Are you Eating Enough to Lose Weight?
This seems like a ridiculous question to be asking, but in reality it is an important fact of healthy weight loss. For most of us, getting our heads around the notion of eating more to lose weight is a difficult concept to grasp. Eating healthy, eating light and eating often with a plan built around one’s individual metabolism, activities, and appropriate calorie intake, are the cornerstones of permanent weight reduction.
Everyone has a basic calorie intake need to exist in their present state of being, given their height, current weight, gender, age, lean weight and fat mass percentages, as well as their lifestyles, whether they are prone to the sedentary or to the active end of the activity spectrum. Variations in any, or all of these anatomical or lifestyle attributes, alter the equation for weight loss, or gain.
Your metabolic rate is the rate at which your body burns calories. Burning more calories than consumed is the goal to lose weight. You burn calories to provide energy for three main functions:
Basil Metabolic Rate: This is the amount of calories you burn just by being alive, even when you’re doing nothing. It accounts for approximately 60 percent of calories you burn.
Burning Calories for Activity: This is the energy used during movement- from lifting your arm to button your blouse to cleaning house. This accounts for approximately 30 percent of the calories you burn.
Dietary Thermo Genesis: The calories burned in the process of eating, digesting, absorbing and using food accounts for approximately 10 percent of the calories you burn.
The real quandary in many cases is eating too little. Our body reacts to this, as it knows how it is being nourished, based on what it needs for survival. It recognizes high activity and too low of an intake of calories. When activity and intake are too far out of line, the body see’s this and slows itself metabolically to cope with this mismatch. “Too far out of line” being the key phrase here. This mismatch often results in the byproduct: “I can’t lose weight”. Dialing in your calorie intake, against your activity, such that you are about 500 calories under the required calorie intake goal that is appropriate for your activity level is extremely important.
All too often, we see people on a combination of the “starvation” plan, and or the “inconsistency” plan, neither of which are good ideas with respect to long term healthy weight maintenance. High calorie one day, low calorie another, skip breakfast today, skip lunch tomorrow, or not eat at all due to “work pressures,” won’t get you there. The fast fix crash plans through the unregulated supplement industry are not the way to go either. Long term healthy lasting fixes are eating healthy, eating light, and eating often within a science based calorie count for your current anatomical and metabolic circumstances, with balanced high quality, frequent, portion controlled meals and snacks targeted to your appropriate “activity level.” These are the locks and the keys to the “ideal body door.”
You too may be thinking “less is more,” eating less and less and finding yourself standing on the scale wondering why you can not lose the weight. Portion size and calorie control comes in to play with every food and beverage choice you are making. BUT, if you are not aware of your calorie needs based on your body composition and activity level, it will be more difficult for you to successfully navigate long term weight loss. For information on how to fine tune your calorie count and activity levels for long lasting results, call us at Fitness Together, (619) 794-0014 and follow our blog at BetterBodySanDiego.com.
Category: Life Style
