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.

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 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….