3 Things to Know About Losing Weight
Weight is a numbers game. The often repeated equation, calories in versus calories out does hold true. When you eat more than you burn you gain weight. When you eat less than you burn you lose weight. And when you eat just enough, you maintain.
But before you embark on this admittedly simple but once again not easy journey, here are three things you should consider based on the experiences of myself and my clients.
#1 Calories across the week, not just the day
Notoriously we are bad at recall. And when we diet it’s no different. Your opinions of your diet are based on your Monday through Wednesday of each week. Thats when you prepare your meals ahead of time, or make sure to eat out responsibly and drink all of your water.
And when the scale does not move, or moves in the wrong direction, you get very frustrated because to your knowledge you are doing your best to eat less than you burn. Afterall, you are going to bed hungry on those nights.
But what about the second half of your work week or sometimes, even just the weekend? Eating 200 calories less Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday is great. That puts you at -600 calories. But if you are back to normal on Thursday (- 0 calories), and then on Friday you grab drinks that gives you an extra 300 calories (drinks add up quick, but not as quick as the food you eat with those drinks), then you are now sitting at -300 calories for the week. Still a deficit. Still good.
Then comes the actual weekend. If you are not locked in and you decide to treat yourself after a long week, that -300 not only can easily be erased, but you may very well put yourself in a surplus for the week.
There is no progress without consistency. The good news is that this is a great argument for not making drastic changes. Setting yourself up with a sustainable deficit helps to keep you full so you don’t even think of yourself as dieting each day. And that allows you to maintain the plan for longer which leads to great results.
Do not starve yourself in the name of dieting. Your body will rebel. But also, don’t carb load all week because you have a 30 minute run on Saturday. That’s too much surplus for an activity that probably did not need a surplus to begin with.
#2 Without intentional tracking, there is no way to know how many calories you are really consuming
My clients are usually pretty bad at knowing how much they eat each day on average. If they’re lucky, they have past experience, but most people have no idea. And it’s not their fault (or yours). Why would you know how to estimate your calorie intake? Nutrition is literally not taught at any point in our education.
If you are lucky enough to maintain your goal body weight, then maybe you don’t need to look deeper. But if you are wanting to lose weight, having an understanding of how much you actually eat will help you make your journey as smooth as possible.
Well below the ultimate version of tracking which includes weighing and measuring everything, are some more attainable starting points. Write down what you eat. Calling attention to your eating habits is often a strong start to cutting back on high calorie, low nutrient foods. Or cutting down on the serving size which is a factor in losing weight.
If you are more technologically proficient, your phones app store has many free nutrition apps like MyFitnessPal that allow you to input your daily food choices and automatically generate nutrition information for each choice based on the quantity you consumed. This gives you a better ballpark idea of how many calories (as well as how many nutrients) you are consuming each day.
Increase your awareness of your intake and you will feel much more confident in the changes you make on your journey.
#3 You are probably not as active as you think you might be
Without the guidance of a coach or past experience, it’s difficult to accurately assess how much we need to eat to still feel good while we work to lose weight. The amount of calories your brain alone needs is often higher than most people think they should eat in a day.
Your activity level dictates how many more calories you need beyond what your brain and other internal systems require. And if you are working on your body composition, the amount of carbohydrates you need in a day depends on how active you are.
People often assume they are a level or two above their actual activity level and that can put them behind from the start. Carbs are not the enemy, but eating the same carb load as a marathon runner is probably not ideal if most of your day is spent sitting at work and driving in your car.
Let me know what you think of all of this. You absolutely are able to lose weight no matter how frustrating your past experiences have been. Keep your head up. Change is possible. But you need to know what you are up against so you are able to be prepared.
And if you would like some help achieving your goals, I would love to help. Send me a note below and we will connect.
-Ben