By PPT Trainer and Director, Mark Jordan
“I can’t lose weight”
“I’ve tried every type of diet exercise plan, even had a personal trainer”
“I can’t put weight on. My genetics just make me a string bean”
These are all comments echoed daily! The question we need to ask, could all your problems simply be in the incorrect approach?
Hunger, that crazy feeling that drives us to crave, desire and annihilate food, any food!! Often commercially trivialised, many companies offer what they claim to be an answer. People start with their new diet, fad or plan. Initial weight changes occur, but beyond that no real information on how to keep it off after the quick fix program.
If you’re eating poorly, and change that up with on of these quick fix programs (often in the form of meal replacements or low calorie diets), change is likely to happen, but very rarely is it sustainable. The reason for the short-term change is pretty simple, you’ve made a change to your calorie intake.
Here’s our take
* No tricks, gimmicks or secrets, its actually really simple. If you are in a caloric deficit (i.e. the amount of energy out is greater then the amount of energy in) you will promote weight loss.
* If you are in caloric surplus (i.e. The amount of calories in, is greater then the amount of calories out), weight gain will occur.
* The outcome of the weight gain or loss is dependent on how it is done. This directly relates to the quality of the nutrition and how you expend those calories. Strength training, metabolic conditioning, low intensity cardio, moderate intensity classes etc, will promote a different result for each individual.
The consistent, underpinning factor in all this is calories. Know what you put in, and you can help determine the outcome and results. Know your numbers and what works for your body; more importantly get to know food and how it impacts on your body. All of this is achievable if you start tracking your food with a food diary.
Take this case study – a 23 y.o Female client of mine (lets call her Nicole). Nicole came to PPT to lose weight, particularly decrease her body-fat levels. Nicole was quite active, and had a decent level of training experience but was still not getting results. In her opinion she was exercising regularly and in control of most things, but the weight kept creeping on. So we started to track food and numbers. It turned out with her busy work and university schedule, Nicole was eating minimally. Most of the time, there wasn’t a lot of food; furthermore, food choices that seemed fine probably were not the best.
What next?
We started tracking her calories.
After tracking a typical 4-5 days for Nicole, including her not so great days, we were able to average out what she was eating in terms of calories. This information, together with a DEXA scan, gave us everything we needed to work out the calorie targets that would get Nicole on her way to reaching her fat loss goals. In Nicole’s situation, we actually needed her to eat MORE calories, a concept referred to reverse dieting. What she was currently eating was not enough to promote a healthy metabolism, that could sustain her training and weight loss at the same time. Under eating was holding her back, and required a slow and steady approach to restore her metabolism. The benefit of tracking enabled us to do this without gaining seeing any weight gain. In fact through this, she kept on losing fat!
With all our ducks in a row consistency was all we needed. Week in week out, I would check Nicole’s diary. At first it was a little shaky but week after week it got better until this happened!
THE PERFECT WEEK!
Once we had a perfect week they kept coming and so did 20KG OF WEIGHT LOSS AND IT STAYED OFF!!!!
Quick note on calorie re-feeding:
Why the spike in red on the Friday you ask? Good question. For some clients, this consistent deficit requires a re-feed day, but we will get to that in another blog. In the meantime, want results, get tracking.
If you’d like to know more about the right training and nutrition protocols for your fat loss or muscle gain goals, feel free to CONTACT US for more information.