No More Diets

How important is exercise to losing weight?


It’s pretty important because

1. it burns calories
2. it boosts your metabolism - even when you’re not exercising
3. it strengthens and firms your body making you look slimmer
4. it helps maintain skin tone and avoid loose skin problems
5. it makes you feel good - at least once you’ve finished your exercise for the day
6. it keeps you busy and away from the fridge!

and they are only the reasons that help with weight loss. There are of course many other reasons to exercise such as keeping you healthy, helping you sleep, boosting your energy levels etc.

All in all exercise is a GOOD THING.

Having said that it’s not ESSENTIAL in order to lose weight - it just helps. You CAN lose weight by diet alone. I don’t recommend it but you can.

What I will say is that if you are not keen on huffing and puffing away at the gym, vary what you think of as exercise. Find an activity (or activities) you enjoy instead such as dancing or swimming or ice skating and don’t let the dreaded exercise word cross your lips. Have fun instead of “exercising” while burning calories and losing weight

What is the best exercise for losing weight and for firming skin?

The best exercise for losing weight is one that you will actually do. You see I could prescribe a whole fat-burning program but if you hate it you will never do it (or at least you won’t do it more than a couple of weeks).

So just do more of the exercise and sports you love and you won’t go far wrong.

Changing your eating habits is by far more effective in losing weight in any case - you have to run more than a marathon to lose a pound of fat just with exercise!

If you are still at the stages of exploring what you like to do however, here are some pointers.

Losing weight by exercising basically boils down to this:-

• burn as many calories as possible with strenuous aerobic training
• keep burning calories after you finish your workout by using metabolism boosting activities such as interval training as part of your workout
• keep as active as possible during the course of the day outside formal exercise sessions - the more you’re on your feet the better
• include strength training in your routine as muscle burns fat even at rest and it will mean that you lose fat rather than muscle when you are dieting

To keep your skin as taut as possible as you lose, ensure you keep the underlying muscles strong - strength training will help here - and lose weight slowly to give your skin a chance to keep up with your body as it shrinks - especially if you have a lot to lose. For more about keeping skin firm see how to avoid loose skin after weight loss.

By the way, you’ll also find there’s no shortage of information out there on the web about exercising to lose weight.

But take care, some of it is plain misleading. See my article about the fat burning myth for more information on that.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.