No More Diets

How can you count the calories you are burning?

Good luck if you are trying to lose weight by counting calories! Most people get this completely wrong by underestimating what they are eating and overestimating how much they are burning. If you can be reasonably accurate then it’s a great way to lose weight - aim for a 500 calorie a day deficit to lose a steady 1lb a week without too much deprivation or trouble.

Here is a calculation tool for finding out how many calories you are burning with a whole list of different activities. You enter your weight in pounds and the duration of your activity in minutes and then get an estimate of the number of calories you used for the list of activities.

Calorie calculator

Remember that these calories are not EXTRA calories you are burning on top of the calories you would use just by sitting around - they are instead of - so you need to subtract the calories you would use just by existing to get an a picture of how much you have helped your weight loss goals.

Remember too that we all burn up calories at a slightly different rate depending on metabolism and body composition so this is an estimate at best.

I believe you can get monitors which measure more accurately how many calories you are burning but I have no personal experience with these as I don’t usually advise the calorie counting method for weight loss. Could anyone else recommend one?

How can I get over my plateau (I’ve bumped up my exercise intensity and my weight won’t budge)?

It’s quite normal to get stuck in a weight loss plateau when you are in it for the long haul - and it is a major danger point - so many people give up at that time. You know how it is - you start full of enthusiasm and really tackle weight loss head on and then a few weeks later despite making a great effort the dial on the scales refuses to budge.

There are quite a few potential reasons for a plateau:-

Maybe you don’t think you are making any less effort but actually you are paying a bit less attention to your eating habits in terms of portion sizes and food choices. Maybe you have got a bit more lax about following your plan and some of your old habits have crept in.

OR

Maybe you have lost weight and you haven’t adjusted your eating habits accordingly. Every pound of extra fat means you have to carry an extra pound of fat around all day. A person who loses weight generally needs fewer calories unfortunately.

OR

Maybe you have been TOO strict with yourself and your metabolism has slowed as a result. Your body thinks you are starving and is conserving fat as much as you can. This generally happens if you are eating more than 500 calories fewer than you need each day (and if you are doing a lot of exercise you may need to adjust the standard daily requirements for your activity level). Maybe your body has even reached the level where it will resist weight loss because you at the healthiest weight for you. If you were trying to reach super model proportions this might very well be the case.

OR

Maybe as you have been exercising so much you have been replacing fat with muscle. Muscle makes your body firmer and more compact plus it burns up more calories even while you are resting but it also weighs more than fat - so you can actually become leaner AND heavier at the same time. This may be happening to you.

Whatever the reason, if you definitely still have weight to lose (and you’re not trying to make yourself unnaturally thin) you have two choices when faced with a weight loss plateau.

You can give up and let the plateau defeat you

OR

you can make an extra effort to continue to get in shape by checking that your food consumption and exercise levels are fine for the weight you are currently at - neither too high nor too low. Then you need to be more vigilant.

Giving up serves no purpose. But if you carry on eating more healthily and moving your body the scale will eventually continue to move and you’ll continue to build the shape you deserve ounce by ounce and inch by inch.

How do I get more motivated to work out…I start for a week and then stop.

The only real answer to this is to find something you love to do so that nothing will stop you doing it.

I think we torture ourselves too much by thinking that nothing less than a full gym program will do when we would do far better to get active with dancing or skating or skiing (or whatever else floats our boat) - something that will not need so much willpower to keep up.

If you insist on trying to do a program which is a chore rather than a pleasure then the only way to motivate yourself is to do it for long enough to feel the benefits before you let yourself stop.

I took up running this year against my better judgement - I knew I didn’t like running at all but it was for a charity race. I simply had to get my running clothes on and get out of the door three times a week. What helped initially was having the race to aim for and a training program to follow. What helped later was the fantastic feeling I got when I came home from a run. (And I did enjoy the race in the end!)

Once you have lost weight how do you keep it off?

When you go on a diet there is a major challenge to overcome when you hit your target weight. You see, diets are seen as a temporary thing, a period of abstinence, of denying yourself the good things in life.

And chances are when you reach that happy milestone and you reach the weight you want to be you will go back to what you see as a normal pattern of eating.

The trouble is your normal pattern of eating is what made you overweight in the first place and therefore the day you reach your target weight is the day you start putting weight back on again - in fact, faster than ever because your new lighter body needs fewer calories to just stay alive than your heavier body did.

So my whole approach is different. Don’t bother to diet. Just make gradual healthy changes in your lifestyle - ones which you are happy to live with forever. Take up some fun activities. Find healthier recipes and foods you love. Learn to eat smaller portions and stop when you are satisfied but not stuffed. In short, learn to live like a slim person not one who is constantly thinking about having to lose weight. The weight will come off anyway without the diet and when it does you won’t have to do anything any different to stay the slim person you have gradually learned how to be.