Losing weight / Weight loss
Liam's thoughts on weigh loss
1. Don't 'lose weight'
I may have named this article poorly, but I figured it would be easier to recognise. 'Losing weight' is the popular way of describing something, which is not about losing weight itself - as most people care to lose their body fat percentage or something along those lines. Often is the case that people will go to the gym arduously for a while, and become discouraged when they realise that they've actually gained weight despite their efforts.
The truth is, that fat itself doesn't actually weigh that much - in fact in submerging a person in water and weighing them we can work out a persons body fat because fat is lighter than water.
To lose body fat, you'll often inadvertently gain muscle, and muscle is heavier than fat - so all in all, you're weight won't be a particularly good indicator of your body fat.
Body fat isn't the easiest thing in the world to test, where as weight is - which I suppose is one of the reasons why it has over time become so popular to weight ourselves as an indication of health and fitness - but unless you happen to have a bio-electrical impedence test lying around the place, or some underwater scales in your swimming pool - I'd say just to go by how you look and feel.
2. Gain muscle
People tend to think that to lose weight it's a matter of hitting aerobic exercises, like running, swimming, aerobics - as it is true that a higher percentage of fat is burned through low intensity exercise. This is also STUPID. Don't do it.
While you're doing a low intensity exercise, a higher percentage of the energy used comes from your fat stores as opposed to your carbohydrate stores - this is an unhelpful fact to cling to in trying to lose body fat because low intensity exercise uses a lower total energy. You use more fat from high intensity exercises, just as you use more from your carbohydrate stores.
The reason I also suggest to gain muscle is that doing exercise itself isn't where the most fat can be burned, rather in gaining muscle mass our resting metabolism rises, and the energy that our body uses even at rest increases - which accumilates to a much greater loss of fat then the participation of exercise itself.
3. Know what you're eating.
I cook most of my own food, and I use very basic ingreients. You'd be surprised what goes into foods in order to make them taste better, last longer, stay in a nicer shape. Like mayonaise for example - do you actually know what mayoniase is?
Mayonaise is the prime example of what I mean - people put it on salad when they're trying to be healthy - but in doing so they sacrifice any health benefits from the salad.
Mayonaise, and all sauces, gain their texture from hydrogenated fat - which is the worst fat that you can put into your body. It's odd that people substitute one form of fat with another, and wonder why their body isn't changing!.
In the same sense, its worth learning the effects of what you're eating, everything you're eating.
4. Stabalise your blood sugar
Some people associate the low feelings of having not eaten for a while, or having eaten too little as part of a successful diet - it ISN'T.
That feeling means that your blood sugar has taken a dive, and that also means that so is your metabolism, which means that you'll be burning less fat in this state.
It's useless, don't do it.
Over recent years there's been a fad called the GI diet. Essentially GI (Glycemic Index) is a way of measuring how quickly various foods get into your system and how much they have an impact on your blood sugar levels. Making sure that you eat a food of low GI means that you'll feel less of an energy drain as the day goes on, and you'll lose more fat as a result of your consistent metabolism.
A big part of this is eating a breakfast, and eating consistently throughout the day. Porridge, for example has a tremendously low GI, and makes an excellent breakfast.
5. Cut out stimulents and sweets (and alcohol.)
Stimulants such as caffeine, and the other chemicals of a similiar nature that you find in evil drinks, like Torreine, etc etc, raise your blood sugar level also, only to drop it worse than it had been before.
Alcohol is just bad for you. Alcohol has a huge energy density, and isn't easily utilised by the body. I know there's this stupid belief going around that small amounts are good for you - as far as I've seen that's based on one study, and only applies to over 45 year olds. If you're trying to lose weight, stay away from booze.
6. It's not about FAT
People look at fat content in food as it's the only thing that causes physical fattening, it isn't at all.
Fat, as a physical stubstance that you find in food, is 9 calories per gram, where as protein and carbohydrate is only 4 calories per gram. this means that fat should be avoided because of it's calorie density - not because it's fat.
Excess calories are converted into fat - if you eat 500 calories of fat, or 500 calories of carbs, it's still 500 calories that your body has to deal with.
Fat is not the enemy itself. Vitamins A,D,E and K are fat soluble, and useless without it.
Omega 3, that everyone has been going on about for the last couple of years, is a form of fat. Just a healthier one than others.
It's about understanding that there is a difference in quality of fats. A lot of the time it just takes common sense.
If a big mac had the same amount as fat as a fish, which is the healthier? The fish. It's not just about numbers.
7. It's not all about CALORIES either
Counting Calories is just wrong as well. As I say, it's not all about numbers. Calories are seen as a bad thing in general, but all it is, is a measure of energy - and energy is a good thing right?
8. Think WHEN as well as WHAT
If I was to do a personal diet plan for somebody, the first thing that I would do is rearrange the time that they eat without changing what they eat. Why? Well:
Firslty, it's hard to have a diet and take things out of it. People crave things for various reasons, and it's not so disastrous letting people eat what they like - It's a big change to make.
In changing when a person eats, you effect their metabolism, the effectiveness of the exercise they do, the amount of muscle they can put one.
For example - I personally eat chocolate, and probably will until the day I die. This is because it's GI is so high that it gets into the blood really quickly - before and after training this can be very effective in two ways. Firstly it means that I can get more energy to do exercise with (if I eat it an hour before exercise.) or I can maximse glycogen recovery by eating chocolate a half-hour after exercise, which means you recover quicker, feel less negative effects of training and progress quicker.
The same applies for protein. Protein should be eaten with half an hour after muscle building exercises to have greatest impact.
Eating a large breakfast jump-starts the metabolism for the day, and makes you less likely to eat so many snacks (snacks, by which I mean typical snacks, like crisps and chocolate are just awful.)
Snacking on fruit can be used to maintain blood sugar, which in turn stabalises metabolism, focus, energy levels - and the level at which you burn fat.
Ok, that'll do for starters.
If there are any questions of things I haven't explained properly, please give me a chance to go into this more. It's a very difficult system to explain, but at the same time very simple when you understand it - it's very common sensical.
love you lots
-Liam.
Thoughts? arguements? agreements? questions?
__________________
- Liam Beale
Last edited by Liam Beale; 09-28-2008 at 08:00 AM.
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