This article will briefly consider weight loss, the science behind it and look at some techniques to boost your weight loss attempts. You will notice throughout that all things are considered in terms of lifestyle changes. It’s no use adopting some so called magical diet that quickly gets weight off but more so quickly goes back on once you’ve stopped….although these are very tempting the fact of the matter is that quick weight loss most probably equates to losing water not fat and worse still reducing your lean muscle tissue ( which is not what you want to be achieving ).
You can safely and effectively lose about 1 to 2 lbs ( 0.5 to 1kg ) a week. At the end of the day you have to think to yourself ” how long did it take me to put the weight on?” The answer to this question is unlikely to be one to two weeks, it’s far more likely to have happened over a number of years. Therefore you have to accept a similar timescale to get back to your ideal weight or more importantly how you look and feel ( Body Composition ). If you are willing to accept this premise you are half-way there, odds are you can achieve it quicker with the correct adjustments. The next thing you must consider is that it is your current lifestyle that got you fat, therefore only by making changes to your lifestyle can you hope to achieve long-term sustainable weight loss
This is why most diets do not work in the long-term; it is because they have not altered your lifestyle. Therefore, the minute you finish the diet you go back to doing what was getting you fat / weight gain in the first place ( your old lifestyle ).
When i work 1-2-1 with my clients i always make a point to see if they are psychologically ready to make a change. The readiness to change is so often overlooked in weight loss programmes and yet my research has shown that this is fundamental to long-term successful weight loss.
ENERGY BALANCE:
At the end of the day weight loss or weight gain comes down to energy balance, this is not rocket science…if you are eating more calories than you are burning then you will be in a positive energy balance ( surplus ). Under these circumstances you will put weight on and increase your body fat %. The best you can hope for is that the fat cells will shrink as you burn off energy…this is one reason why somebody that has been over weight finds it easy to put the weight back on, the fat cells are sitting there waiting to be filled. If however you have never been overweight you will possess less fat cells so it is not quite so easy to increase your weight.
If you are burning more calories ( very active ) than you are consuming you are in a ‘ negative energy balance ‘ ( calorie deficit )and under these circumstances you will loss weight ( reduce your body fat ). That said, it is not quite straightforward as this ( if only it were ). A number of factors impact upon this, an important one being genetics. Undoubtedly the genes that you inherited will have an impact on how successful your weight loss attempts are. With perseverance however if you maintain a negative energy balance you will lose weight….FACT!!
Men will find it easier to lose weight than women and again this is down to genetic makeup. Men possess more of the enzymes that help breakdown fat and are therefore better placed to burn off fat. Added to this women have more of the enzymes that store fat ( necessary during pregnancy ) therefore they will lay down fat easier than a man. The good news is that the more active you become the more efficient you become at burning fat so keeping active, and if possible increasing your activity levels are the key to long-term weight control.
Robhamill 