No More Diets

I have lost 10 lbs in the last 3 months. I am now at a healthy weight according to my BMI although I would like to lose 10-15 more. My question is, why when I look in mirror do I feel like I look exactly the same as I did when I was heavier? Especially my stomach feels like it sticks out and is untoned even though I have been doing stomach exercises.

Those BMI weights are just a guide for what makes a healthy weight for an average adult. Most of us look better in our clothes and feel better when we are slightly lighter than BMI (while the more muscular types will look good at a weight higher than the average BMI). It’s a case of finding out the best weight for you - the one that is both healthy and makes you feel good.

A 10lb weight loss spread over your whole body will have a subtle effect on your shape but is rarely enough to make a difference which is very noticeable to others unless you are already very slim.

Re your stomach - at times, your rounded tummy may be due to bloating, water retention or excess carbs. Just look at your tummy after a high carb meal versus a lighter one and see the difference. If you are still carrying excess fat however, it’s one of those facts of female life that it tends to gather in one place (and generally in the place where we don’t want it to gather). If you tend to put weight onto your stomach it will be the first place fat goes and the last place it will leave. This is where the final few pounds of effort will probably make a difference especially if you keep up the toning exercises. Make sure to always do toning exercises properly to really work your muscles deep down (and to avoid straining). Pilates and yoga are great for tummy firming if you would like to have a go at them.

Also don’t expect to get a completely flat stomach. Women’s tummies (especially if you have had kids) are usually a little curved - that’s quite natural - and just as lovely as the washboard flat stomach of a teenager.

How Fast Can I Lose Weight?

This can vary a great deal. Those who starve themselves and take strenuous exercise like those on shows like the Biggest Loser can drop a huge amount of weight quite quickly but of course they are doing that under very special circumstances and with medical supervision.

A lot depends on how much you have to lose. If you are very overweight you can lose weight faster than someone who only has a few pounds to go but much of the weight loss in the early weeks will be water.

The problem with losing weight too quickly is that

a) you tend to lose muscle along with the fat. Muscle is needed to keep your metabolism running high. Lose muscle and you will start and burn fewer calories each day (muscle burns calories even when you are not doing anything). Muscle is also needed to keep your body and your skin firm and taut. So you want to preserve your muscle tissue as much as possible. This is why the Biggest Loser contestants have to keep up their exercises - not just to burn calories but also to preserve their muscle tissue.

b) you tend to give yourself a weight loss program which you just can’t keep up and live a normal life. If you are trying to lose a pound a week you can do that without affecting your life too much. If you try to lose a lot more than that it’s very difficult to eat at parties and weddings, business trips or weekends away and much of your free time will be given over to exercise. Result - you will probably give up too soon to make any lasting difference to your weight.

c) you tend to put the weight back on much quicker. This is especially true if you have lost muscle (due to burning fewer calories) but it is also because you will probably not have learned a way of eating which you want to keep going for the rest of your life. Strict diets are usually followed only until you get to your target weight (if you keep them up at all). As soon as you go off your strict weight loss program, you will pile on the pounds if you go back to eating the food and the quantities which made you overweight in the first place. In fact over 95% of people do exactly this after reaching their target weight.

In my Diet Exit Program I show you a different approach to losing weight. The best way to lose weight is to make small gradual changes to your lifestyle and habits which you are prepared to live with for ever. These changes accumulate to make a significant difference to your weight without taking over your life. Result - you lose weight steadily pound by pound and stay slim forever.

What diet pills, if any, are safe and effective?

This one comes up very frequently in my inbox. I wrote about it on this Weight Loss Pills post too but it’s worth emphasizing.

There are a few pills your doctor might prescribe if you have shown that you have tried to lose weight in other ways, have not been able to and it is affecting your health, but most medical professionals are not too keen except as a last resort. All those pills, if they are going to do anything, have side effects too. In any case, it is only someone who has full knowledge of your medical history who could say that something was safe (or at least reasonably safe) for you.

I will say that most of the diet pill ads that pop through your letter box full of bright shiny promises or which you find on the internet are sheer rubbish. They make the ads sound so believable but they are basically lies. The experts do not exist if you look for them in medical circles. The before and after pictures are fake (either people lost weight by other means (sensible diet and exercise!) or there have even been cases of the “after” pictures being swapped round with the “before”). And you will find multiple ads for pills with various names doing the rounds all coming from the same few PO Boxes around the world. To add insult to injury they often send a diet and exercise sheet with the worthless pills even though they said that wasn’t necessary.

I tell you, I have seen it all in my time weight loss chocolate (!), lip gloss, patches you stick on your thighs and your feet and every kind of pill. I wouldn’t give any of them house room.

It stands to reason that if anything like this worked we would all know about it soon enough. News would spread like wildfire about this safe new drug which is helping people shed pounds. Do you think that would stay a secret for long? No, we’d all know about it.

My advice is that when you see such an ad - completely ignore it and get on with losing weight the safe way - with modest portions of good food and finding a way to get moving that you actually enjoy.

How do you stay motivated when you start to feel deprived of all the good-tasting stuff?

It really depends on how you are losing weight.

If you are following a weight loss program where you have rules where foods you love are forbidden then you can start to crave the good stuff more than you ever did before.

This takes iron will-power especially when the food you love is on offer in a restaurant or at a friend’s house. (You aren’t tempting yourself are you, I hope, by keeping the food around at home…?)

You may want to practice pausing at the moment you are tempted and remind yourself why you want to lose weight and what it means for you - run through the end result in your head - and then compare that with the momentary pleasure of the food.

But I tend to tackle this issue by working on removing the feeling of deprivation altogether.

In my program I have my clients tackle this problem by encouraging them to :-

a) eat the food they love, to buy the very best and to eat it in small portions, sitting down, very slowly, enjoying every moment. If you really taste the food, eat it when you are hungry and “know” you are consuming it - then a small amount is much more likely to satisfy you than if you stuff down a huge portion guiltily by the fridge.

b) find new healthy satisfying recipes and foods so that over time the food they love and the food that does them good get closer together. Healthy food does not have to be wall to wall salad and cottage cheese - there are loads of fantastic real food dishes which taste great, fill you up and satisfy your hunger for the good things in life so that you’d never know you were trying to lose weight.

These two approaches take away every sense of deprivation - the sort of diet mentality where you can’t have this and you can’t have that … until you come off the diet, eat it all again (in large amounts) and put the weight back on.

I follow my diet exactly and I can’t seem to lose any weight. What could be wrong? (Weight watchers core and SBD)

There are a few things which could be wrong here because, normally, if you have the will power (though few of us have) to follow a diet exactly you SHOULD lose weight.

I am a bit concerned that you find it necessary to stick to two plans. Is that even possible? Assuming that SBD is South Beach Diet can these diets even work together? Why not just concentrate on one if you’re going to diet? Because as I say both have been known to work if you stick to them to the letter. (My problem with diets is that even if you stick to them while you lose weight most of us can’t or won’t stick with them forever and you just gain the weight back unless you change your habits).

The other thing I need to ask (because it’s all too easy to avoid being honest with ourselves) - are you really sticking to your diet exactly? to every dish? to every amount/portion size (by measuring not guesswork)? to every exercise session etc? A little slip here and there doesn’t seem like much but it may be the difference between losing weight and not.

But if you are following your diet exactly and not losing weight then it may be that

a) you have not got much weight to lose and so your body is resistant to weight loss - it is much harder to lose weight if you are already around the normal weight range.

b) you have been on a very low calorie diet in the past and your metabolism is sluggish as a result - this is just your body’s way of protecting itself when you try to starve it

c) you have a slow metabolism due to a medical problem such as an underactive thyroid. Best to check this out with your doctor.

Only you can really know what applies in your circumstances - once you do you can take it from there.

Is there anything to help me lose weight without exercise as I’m in wheelchair?

While not wanting to put anyone off exercise (because it helps with weight issues in many ways both directly and indirectly) I have to say that, in my experience, it is usually eating too much food which is the main problem with weight management rather than the amount of exercise a person takes. And changing food habits which is the main key to losing weight.

I say that because when you gain weight it is not usually the lack of running or going to the gym that is to blame (after all you have to run more than a marathon to lose a single pound of fat). The problem is that it is too easy to swallow a pound of fat’s worth of calories (about 3500) without thinking about it. And even easier to let weight creep on little by little with 200 calories too much here and there.

With exercise many people get discouraged by how much physical effort they have to make to get results, and many others sabotage their exercise efforts too by “rewarding” themselves for all their hard work with more calories than they used up!

With healthy eating, portion control and eating less (small changes to your habits leading to bigger changes if necessary) you can often make a big difference to your weight with a lot less effort.

Of course, it always helps if you are active when you want to lose weight - every calorie you use up helps - but you can still lose weight even if you are not taking exercise. You just have to reduce the amount you eat accordingly.

But why not do what you can in terms of activity?

Think about what you CAN rather than what you can’t do. What range of movement do you have in your upper body for example?

There are some very fit wheelchair athletes around the world so being in a wheelchair does not in itself stop you getting fit and being active.

If it’s not actually that you hate exercise just that you don’t feel that you are able to do any because you are in a wheelchair then there are quite a few sites which might help you see things differently depending on what you are able to do of course (and what your inclination is).

Active wheelchair users enjoy a wide variety of sports including tennis, water-sports and Tae Kwon Do. Take a look at the pictures on this site “A celebration of wheels” and see that your limitations might not be as great as you thought.

Of course it depends on your whole physical picture. You may not be able to do those sports. You may not want to. You might have to build your upper body strength or lose a bit of weight first. It really depends on your circumstances and your preferences. If you decide you’d like to try something, be sure to speak to your doctor first about what is suitable for you.

What is the right pill to take to lose weight?

I’m afraid there’s only one answer to this. NO pill is the right pill to take. Short cuts are not the answer in losing weight - not if you value your health and looks. The only answer to losing weight and staying slim is changing your lifestyle into a healthier happier one and sticking with it for life.

I have had so many heartbreaking stories from people who believed the miracle pill adverts that popped through their letter boxes, lost their hard-earned pennies and ended up heavier than ever. (In fact some people so believe the ads that they eat more in anticipation of the miracle that is about to transform their body, thinking that they can now eat anything and it will all be taken care of).

Don’t get taken in by the scams and worthless pills being sold everywhere - or by the dangerous diet pills and banned substances being touted by websites. It is so not worth it, when you can eat delicious food, keep active and be gorgeous with your own efforts in a few weeks or months.

There are a few pills that doctors can legitimately prescribe but in general they are only available to those who have made an effort to lose weight and only work in any case with dietary restrictions. And who wants to take pills with potentially harmful side effects when the only side effect of good food and sensible exercise is feeling great.

Please look at your habits and see what you need to change and then gradually change them one at a time until they stick with you forever. It really is the only way.

I want to lose two stones (28lbs) in two months - how can I make that happen?

The short answer is that to lose 28lbs of fat you need to eat 98,000 fewer calories than you use in activity during that time - which is pretty nigh on impossible if you want to lead a normal life. That’s 1750 fewer calories than you need every day for 8 weeks! Given that average calorie needs are around the 2000 mark - you can see that it is not going to happen.

Not only that but by dieting to that extent, you would not be taking in vital nutrients and you would be putting your body and metabolism into starvation (fat conservation) mode which might affect you for some time to come - meaning that when you return to normal eating you will pile weight back on faster than ever.

The maximum you should set out to lose is 2lbs a week so you might realistically (and healthily) get half-way there and even then only if you make a huge effort to change your eating and activity habits.

You may see TV shows like The Biggest Loser where people lose more than 2lbs, but the contestants generally

a) have a huge amount to lose in the first place and the more you weigh the easier it is to lose a number of pounds in a week(a lot of that weight loss is water rather than fat). If you are less than 30lbs overweight it is more difficult to lose that much consistently.

b) undertake very low-calorie diets which are miserable as hell and not sustainable in the long term or even in the short term by anyone with a social life or even a normal life

c) exercise hard for long periods each day

If you want to lose weight AND KEEP IT OFF - I have to say that slow and steady wins the race. Change your habits one at a time into habits that you can live with for the rest of your life. Build success one step at a time and you’ll make permanent changes in your shape which will be with you for the rest of your life.

I don’t say this to discourage you - just to be realistic - I have seen time and time again when friends have lost weight on some “fantastic” new diet only to see the weight return with a vengeance because eating and activity habits weren’t changed to match their new slim body - they just went back to their usual pattern of eating once the diet was over.