No More Diets

I usually eat only lunch or dinner - I feel because of my size I shouldn’t be eating much at all. But I have since learned that I have put my body into starvation mode. However I am still struggling with the concept of three meals a day. Do you have any advice?

The best way to keep your metabolism stoked and burning food at a high rate is to eat little and often.

By eating only twice a day you are saying to your body “I’d better conserve as much energy as possible, because it doesn’t look as if any more food is coming my way”.

And when you do eventually eat, your body will be saying “Food at last. Better hold onto this in case the next lot is a long time coming just as it was yesterday and the day before”.

If you want to lose weight I recommend 5 or 6 mini meals a day if you can possibly fit that into your lifestyle. i have to admit, it’s not for everyone. If your style is to eat large meals with others at lunch and dinner then this would not be easy to do, but work towards a compromise but including some of the ideas below.

• Always eat a healthy breakfast when you want to lose weight - so many studies have shown that it helps and this is even the case when it means you eat more calories in total! See a recent report confirming that breakfast helps you lose weight from the BBC.
• If you feel you can’t face breakfast right away, take something healthy to work and eat it as soon as you can face it.
• Don’t keep yourself going with coffee and tea. Keep yourself going with proper nutrition.
• Eat a small healthy snack mid morning - for example, an apple and 5 or 6 almonds
• If you take you lunch to work (a good idea when you want to lose weight) you can try eating part of it as your mid morning snack save part of it for the afternoon
• Always eat something healthy mid-afternoon so you do not over-eat at dinnertime
• Reduce portion sizes so that you are hungry within 2 to 3 hours of each meal. You should not be eating more than two fistfuls at a meal in terms of quantity with smaller snacks in between
• Eat the bulk of you food while you are most active - for most people this is during the day and not after 8pm.
• Reactivate your metabolism with exercise - if formal exercise is not for you then just keep as active as possible during the course of your normal life. Your metabolism does not know if you are at the gym or if you are cleaning your car but it does know if you have not moved from your seat for the last 3 hours.

I’m 33 years old, 5.2” inches and weigh 75 kg (165lbs) Over the last 2 years I’ve put on 10 kg. Before that I was going to the gym but can’t go regularly any more. Can you help and guide me with what to do?

You know how easy it is to put on 5kgs (11lb) over a year?

Dead easy!

If you eat just 105 calories a day more than you use then there’s your 5kgs. That’s just a couple of apples or a milky coffee too much. And if you were exercising 3 times a week at the gym and stopped going that could explain your weight gain too.

It’s generally not the odd blow out meal or lack of marathon running which affects our weight so much as the daily cookie too many, the daily walk too few.

I’m not that fond of diets for lasting weight loss but I am very fond of gradually changing your habits so that you are eating healthier food and moving a bit more in your everyday life. That doesn’t need going to the gym. It just means climbing more stairs and taking fewer lifts or escalators. It means taking as many steps as possible rather than sitting down. It means putting more energy into everything you do. It also doesn’t mean eating rabbit food all the time but it does mean going easy on fatty or sugary foods and eating a smaller portions.

There’s such a fine line between weight gain and weight loss that just a few habits changed for the better can swing things back in the direction you want to go.

And if you decide to diet anyway - choose one you could live with (in a modified form) forever so that you are establishing long term good habits.

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.

I have read so many diets which all propose different calorie amounts. How many calories should I be eating to lose weight?

The simplest calculation for the number of calories you need to maintain your weight is to take your weight in pounds and multiply by 12. (Remember, there are 2.2lbs in a kilogram if you weight yourself in kilos.)

If you weigh 10 stone (or 140 pounds) that’s 1680 calories daily just to stay the same.

To safely lose weight, subtract no more than about 250 calories from that and then make sure you get active to the tune of 250 calories a day. That doesn’t have to be formal exercise - it can be doing gardening, housework, cycling or walking - anything active.

This will give you a 500 calorie a day deficit, and should result in you losing about a pound a week.

Actually I’m not that fond of calorie counting because it’s too easy to underestimate the amount you are eating or to forget to add something in and too easy to overestimate the number of calories you are burning. And even if you manage to lose weight by being meticulous in your calculations, who wants to keep calorie counting forever? When you stop counting the weight piles back on.

To my mind it’s better to forget about counting calories and to train yourself to eat sensible portions of delicious healthy food and to change how you interact with food so that you have good habits and a slim body for the rest of your life - and so that’s what I teach in my 8 week weight loss coaching program.

Does it make a difference what time of day you eat?

From a pure physical point of view it doesn’t really make much difference when you eat calories - a calorie is a calorie. I have never seen any evidence worth writing home about that says 200 calories eaten at midday are different from 200 calories eaten at midnight.

If you’re talking about a whole day’s food however, it does make sense to spread your calories throughout the day - as this keeps your metabolism firing on all cylinders burning up your food and prevents you getting over-hungry and shovelling down whatever is to hand.

And eating a good breakfast has long been thought to prevent unhealthy snacking mid-morning and is one of the factors that have been shown to help people who have lost weight stay at their target weight.

But it’s really a matter for personal choice. Do you find you eat more or less overall by eating at particular times of the day? Let that be your guide. If you can’t face breakfast, take a healthy snack with you if you have to go out so you’re not tempted by junk mid-morning. If you eat too much at dinner and go to bed uncomfortable if you eat late then eat your dinner earlier and don’t eat anything after 7pm. It’s just a case of seeing what works for your own circumstances and getting into good habits.

Salad upsets my stomach, what sort of diet do I do?

Nearly all traditional diets prescribe lots of salad. In many ways, it’s the perfect diet food. It has very few calories and quite a lot of bulk - although I do find that without some protein and slow-release carbs with your salad the full feeling tends not to last too long. And you have to be careful with dressings too - if you add more than a tablespoon (15ml) of anything the perfect dieter’s meal turns into a dieter’s nightmare. Salads in restaurants are a particular problem.

Whether it’s a good salad or a bad salad, doesn’t matter to you though. If salad doesn’t agree with you (or you hate salad) don’t eat it!

This probably counts out 90% or more of the diet books on the market which have a rigid meal plan.

I guess, what you’re asking me is what do you eat instead to get the low calorie/high vitamin combination that salads provide. The simplest thing is to replace salad with cooked vegetables (which are gentler on your stomach) and eat a little fruit too so that you get a good helping of vitamins and minerals that the salad would give you without going overboard on the calories.

If you don’t like or can’t eat too many cooked vegetables then you have to get a little creative with them. You may find that you tolerate them better if they are pureed or incorporated into soup or pasta sauce and this can go a long way towards getting your healthy quota of 5 portions for the day.

The thing is you don’t need any particular food or food combination to lose weight - you just have to avoid eating too much of whatever you choose. Particular food groups are essential for good health though and this includes fruit and vegetables. It’s just not necessary to eat them in the form of salad.

I don’t recommend any particular diet - diets are a temporary thing that may work for a time - but weight just piles back on when you return to “normal” eating. I recommend that you gradually change your eating habits step by step until you are eating (and enjoying) modest portions of healthy delicious foods every day (with the occasional splurge on less healthy food, which is good for the soul) and that you eat that way for the rest of your life.

And this works salad or no salad.

How can I lose weight without giving up junk food?

I really wonder about this question but more about that in a moment.

First I’ll say that it’s perfectly possible to lose weight without giving up junk food. You can either

a) reduce your portion sizes so that you are eating fewer calories than you need

This means looking at how many calories you need to lose weight and then seeing how much of your normal foods will give you that requirement.

Advantage - you don’t need to change your food choices at all
Disadvantage - junk foods are high in calories so you will be able to eat very little in terms of quantity and will be hungry all the time

or you can

b) reduce the amount and frequency of your junk food eating

With this option you eat junk food less often than you used to, for example, allowing yourself one cheat day a week or one treat a day or whatever.

Advantage - you eat healthily most of the time
Disadvantage - you feel deprived during the times when you are not having your fix

Actually I recommend neither. Why is that? - after all anyone who know me knows that I like chocolate and I certainly haven’t given it up! I don’t like the first suggestion because before long you will give in to real physical (and potentially sugar-induced) hunger and I don’t like the second because imposes rules and restrictions on you which will probably make you feel deprived and rebel in the end.

What worries me however is where the question is coming from.

I normally get asked - how can I give up this or that unhealthy habit….not how can I keep on wrecking my health and still look good.

As a weight loss coach, I’d really want to explore where that drive to keep up something that does you harm comes from. If it’s just a casual question about wanting to eat the odd cookie now and again - then that’s fine - no need to go ” completely cookieless” as part of a healthy diet.

But if you are wanting to feed yourself junk all the time then that is generally more than a food preference issue but a self-esteem issue. If you love and care for yourself in a healthy way, then you want to give yourself the best possible nourishment and find the ways to make that nourishment taste good too.

Now why do you not want that for yourself? Just something to think about….

How Do I Lose 15kgs?

If you have weight to lose - whether it’s 10lbs or a hundred - there’s only one way to do it - one ounce or one gram at a time.

It’s all about creating a deficit in the calories you eat compared to the calories you use up each day. If you eat 100 calories less than you use every day you will lose a pound of fat in 35 days - and it will take you 1155 days to lose 15kgs.

If you want to lose weight faster than that you need to do more - by eating fewer calories and moving more to create a greater deficit - just be aware that a deficit of more than 500 - 1000 calories a day is not recommended by most weight loss experts (and most recommend 500 giving a weight loss of 1lb a week). More than this and your metabolism tends to slow down.

Now you can create this deficit and lose weight the hard way by going on a strict diet and exercise regime and STICKING TO IT - you will find these types of weight loss programs in every book store and all over the internet. Look for one which suits your lifestyle and/or preferences so that you have the best possible chance of sticking with it.

I don’t like diets - although they may work for some and do a good job on a temporary basis.

I don’t like them simply because they don’t work forever. Unless there is a maintenance option, they don’t teach you to permanently modify your eating habits - and even when there is a maintenance option are you prepared to live with that kind of restriction forever?

In any case we tend to see diets as temporary. We go on a diet, and then we come off it and put all the weight back on by going back to “normal” eating and activity levels. At least the statistics show that 95% of us do - and they are not good odds.

What to do instead?

Examine the habits which made you 15kgs overweight. What do you do which slimmer friends do not? And what do they do which you don’t? What do you eat? How much? How often? What do you drink? How much? How often? What kind of exercises do you take? What are you doing differently to them? What do you need to change?

Gradually change your “fat habits” one by one at a rate which is comfortable for you. Change those which are easiest for you to change first before tackling the ones which are more difficult. Lose weight by starting to live a healthier lifestyle one small step at a time.

Even if you insist on dieting work on your habits too - each small habit you change permanently will reduce the rate of weight gain after you stop dieting.

What are the easy ways to lose weight and stay healthy?

The easy ways to lose weight are different for everyone because it depends on your eating and activity habits. Some things you can change quite happily and not care but other habits might be a big stretch for you.

In any case I would start to look for habits in your life that are keeping you overweight that you are reasonably happy to change. Think about what you are getting out of the habit and find a (lower-calorie or calorie-free) substitute. For example, a chocolate-chip cookie with your coffee might give you a feeling that you are treating yourself. Ask yourself what else you could do that would give you that same boost. Maybe you could drink your coffee from a special cup, have one square of luxury chocolate instead of the cookie and make it melt slowly in your mouth or have 10 minutes with your feet up and a good book while you drink your coffee. Your idea of a treat is your own but you can see the principle.

To lose weight easily make small changes like these to your habits one by one and over and over until they stick, substituting healthier habits for less healthy habits.

As long as each habit involves eating fewer calories or using more up by moving your body you will be going in the right direction. A deficit of just 100 calories a day (less than 2 cookies worth) adds up to 10lbs lost over a year. And what does it take to change a 2 cookie a day habit? Very little effort - all that takes is no longer buying cookies when you do the shopping.

Other ways?

Drink water instead of juice, soda, milky drinks or alcohol
Avoid the bread basket at a restaurant
Take lunch to work instead of eating out
Put a single tablespoon of dressing on your salad and toss well instead of pouring from the bottle
Eat 2 squares of chocolate instead of dessert
Have soup and dessert (instead of main course and dessert) when you must have dessert

Add your own in the comments