuffing yourself with whatever you fancy "because you haven't eaten all day".

I talk about my preferred method of fasting in the trainings in MoveBetter.Club, so if you want more help with nutrition, training and lifestyle to improve health and get you moving better, check it out.

MoveBetter.Club

Mark

Improving your eating and health without “Dieting”

For most people “Diets” are too difficult. The healthy recipe book or diet plan is great for about a week, then compliance drops off and the excitement of trying something new wears off because you haven’t lost 10 lbs in a week.

Gradually the “Diet” goes out the window and old eating habits creep back in.

For some people, the traditional method of following a strict diet for a few weeks, or the points systems or calorie-counting that have been relied on for so long do work, but for most, they don’t quite get the results you’re after.

Enter Habit Based Nutrition.

The reason people fail at dieting is because their new actions go against ingrained habits. It’s your behaviour and habits that need to be addressed rather than a strict plan telling you what you can or can’t eat.

You don’t need to be told what you can or can’t eat as this is the failing point in most diets, and most people know what they should and shouldn’t be eating. You need to be able to enjoy the foods you like, but still eat in a way that works for your body and delivers the results you want.

By addressing your daily habits, you can make small, healthy changes easily; gradually improving your diet over time so it changes for good, not until “the end of your diet”. Every couple of weeks you should introduce a new habit that you can scale up or down to suit your current level – if it’s too hard, make it easier. If it’s too easy, make it more challenging.

By introducing one achievable habit at a time, you’ll build up step by step to a healthier lifestyle.

Progress should be tracked in a number of ways, not just with weight on the scales (which is useful, but not ideal); photos, measurements, compliance and any other specific markers you feel will be helpful are essential in keeping you motivated.

DAILY reminders will help you stay on track; and learning why you’re doing what you’re doing will help you understand and commit to your habit changes more easily. 

Remembering why you’re making the changes (what your goals are) will also keep you motivated.

One of the main reasons slimming clubs work is because you’re making yourself accountable. Tell someone what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and ask for their support (it doesn’t have to be a facebook announcement to the world, but someone you trust who will hold you accountable and give you a hard time if you slack off – like a trainer or coach). 

The aim is not to embarrass you when you fail, but to motivate you to try harder and boost your pride and confidence when you succeed.

Now you can do all of this yourself, but there’s so much nutritional “information” out there that it can be difficult to work out what you need to do next, or even where to begin!

As a Precision Nutrition certified coach, I can now offer you access to ProCoach, a habit-based nutrition coaching program that will help you to easily integrate healthy eating into your lifestyle.

It covers all of the above – teaching you new habits in a structured way to ensure you start at the beginning and build up slowly, one success after the other. While there’s no right or wrong way, certain foundations need to be laid before you can build on them, so getting the right habits under control first will prevent you from falling off the wagon by trying something you’re not ready for.

This is an entirely new approach to dieting for most people, (in fact, for the first couple of weeks we don’t even talk about food!) but it’s effective and it works. By helping you think about and focus on your goals, it will help you make better choices that will ultimately lead to your desired result.

If you’d like more information on ProCoach, visit www.DartfordBootcamps.com/nutrition-coaching where you can watch a video of people who’ve done the program, and contact me with any questions you might have.

If your current efforts aren’t working for you, it’s time to try something new! 

Visit www.DartfordBootcamps.com for more information on Personal Training, Nutrition Coaching, Bootcamp, and other classes.

And follow us on Facebook and Twitter (do it now……) for extra tips, advice and motivation.

Weight Loss 101

In their attempts to lose weight and get fit people often turn to the latest “Diets” to solve their problems for them.

From the most recent trends and Instagram gurus to the well-known weight loss clubs that have been around for years. These multi-million pound businesses have a vested interest. While it is in their interest to get people results, the efficacy of their programs is irrelevant once they’ve sold you their product, so clever marketing is their number one concern.

Before your health and successful weight loss, comes your money.

People buy into things based on what they believe from the marketing and word of mouth/popularity.

Before and after pictures bombard every advertisement for these products because they’re convincing and people want the results they see on the ad, but here’s the thing – no one diet works for everyone!

If 1,000 people follow a diet, it WILL work for a proportion of them, maybe 10%; maybe more, maybe less, but it will work for some.

10% of those 1,000 people is 100 success stories and THOSE are the stories/pictures they’ll use for the advertising. The ads wouldn’t be so convincing if under the fantastic transformations it said “you have a 10% chance of achieving these results”.

I’m not saying that all of the diet plans out there are bad, in fact most of them are very good… for some people.

But how do you figure out which plan is right for you?

The key here is not to follow a specific plan.

While this may sound illogical, let me explain…

A “Diet plan” is set, minimal room for variation or flexibility. Since everybody is different, and what works for you won’t necessarily work for the next person, any plan set out in writing will fail the majority of people.

Instead, you need to look for the common factors in all of the successful diet plans. Trends and patterns, guidelines and rules of thumb.

The most successful diets (and I don’t mean for short-term results, but for lasting, “keep the weight off” results) have a few things in common, they:

● get people preparing their own meals

● get people eating fresh, whole foods as opposed to pre-packed ready meals

● help people build healthy habits into their lifestyle rather than tell them “you can’t have this”

● help people establish their own eating rules and guidelines suited to them specifically

● help people determine how much they should be eating, how often, and when

● look at exercise as a form of calorie reduction rather than just cutting down food intake

● improve the HEALTH of the person, instead of simply looking at their weight

If the main focus is purely on weight loss, you’ll likely do your body harm and end up, long-term, with a failed attempt.

If you make HEALTH the main goal, weight loss will follow and you’ll feel fantastic for it. Long-term success is much more likely.

In order to have success in dieting, you need to look at many factors and create your very own diet plan that works for YOU (and no-one else).

No-one looks the same, no-one acts the same, no-one has the exact same problems; everyone is individual. Your diet needs to be too.

The above listed rules and guidelines do apply across the board, but to tailor a diet to suit YOU, you need to figure out exactly how to integrate all of these things into YOUR lifestyle; kind of like your very own “Owner’s Manual”.

The bare bones of weight loss (or weight gain if that’s your goal) is energy balance, or calories if you will.

While I hate the whole process of counting calories (or allocating points to calories), there’s no escaping the fact that you cannot create energy from nothing.

…meaning you cannot gain weight without eating more than your body needs, and you cannot lose weight if you’re eating more than your body needs.

What your body needs is unique to you and there is no equation or formula that can tell you specifically what you need. There are formulas that will give you a ballpark figure of what someone your height, weight, size needs, but it doesn’t take into account the myriad other factors, like stress, diet history, hormones etc., therefore it needs refining to suit you.

If you’ve slowed your metabolism by following a low-calorie diet for a long period of time, your daily calorie goal according to the calculations will likely be much higher than your actual need (since your body has become more efficient and shut down anything that requires energy that it deems non-essential to survival).

So following a diet that uses these calculations will mean you’ll gain weight.

As an example,

A 35-year old female, weighing 80kg (176lb, or 12 ½ stone), and 162cm (5’4”) tall, who exercises 3 times a week would require 2,030 calories per day to maintain that weight, and any reduction in that number should see her lose weight.

But if our example has been following a low-calorie diet, say 1,200 calories per day for a long period, chances are weight loss has stopped despite being 800 calories below her daily maintenance level.

What’s happened? Her body has stopped all non-essential energy consuming activities and slowed things down to survive on 1,200 calories per day (which is far too low for this individual anyway).

So if, having “failed” at her current weight loss attempts (now it’s stopped working) she started a new diet that used the standard formulas and said that to lose weight she needs to eat 1,800 calories per day (a reasonable assumption given that her maintenance level is 2,030 calories), she would gain weight; because her body has adjusted to burn only 1,200 calories per day. So we now have a 600 calorie surplus!

This is why the standard calculations don’t work. They do not take into account diet history and current eating habits.

For long term success, you need to start your nutrition plan right where you are. Assess your current eating habits and make adjustments from there.

Anyone who is overweight due to over-eating will have success using these formulas because their body is burning as much energy as the calculations would suggest (maybe even a bit more if they’ve been over-eating for a long time). So for them, a simple cut in calories will result in weight loss.

But for anyone who’s been dieting, not over-eating, and has cut calories already, the equation will fail you every time.

As a coach, I rarely see food diaries with excessive amounts of food on them, but regularly see food diaries where people are under-eating yet still not losing weight.

In order to achieve successful and healthy weight loss (or gain), you need to establish what you’re eating now and what results it brings i.e. if you’re gaining, losing, or maintaining your weight.

Once you’ve established your current calorie intake and its results, you can make adjustments from there to get the required outcome.

Be aware though that if you’re already below your daily calorie intake (i.e. maintaining weight at a calorie count below your BMR as in our example before), further reducing calories is NOT the way to go.

You’ll need to find a way to increase calories without gaining weight to get back to a healthy calorie intake and to increase your metabolism to burn more.

This is the real basics of weight loss/gain, and it can’t be cheated. There is no shortcut and there are no supplements that enable you to bypass this simple fact. Energy cannot be created out of nothing, or burned without the required effort – a pill will not burn fat!

The pyramid below shows the order of importance for weight loss (or gain). 

There is a hierarchy here, and trying to utilise any of the sections before you’ve mastered the section below will result in failure.

This, if you read between the lines, tells you exactly what you need to do.

Anyone, be they a trainer in the gym or on the internet, a fitness “guru”, or a huge trusted company, selling you supplements for weight loss without first covering all of the other factors involved are either after your money, or lacking the knowledge to help you. Be VERY cautious who you listen to.

I’ve mentioned in previous articles to be careful who you listen to, and if something doesn’t make sense, it’s probably not right. Find someone who speaks sense and you trust, and follow their advice over hearsay.

There are many “Diets” out there to choose from, but finding your own will be the best move you ever make. It won’t be one you can find online or buy in a book, or one you can share with someone else once you’ve found it, because it will be YOUR diet, and yours alone.

It will also never be static and will change as you do. As your body changes, so will your dietary needs. If you change your exercise habits, lifestyle habits, or even your job, your nutritional requirements will change too.

So before you choose your next ‘Diet’, think about these things and look over the proposed Diet. Does it tick all the right boxes and does it make sense? Or does it sound easy and too good to be true?

And perhaps most importantly, does it start with you establishing your baseline and work from there (most likely through either a food diary or a number of questionnaires, or both)? Or just ask for your basic details (gender/age/height/weight/goal weight) so it can punch them into an online calculator and generate a program from that.

Or even worse, does it not even ask for any of those and simply give you healthy recipes to eat?! (Which is great – but is just a cook book, not a diet)

Tread carefully and think through your decisions when making dietary choices as they will affect not only your weight, but your health and your sanity too!

www.DartfordBootcamps.com

www.MarkOneFitness.co.uk

How to diet successfully (and easily)

Ok, so most people reading this have probably, at some point, followed a diet. You may be following one now?

But is it too much? Are you struggling to stick to it?

Most people when starting a new diet aim for perfection.

On a scale of 1-10 (1 being terrible, 10 being “perfect”), people aim for 9 or 10 when they start a diet. Cut out ALL of this, don’t have ANY of that, cut 1000 calories a day… then after a week, it all goes out the window. The weekend binge of 6000 calories on Friday and Saturday undoes all of the calories you’ve saved in the week, and does more damage than if you’d not bothered in the first place; and you went through 5 days of hell to get there.

If your diet is currently a “2 out of 10” – what do you need to do to improve and see a change…?

3 out of 10. It’s that simple.

If you normally have a large pizza on a Friday night – would your diet be better, would you be eating less calories, and would you see a change if you swapped that large pizza for a shish kebab or a burger?

Yes!

You’ve swapped one “bad” food, for something slightly better. Do you need to change it for a bean salad? Probably not right now.

Is this change more acceptable to you? And are you more likely to succeed?

Find compromises that you’re happy with (salad may not be one of them right now) and are confident that you can do, and implement them.

If you swap the pizza for a lower calorie, healthier option, you’re on the right track.

If you can eat what you want, as usual, but just skip dessert – you’ve improved your diet and reduced calories. All without giving up the foods you love.

Like chocolate and can’t imagine not having any? Swap it for dark chocolate. You’ve just jumped from a 2 to a 3 out of 10.

The point is, you need to implement small changes that you can actually see yourself being able to stick to, without draining your self-discipline to the point that when someone offers you a piece of cake you want to bite their hand off or punch them in the face.

Take the guilt out of the foods you love, and just work on a slight calorie reduction through small changes. Trying to cut out bread? How about go for thin sliced wholegrain instead of thick sliced white? Another simple improvement that doesn’t leave you wondering what the hell you can eat for lunch.

Make small, easy changes for the better and gradually your diet will improve more and more. You only need to get from a 2 to a 3, then 3 to 4, and so on…

There are so many little changes and swaps you can make to improve your diet, don’t try to make them all at once or go straight for the big ones. Steady weight loss, without the stress, hunger and cravings is far better than rapid weight loss, feeling like s*** and inevitably failing a week or two down the line. And no-one wants to give up the foods they love for lettuce leaves!

You CAN have your cake and eat it, just a little bit less :)

A quick note on calorie reduction:

While it’s not quite as simple as it seems, the bottom line is you DO need to burn more calories than you eat to lose weight. But the clue there is “burn”.

Don’t drop too many calories out of your diet or you’ll cause a number of other problems that will be far worse in the long run, as well as being constantly hungry (which will chip away at your discipline and diet adherence).

If you drop 200 calories from your diet (a modest reduction and easily achievable for almost anyone), but also BURN 200 extra calories per day (again, a perfectly achievable amount), then you’ve just created a 400-calorie-a-day deficit – more than enough to see changes in body composition and weight loss.

This could be as simple as skipping dessert, having one biscuit instead of 3, taking 1 less sugar in your tea/coffee, having a square of dark chocolate instead of a bar of milk chocolate…

…and adding a 20-minute workout into your daily routine (or if you already workout, tweak your routine to burn more calories – switch from running on a treadmill to lifting some weights or circuit training for example).

Sit and have a think about how you can “improve” your diet, without trying to eat like a vegan supermodel, and find a form of exercise you’d be happy to spend 20 minutes of your day doing.

Then make those changes!

If you need more help, I offer one-to-one and group training out of Crayford gym. Visit www.DartfordBootcamps.com for more information on this, Nutrition Coaching, and Bootcamp classes.

And follow us on Facebook and Twitter (do it now……) for extra tips, advice and motivation.

Overfed and Under-nourished

The general belief these days is that if you cut calories, you’ll lose weight.

Whilst this IS true, it’s not as simple as that. Where your calories come from is, in fact, much more important. Hormones dictate whether you’ll burn fat, store fat, build muscle, or lose muscle (as well as myriad other things). And what you eat will have a huge effect on what your hormones do.

Most people who eat too many calories and gain weight are in fact still under-nourished. If you’re eating the wrong foods it’s easy to over-consume calories, and still get very little actual nutrition.

A typical junk food meal from any well-known fast food restaurant could easily clock up 1500 calories yet you’ll get very little if any nutritional value from the meal.

This is why you can put away so much food and still be hungry; because your body is still crying out for fuel and nutrition even after you’ve eaten a huge meal. And also why it’s so easy to gain [the wrong kind of] weight.

Given that many people make bad food choices and over-consume calories whilst under-consuming nutrients, cutting calories (i.e. going on a “Diet”) will lead to even fewer nutrients being eaten. This WILL lead to muscle loss, a drop in energy levels, and poor health, as well as slowing down your metabolism and leaving you malnourished (and no, a smoothie/juice/shake WON’T make up for this deficit!).

The key is to select nutritious foods over the less nutritious foods. Fresh vegetables are high in nutrients and low in calories – eat more of these – a LOT more. Fill up on low-calorie, nutrient-dense foods and you’ll struggle to over-eat or surpass your calorie requirements, and you’ll also get the many benefits of giving your body all the nutrition it needs (along with, obviously, fats and protein).

Avoid calorie-dense, low nutrient foods – mainly sweets, cakes, biscuits, fast-food, fizzy drinks etc.

It’s possible to “under-eat” (i.e. drop calories) and still get adequate nutrition IF you choose the right foods. But keep your calories up, with nutritious foods, and you’ll reap far more benefits than you would from dropping calories! Weight loss will be from fat rather than muscle, and your energy levels and mood will improve dramatically. And you won’t have to deal with the usual post-“Diet” weight (re)gain afterwards.

If you need more help, visit www.DartfordBootcamps.com for information on Personal Training, Nutrition Coaching, and Bootcamp classes.

Cheat Meals

Anyone dieting has probably heard of or used a “cheat meal” or even a “cheat day”!

So is this good or bad?

My personal opinion – don’t do it! Certainly not every week.

For most people trying to lose weight, it’s really NOT just a case of calories in vs. calories out (i.e. eat less, move more); it’s a case of an inefficient hormonal profile.

If you’re lean, and weight loss isn’t a goal, chances are you’re able to handle a “cheat meal” without any negative effects because you have an efficient system (balanced hormones, efficient digestive system, good carb tolerance, good insulin sensitivity etc.). In this case, ‘calories in vs. calories out’ is far more likely to work – because you have an efficient system.

But if you’re overweight, chances are high that your hormones have, over time, become imbalanced. Insulin resistance is likely an issue, reducing carb tolerance; and digestion may be compromised. And it will take time to rebalance them, through both diet and exercise.

If you put in all that effort to follow a diet for a few days, and then have a cheat meal (read: blowout) it WILL, almost certainly, undo all your hard work and send you right back to the start hormonally. You may lose some weight initially, but you’re setting yourself up for failure. The weight loss will soon stop and your hormones are still out of balance (possibly even more so).

It’s like giving an alcoholic a drink a week. Will they have one and stop? Or go overboard and have more than a few?!

If you’re following a healthy diet, you can use a “re-feed” day, but you still need to follow the same rules. There’s never a good reason to have junk food. On your re-feed days (maybe once every 4-6 weeks depending on the individual) it should be with good, clean, real foods. It means you can eat more of the good stuff for a day, not binge on crap and expect it not to have an effect.

Your aim here isn’t to eliminate all the things you enjoy forever, but to eliminate them temporarily until you get to the point that you CAN indulge occasionally without any negative effects. When you’re in this position, there’s no need to feel guilty about the odd night out. You won’t gain a stone on a one-week holiday (that took you 6 months to lose!).

When your system works efficiently, you can enjoy the foods you want, when you want them (within reason). But until then, you need to rebuild your system, and that means spending some time being good, cutting out the foods/drinks you know you shouldn’t be consuming, and following a good training plan.

As you get leaner, you’ll be able to introduce more of the foods you love, but until then – fight on!

If you want help, visit www.DartfordBootcamps.com for information on Personal Training, Nutrition coaching or Bootcamp Fitness classes.

And follow us on Facebook and Twitter (do it now……) for extra tips, advice and motivation.

Mark Broadbent

What (not) to eat before you exercise…

Most people exercise/workout to lose body fat. Even the people aiming to gain muscle mass (which should be ALL of you) want to lose body fat too.

With this in mind, should you eat before a workout? How long before? And what?

The key thing to remember is that your body is smart and it will use whatever form of energy is most readily available. Why go to the trouble of breaking down and burning fats if there’s a steady source of sugar at hand?

If your goal is fat loss, you need to avoid sugar (carbs) before your workouts. Quite simply, if you have glucose running through your bloodstream, that’s what your body will preferentially burn, NOT fat. Why would it?!

So if you’re one of these people who go into your spin class, sports drink in hand, you need to stop. Right away.

You need to prime your body to burn fat by reducing insulin levels, which are elevated the most by consuming carbohydrates.

If insulin is present, you’ll be pushing sugars INTO cells (either muscle or fat cells, depending on how much exercise you’ve done and/or the amount of carbs you’ve eaten – because once muscle cells are full, they’ll head straight to fat cells for storage!)

If insulin is NOT present (i.e. you haven’t eaten sugary carbs), then your body will be relying on the stored energy in your muscles and your fat cells.

So grabbing a banana before your workout is a BAD idea, as are any sports drinks (trust me, avoid the supposed “low sugar/calorie” options too).

Save your carbs for AFTER your workout and/or your evening meal. This will replenish the muscle glycogen you burned during your workout, without storing excess as fat (assuming you don’t overdo the carbs that is – eat too many and you’ll be right back to fat storage!)

Nutrition can get very complicated, but for the most part, it’s the simple changes that’ll make the biggest differences. Get on top of those, and you’ll probably never have to worry about the minor tweaks and details unless you’re planning on competing.

Visit www.DartfordBootcamps.com for information on Personal Training, Nutrition coaching or Bootcamp Fitness classes.

Is your diet working yet?

January’s long gone and by now lots of you may have fallen off the diet and exercise wagon, or simply lost heart in it due to lack of results.

You’ve done a few exercise classes and halved what you’re eating, and possibly joined a weight loss club to learn how you can still eat junk whilst losing weight (you know – save a few points at lunch so you can have that chocolate fudge cake after dinner, then not eat tomorrow…)

You’ve probably heard it before: “Eat less, move more”, and while I’m 100% behind exercise and healthy diet, it’s really not as simple as that.

First off, cutting calories should be the LAST weapon in your arsenal of fat loss. Reducing calories will work briefly, until your body realises what’s going on and simply stops burning as many calories. So your metabolic rate (how many calories you’re burning) slows down to match what you’re eating. Then weight loss will stop, and you can’t just keep cutting calories.

So… The FIRST things to do would be:

1. Increase the amount of calories you’re burning, whilst maintaining how many calories you’re eating.

This is done through TRAINING. This is not “exercise”. Getting out of breath and building up a bit of a sweat is great if you’ve never done any exercise before. It’ll strengthen your heart and lungs and improve your health a bit.

But if you want serious results, you need to TRAIN. That means find something that’s difficult, and push yourself as hard as you can.

Ideally, get to the gym and lift some weights. The heavier the better. This won’t make you a muscled beast, but will firm and tighten your muscles, burn calories, increase your metabolism (so you burn more calories every day), and make you stronger and fitter.

I understand the gym isn’t for everybody, but you need to find something that works with resistance (bodyweight or external), be it a class or a sport.

Intensity is the key here. Lifting weights that don’t challenge you won’t get you results. Maintaining a steady pace for an hour won’t get you good results.

2. Change what you’re eating (again without reducing the amount)

Write 2 lists. One of the foods you know you should eat more of, and one of the foods you should eat less of. Then swap them out. Swap one of the bad foods for one of the good/better ones. This is far more beneficial and effective than just cutting out foods to reduce calories (even the bad ones), and should make sure you don’t starve yourself. You should NEVER be hungry.

And “saving points” so you can indulge yourself at the weekend just won’t get you the body you want!

Start with these two actions and see how you get on for a month. And remember to measure yourself instead of weighing yourself.

If you want help, visit www.DartfordBootcamps.com for information on Personal Training, Nutrition coaching or Bootcamp Fitness classes.

And follow us on Facebook and Twitter (do it now……) for extra tips, advice and motivation.

Why cutting calories might be making you fatter!

You’ve probably heard the term “metabolic rate” or “metabolism”. Basically, your metabolic rate is how fast your body burns calories.

The faster your metabolism, the more calories you burn.

But did you know that reducing calorie intake (such as in most diets) can actually reduce your metabolic rate?

What does this mean? Basically, that when you first start your calorie restriction diet, you’ll lose weight because your body will be burning more calories than you’re feeding it. Great!

…But your body isn’t stupid. It knows it can’t keep this up for long, so since it thinks food is scarce, it does the only thing it can, it STOPS BURNING SO MANY CALORIES.

(As a side note, a “cheat day” will NOT solve this problem, but I’ll go into that another day)

What happens when you diet to the point that your metabolism slows down to match your calorie intake? …Weight loss stops.

Now most people, having lost some weight from the first wave of calorie restriction immediately assume they need to cut calories even more. Weight loss will start again; and then stop.

How long can you keep this up for? There’ll come a point when you can’t just stop eating.

This is where many people fall off their diet, because the lack of calories slowly shuts their body down. You feel terrible, have no energy, and your body will start to burn muscle tissue instead of fat; after all, muscle requires energy, from food which it’s not getting, so your body ditches the extra muscle to save on energy expenditure and you end up “skinny-fat” (a term used to describe people who are skinny, but with no muscle – think marathon runner)

We all know people, maybe you’re one of them, who seem to eat almost nothing and still don’t lose weight. This is why.

In the end, most of these people either carry on eating almost nothing and make themselves sick, or give up and go back to eating the same junk they were before. Except now your body is burning far fewer calories than it was originally (since you’ve slowed your metabolic rate down), so it can’t do anything with all this extra food except store it, as fat. Enter the yo-yo dieter!

Yes, a slight calorie deficit is necessary to aid weight loss, but if you can also ramp UP your metabolic rate (through exercise, and the right food selection), you’ll now be burning more calories (not less) without starving yourself. Energy levels will be good, your immune system won’t be compromised, and you’ll lose weight.

For help with your diet or exercise plan visit my website www.DartfordBootcamps.com

One-to-One and small group Personal Training, and outdoor fitness classes in Dartford, Kent.

Should you be counting calories?

I've often told people that it's not so much the calories that matter, but where they're coming from.

Obviously 1,000 calories of chocolate has pretty much no nutritional value, whereas 1,000 calories of broccoli or vegetables has a lot to offer.

I still stick to my guns on this, but you can't argue the science. At the end of the day, calories in vs. calories out is the most basic rule to weight loss/gain/maintenance.

If you want to lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you eat, to gain weight, eat more than you burn, and to maintain, eat as many as you burn.

Although it does get more complex than this, and hormones come into play, as well as (like I said) where these calories are coming from, you can't escape this one, simple rule.

The benefit if getting these calories from nutrient-rich foods is that you will have to eat much higher quantities to get the same number of calories (so you'll be full, and not starved); and that by giving your body all the nutrients it needs, your brain won't be sending you the "eat" signal, so you won't get hungry as often.

So back to the calories...

Any diet that says you need to be eating X number of calories is one to steer well clear of.

Everyone is different, and for a diet to tell everyone, regardless of shape, size, age, physical condition etc, to eat the same number of calories is just nonsense.

So how many calories should you be eating, and how much do you need to cut back to lose weight safely and permanently?

There are a number of calculations used to workout your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate - i.e. how many calories you need just to stay alive - this would be how many calories you'd burn if you slept all day).

BMR is responsible for burning about 70% of your daily calories, so it stands to reason that the higher this is the better (more muscle, more activity, smaller more frequent meals all increase metabolic rate).

My preferred method of working this out is the Katch-McArdle formula, as it takes into account lean mass, rather than just total body weight (which doesn't tell you how much of the weight is calorie-burning muscle, and how much is fat).

Since this formula uses lean body mass, it's the same formula for men and women. But you WILL need to find out your lean body mass to work it out - just ask an instructor at your gym to measure your body fat %, and you can work out your lean mass from that (Total weight - fat weight = Lean Body Mass).

So now let's work out YOUR BMR...

BMR = 370 + (21.6 X lean mass in kg)

Example:

Female

120lbs (54.5kg)

Body Fat = 20% (24lbs)

Lean Mass = 96lbs (43.6kg)

BMR = 370 + (21.6 X 43.6) = 1312 calories

(remember, this is what's required simply to keep you alive! So you still need more, and cutting calories below this amount will only end badly)

Now you need to calculate your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure).

To do this, you take your BMR and multiply it by the appropriate value from the activity multiplier, which is as follows:

Sedentary = BMR X 1.2 (little or no exercise, desk job)

Lightly active = BMR X 1.375 (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/wk)

Moderately active = BMR X 1.55 (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/wk)

Very active = BMR X 1.725 (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days/wk)

Extra active - BMR X 1.9 (hard daily exercise/sports & physical job, or 2x day training)

So for our example above, assuming moderate activity (work out 3-5 days/wk),

BMR = 1312

Activity factor = 1.55

so TDEE = 1312 X 1.55 = 2033 calories

This is the most accurate method you can (easily) use. (There are others, but they're expensive, and for the sake of a hundred calories or so accuracy, this will do just fine!)

Going back to the example, to maintain weight, this woman would need to consume 2033 calories per day.

What if you want to lose weight?

Well we need that calorie deficit we talked about earlier. But the reason for going to all this trouble to work out the TDEE is so that you know how many calories YOU need to cut out to lose weight safely.

This is obviously different for everyone depending on their TDEE. So diets telling you to stick to X calories are just plain lying to you!

To lose weight, without sending your body into the starvation response, cut calories by no more than 20%. So for the 2033 calories/day example, she would need to drop the calories to no less than 1,626.

NEVER CUT CALORIES BY MORE THAN 20%max.!!!

If you want to increase the weight loss further, work on the calorie deficit from the other end; exercise.

Burn more calories by increasing your activity levels to increase the deficit and lose weight faster, but safely.

So hopefully from this post you can see that what works for someone else, won't necessarily work for you. Work out what YOU need to do, and stick to the rules. No more than a 20% cut in calories, and increase activity levels.

Persevere and be patient. A body that took 10 years to acquire won't go in 2 weeks. Don't rush it or you'll end up depressed, frustrated, and right back where you started (or worse).

As I mentioned at the beginning where your calories come from is also key in unlocking weight loss. So check out my other blog posts to find out what you should be eating, and what you should avoid at all costs if weight loss, or indeed health, is your goal.

You can also work with me personally to figure out a diet suited to you and your specific goals by contacting me through my Personal Training website www.MarkOneFitness.co.uk 

How does exercise/diet help you lose weight?

So many people seem to be trying to lose weight without really understanding what it is they need to do for that to happen.

People go on diets – How does eating less help?

Sounds like a stupid question doesn’t it?

How about – How does exercise help?

Pretty stupid too... Or is it?

Without knowing how each of these things affects your body in a way that helps you to lose weight, you’re just “doing what everybody else is doing” without understanding why you’re all doing it.

It might have worked for your friend, you may know people who lost weight with a weight management group, but you don’t know what else they did while they were doing that; and how many of those people went on to re-gain that “lost” weight?

Everyone is different, but there is one simple truth that is true for EVERYONE – To lose weight you need to [consistently] burn off more calories than you consume. This means changing your lifestyle, not “going on a diet” which will ultimately end, meaning you start your journey of weight gain all over again.

Without understanding this one simple fact, you go into your diet with no idea of what you are doing or how it will work other than “It worked for________ (fill in the blank)”.

And for those of you who believe that you can do this properly without either exercise or diet (i.e. just do one of them), you’re fighting a losing battle.

What IS a calorie?

Contrary to popular belief a calorie isn’t just a way of seeing how good or bad for you a food is.
Calories ARE NOT bad!

A calorie is simply a measure of energy.

Therefore if we eat 2000 units of energy and only use 1500 units of energy, we store the extra 500 units (yep, as fat).

So, the recommended daily calorie intake for the average female is around 2000 calories (a VERY rough guide that should not be taken as gospel – for a more accurate measure of your daily amount you can use the Harris-Benedict Formula at the bottom of this article).

So, to lose weight you need to be consuming LESS calories than you’re burning. Simple.

But wait!

You can’t simply cut back on your eating and not exercise because your body is programmed to survive – 1000‘s of years ago, people didn’t know when their next meal would be, so we’ve evolved to survive as long as possible without food by holding onto our richest source of energy – fat.

If you cut back on your eating too much, your body will HOLD ON TO FAT, so instead of burning fat stores, it will burn muscle tissue, because muscle tissue needs energy, and your body wants to get rid of anything that’s burning energy.

So while reducing your calorie intake may cause you to lose weight, it will be from muscle tissue NOT fat tissue.

Enter... Exercise

By exercising, you are maintaining, or even building muscle tissue. This is important for a number of reasons.

Firstly, as I mentioned above, muscles need energy to function. Meaning the more you work a muscle, the more energy it needs/burns. So the more muscles you are working, the harder you’re working them, and the more often you work them – the more calories you will burn.

Secondly, the more muscle mass you have to maintain, the more calories you will be burning throughout the day just to maintain that muscle. These calories (if you are burning more than you are eating) will come from fat stores.

So in short, the more muscle you have, the more calories you will burn both during exercise AND throughout the day.

Starting to see why exercise is so important?

Without taking this too much further (you can download my Free report on weight loss from my website), I’ll leave you with a simple calculation that should show why it is important that you use both exercise AND a slight reduction in calories (only slight, or you’ll end up holding on to fat remember) to lose weight/bodyfat.

3500 calories = 0.45kg (just under 1lb) -- so to lose 1lb, you need to burn off 3500 calories MORE than you consume.

Spread this across the week and that means a calorie deficit of 500 calories per day.

Remember if you reduce your calorie intake too much you hold fat, so you need to create this deficit using diet AND exercise.

Reduce your calorie intake by 250kcal per day, AND increase your exercise/activity by 250 calories per day, and you’ve got your 500 calorie deficit. Meaning a steady, healthy weight loss of 1lb per week.

More importantly, by maintaining or building muscle, you won’t gain the weight back again when you “finish” your diet.

If 1lb a week isn’t good enough for you, then you will need to increase the amount of work your muscles are doing (not long runs/bike rides in the gym – work your muscles), but NEVER reduce your calorie intake by more than 500 calories below your recommended amount!

The harder you work, the more you’ll lose.

My book, Fab In 15 Minutes is a collection of 15 minute workouts that burn up to 250 calories each – this is a great way to reach your target quickly and effectively without ever having to set foot in a gym. Visit http://www.fabin15minutes.com/ for these weight loss workouts. If you could consistently lose 1lb a week working just 15 minutes a day would you do it?


To work out your recommended daily calorie intake use the Harris-Benedict formula below:

Men: 66 + (13.7 x weight in kg) + (5 x height in cm) – (6.8 x age)

Example- For a 170cm tall man aged 35 and weighing 90kg:
66 + (13.7 x 90) + (5 x 170) – (6.8 x 35)
= 66 + 1233 + 850 – 238 = 1911 calories


Women:655 + (9.6 x weight in kg) + (1.8 x height in cm) – (4.7 – age)

Example- For a 165cm tall woman aged 35 and weighing 75kg:
655 + (9.6 x 75) + (1.8 x 165) – (4.7 x 35)
= 655 + 720 + 297 – 164.5 = 1507 calories


Once you have this number (your BMR), multiply it by the following depending on your activity levels, to get your daily calorie guideline.

Sedentary BMR x 1.2 little or no exercise, desk job
Lightly Active BMR x 1.375 light exercise/sports 1-3 days per week
Mod. Active BMR x 1.55 moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days per week
Very Active BMR x 1.725 hard exercise/sports 6-7 days per week
Extra Active BMR x 1.9 hard daily exercise/sports AND physical job

So if we take the female example above with a lightly active lifestyle, your daily calorie guideline would be 1507 x 1.375 = 2072 calories per day


Please note, if you are “over-weight”, this calculation will slightly overestimate your caloric needs.


Now you (hopefully) have more of an idea of what it is you’re doing, check out the FREE weight loss report at http://www.markonefitness.co.uk/, and the workout book at http://www.fabin15minutes.com/.