One of the age old myths is that starving yourself and depriving your body of certain foods lead to fat loss. Well the truth of the matter is that this method can actually be detrimental to your weight loss and your health. Your body will go into a stressed state with the low amount of calories as a way to protect your vital organs from damage. This stress will release certain hormones into your body that will encourage the production of body fat as a safety mechanism.
So with this being said you may be asking well how can I burn body fat then. Well below are 5 simple keys to weight loss success so let's take a look.
- Have a calorie deficit for the day. Calories in against calories out.
- Eat smaller meals more often
- Drink a minimum of 2L water per day
- Control carbohydrate intake
- Use the nutrients timing tools to your advantage
1) Key point number one talks about being in a calorie deficit for the day. What this means is that you need to be either eating less calories than your body needs or you need to be doing exercise to burn off those extra calories. We recommend being 250-500 calories under you maintenance. Let's use somebody who needs 1800 calories per day to maintain their body composition as an example. Now this person doesn't eat in a deficit but does do an hour of weights per day. Here is how it would look.
(Calories eaten per day - physical activity - Calories needed for maintenance = total caloric suplus/deficit for day)
(1800cals eaten -250 exercise -1800 resting metabolism = -250 calories overall for the day)
As we can see above, this person was 250 calories under their maintenance. As we recommended above this person would need to find a way to get an extra 50-250 calories burnt or look into eating less during the day. This can be done by exercising for as little as an extra half hour or eating slightly smaller meals during the day.
2) Key number looks into eating smaller meals more often during the day. There is a very simple reason for this which most people miss. It all comes down to your metabolism. Eating foods will spike your metabolism in order for those foods to be processed and used for energy. In return this will increase your overall body temperature which leads to a greater amount of calories burnt.
We recommend that you are eating whole foods as much as possible and a good guide is every 2.5-3 hours during the day.
These meals should be:
- Meal 1
- Meal 2
- Meal 3
- Meal 4
- Meal 5
- Meal 6
By doing this, your body recognises that it will be fed every 2-3 hours and be very 'happy' to work it's metabolism (the rate at which your body burns energy) at a higher rate. Especially if it's used to only eating every 6-7 hours (say a 1pm lunch and 7-8pm dinner, like most aussies). We're then more likely to not 'binge' because our body is not upset at us for leaving it for such a long period without food or be scared that there is another 7-8 hour period coming with no food intake. We're now a lot more likely to stick to a healthy eating regime!
Stay tuned for part 2
*Disclaimer: Individual results vary based on agreed goals. Click here for details.
