I’d have to say that losing body fat is harder for me now than it has ever been, I’m drinking my water, exercising and eating pretty well – its working but its slow. Then slow is what I wanted, well that’s to say I want changes I can make and live with for a lifetime. Here are what I think are among the best bits of advice I’ve received …
- Reduce high calorie, low nutrient food, yes you’d think that went without saying but have you ever worked with a woman on a diet who can eat an entire box of weight watchers lamingtons before lunch because they are low points …. go figure. It has got to be common sense to cut out the processed, trans-fat and chemical crammed stuff and focus on eating natural fruit, non starchy vegetables, yogurt, cheese, meat and fish. The fibre in a natural diet will also help improve blood sugar control, not to mention keep your digestive tract healthier.
- Read labels. Those number you see on the packaging next to colourings, flavourings, thickening and preservatives – your body doesn’t actually need those and for a large portion of the population your body REALLY doesn’t want them and is sending you messages to tell you that. I only really noticed the message when I cut out the numbers from my food and realised how good I felt. Now I appreciate not everyone is impacted the same way but then leaving them out won’t do any harm either.
- Cut carbs. No I don’t mean cut vegetables and fruit from your diet I now eat even more of those but avoiding the low nutrient processed carbs has done wonders for me. Sugar, bread, white rice and potato have limited nutrient value so I would rather have extra meat, fish and salad veg. If you want to reduce your carb intake watch out for the low fat craze, most reduced fat items you pick up in the supermarket replace the fat with sugar and chemical flavours and thickeners. I now prefer to have a little of the full fat version then the tampered with alternative.
- Eat foods that help you lose weight. There really are food that are virtually neutral or even negative in their calorie value as your body is going to take up similar amounts of energy in processing them. A lot of green salad vegetables comes into this category. Add these to a diet of lean protein and healthy fats and your body is primed to drop excess body fat.
- Drink water, yes it really is true, your body needs it to function effectively. Read more here.
- Decrease alcohol. Its not voodoo magic and a glass or two now and again won’t stop you being healthy or losing weight but alcohol is empty calories which just means your body doesn’t derive any nutrients it needs from the alcohol and it will use the alcohol energy first before it uses uses energy already stored for use in the body or metabolising fat to use as energy. So it will slow down your fat loss as a result.
- Exercise. Cardio exercise uses the energy stored as glycogen in the body and when energy supply is insufficient forces the body to go metabolise some fat to use as backup, it keeps your heart healthy by making it work regularly under different load levels and works the big muscles in the body. The adage use it or lose it really is true, if you don’t exercise regularly you fitness level and flexibility will decline with age. Weight bearing or resistance exercise is equally important, whether you use weights, your own body weight or routines such as pilates and yoga you need to put muscles under repetitive load to maintain them. The good news is that muscle requires more energy to maintain than fat your your basal metabolic rate will increase once you start rebuilding your lean body mass. Again this is particularly important as muscle will naturally decline with age unless you actively work to keep rebuilding it. There is further evidence that resistance exercise helps ward off osteoporosis and mental decline in older generations.
- Be aware of your emotions. Eating does not make me happy nor does it make the boss less grumpy and reduce my stress levels at work, not sure why I thought it did but somewhere in my neuro programming in the past I got that muddled up and it is taking a bit to reverse it.
- Eat when you are hungry. How good is it to know you can lose weight without having to be hungry, the trade off is you need to learn to listen to your body, if you are going to know when you are hungry and eat, you also need to learn to know when you are no longer hungry and stop. Interesting point that stuffed, can’t move, couldn’t eat another bite feeling is not what we are aiming for. I also needed to eliminate habit snacking like I had an association between going to the movies and eating an ice cream in the movie, even if I had just eaten and wasn’t in the slightest hungry.
- Avoid sabotage. You love you family and friends and they love you but everyone is going to have a reaction and not everyone is going to support your efforts. You need to have a plan in place to deal with the friend who will be hurt if you don’t try her triple decker, double cream chocolate gateaux or the one who heard that people die on the nutrition plan you are on, or those that just need to tell you because no one else will that you are looking a bit peaky after losing all that weight.
