Weight Loss and Nutrition - What Should You Eat?

You have to eat enough food if you want to lose weight. Sounds exactly the opposite of what it should be, but believe me – that’s how it is. If you cut calories drastically and skip meals, your body will hang onto all your fat stores and burn muscle tissue instead. You really, really don’t want this to happen! Muscle is your body’s fat-burning furnace; the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn – even when you’re sitting watching TV.

Besides, if you don’t eat enough, you’ll feel weak, listless and miserable (and hungry!) and not have the energy to exercise, which is the other essential half of the weight-loss equation.

So what we need to look at is cutting down on some of the unnecessary calories – the junk-and-cookies part of your daily intake – and adding in more calories that are nutritious, filling and healthy.
If you can’t resist chocolate and potato chips, don’t have them in the house. Buy 1 treat a week, look forward to it and enjoy every bite.

You should be eating 3 meals a day, with 2 small snacks in between. This will keep your blood sugar levels steady and your body will release fat to make up any calorie deficit – exactly what we want.
Each meal should ideally contain protein, carbohydrates and some “good” fats i.e unsaturated. I’ve drawn you up a quick list of ideas:

Protein: Chicken/turkey (no skin)/lean red meat (once or twice a week)/fish/eggs/cheese/lentils and pulses. A portion is the size of your palm, (without fingers), 2 eggs or a matchbox size piece of cheese.

Carbs: Granary/wholemeal bread (Please not white!), brown or basmati rice, potatoes with skin on, brown pasta, beans, oats. A portion is 1 slice of bread or a fist-sized amount of rice, pasta or 1 medium spud.

Veg: All kinds, including salad stuff. Try to eat 3 – 5 portions a day. A portion is 2 – 3 tablespoons cooked veg, or a bowl of salad, or a handful of cherry tomatoes – you get the idea. Eat as much veg as you want. Darker coloured veg contain more vitamins and antioxidants (protect against free radicals implicated in some cancers).

Fruit: All kinds. 2 – 4 portions a day. A portion is 1 medium sized piece of fruit (apple), 2 small pieces (satsumas, plums), half a grapefruit and so on. Vary it; try to eat a rainbow of colours every day! Dried fruit is a good snack, but keep portions small.

Fat: Small amounts of fat are essential for the absorption of vitamins A,D,E,K. Avoid any fats that are solid at room temperature; they are saturated fats. Go for small amounts of olive oil, sunflower, rapeseed. Eat oily fish (salmon, mackerel, sardines, fresh tuna) 2/3 times a week and have a handful of unsalted nuts twice a week.

Read labels on pre-prepared meals and avoid anything with “E” numbers, hydrogenated or trans-fatty acids like the plague. Including margarine; I’d rather you had a bit of butter!

If you must eat ready meals, go for good ones like M&S or Waitrose (in the UK) and aim to avoid food in creamy sauces; go for tomato-based ones instead.

So, here’s a rough idea for a day’s eating. Feel free to substitute; you don’t have to eat anything you detest!

Breakfast: 2 slices granary toast or 2 shredded wheat, semiskim milk. Or porridge. Wonderful stuff!
Midmorning: Apple or banana

Lunch: Mixed salad with ham or chicken, or similar in a sandwich, or baked beans on granary toast. Low fat yoghurt.

Mid-afternoon: Portion of fruit. If you are peckish, have some wholegrain crispbread or oatcakes.

Dinner: Grilled salmon, veg, rice. Fresh fruit salad.

If you are craving sweet stuff, try having a few dates or dried figs. Or a couple of squares of dark chocolate. NOT the whole bar.

This gives you a rough outline of what you should be eating. You should never feel madly hungry – eat whenever you feel genuine hunger and drink lots of water as sometimes thirst is interpreted by the brain as hunger. The most important thing is to be honest with yourself. If you want to eat something “naughty”, then do so – just don’t fool yourself that it doesn’t count!


Alcohol

You know what I’m going to say! There is no food value at all in alcohol, so it goes straight into fat stores (via the brain!). A small glass of wine contains around 125 calories. I’m not saying cut it out altogether – hey, life has to be worth living - but make informed choices about drinking and remember that alcohol enhances appetite and ruins willpower.

A man requires roughly 2500 calories a day to function (more if a lot of exertion is involved). A woman requires 2000. To lose fat steadily, safely and long-term, you should be consuming around 300 calories a day less than that, and doing around 30 minutes of exercise, which will burn 200 cals. This creates a calorie deficit of 500 cals a day, 3500 in a week. That’s 1lb of fat burnt off, with not a great deal of disruption to your daily life. And you will have started to tone your muscles by exercising, as well as strengthening your heart and lungs and reducing your risk of ill-health.

Carol J Bartram
(Personal Trainer, Pilates Instructor & Massage Therapist)

Weight Loss and Nutrition

How To Lose Weight Fast

Before we start let me ask you a question. Why do you want to lose weight fast?

Is it because you've been asked to a wedding and you want to shed 40 lbs to get into that slinky dress? Or have you woken up, looked in the mirror and suddenly realised you’re slightly more – er – cuddly, shall we say? – than you ought to be?

Or is it because you’re going on holiday and don't want to look like a beached whale in your bikini?

There are a thousand-and-one scenarios where we suddenly realise just how overweight and unfit we are, and the same number of reasons why we want to lose all that extra fat.

But slow down a minute. Before you start looking for websites on “How to Lose 10lbs in 4 days” or similar (and yes, they are out there), stop and have a think and read the rest of this article.

We all realise that being overweight isn’t ideal. It’s bad for our health, our self esteem and the future of the human race. I definitely agree with you there; I’m a Personal Trainer and my job is to help people like you achieve their health and fitness goals on a daily basis.

But trying to lose weight fast is downright dangerous. Yes, I’ll say it again. DANGEROUS. Advice on losing weight fast should carry a great big warning on it, like cigarettes; HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH. Attempting to lose weight fast is the worst possible thing you could do to your body and will destroy any chance you have of reaching your desired weight and shape.

I have never understood why otherwise sane and intelligent people go down this route. It has probably taken you years and years to pack on the extra weight you are carrying right now. How on Earth do you think you can get it off in a few weeks or months? Nature doesn’t work like that, or we’d all have died millennia ago! You just can’t lose weight fast. Quick weight loss equals even quicker weight gain a short time later. We all know of people who have lost large amounts of weight quickly. We all admire them and wish we could be like them. How many of them 6 months or a year later have kept the weight off? Of all the people I know who’ve tried it, precisely none. Zip. Zilch.

The human body does not like rapid weight loss – or rapid change of any kind, for that matter. Inside, we’re still prehistoric. The body is designed to keep you alive for as long as possible on as little food as possible. We haven’t been programmed to cope with the opposite – too much food, too easy to get!

There are many reasons why rapid weight loss doesn't work. Here are some of them:

1. Reducing calorie intake beyond a certain point triggers the body’s "You’re starving me - there must be a famine" mode. Our minds have developed much faster than our bodies. The primitive part of our system that deals with survival doesn't care that we are surrounded by food. The only thing it knows is that it is being starved. This triggers defensive measures that (in its limited view of the world) will ensure survival of the body. Your metabolism – your body’s fat-burning engine - slows down, so you burn fewer calories. Which is the exact opposite of what we really want! Your system will release hormone “messages” which will cause you to feel hungry all the time. It will also (and this one is the real killer) cause you to store the very fat you need to get rid of and burn off the muscle tissue you need to keep! Muscle tissue is an expensive resource. It burns more calories than almost anything else so it must be sacrificed at all costs, as far as your “starving” body is concerned. Having muscle tissue means you burn calories even when you’re not doing anything. Having fat instead burns barely any calories at all. You are ruining your body’s fat-burning capability – the very thing you absolutely need if you’re going to get rid of the fat! Now, how insane is that?
    
2. In their quest to lose weight fast, some people will take drugs to try and speed things up. This is not the best idea in the world! Not only do you get all the bad points of (1) but you are artificially speeding up your metabolism. What do you think will happen once you stop taking the drugs? Yup, rapid weight gain! On top of that, these drugs can have nasty side effects and won’t do your immune system any good.

Bottom line is, if you want to feel ill, have no energy, lose muscle, lower your body’s defences by damaging your immune system and look flabby even after you've lost weight (because you have no muscles to tone), then by all means crash diet. Go ahead and try to live on bananas, cabbage soup, camel dung or whatever the latest “miracle” diet is.

If, on the other hand, you want to actually reach your fat loss target you need a totally different approach. Safe and effective weight loss is not rocket science. It just isn’t “instant”. And there are a few rules:

• Burn (use) more calories than you take and you’ll shed fat.
• Eat more healthily. Just cutting out most of the junk food will make a difference.
• Take regular exercise. 15 – 20 minutes 4 times a week is manageable.
• Accept 1-2 lb a week fat loss and be pleased. If you do it right, it will all be fat.
• Make small changes to your eating habits, but maintain them over the long term. (Forever!)
• Adjust your expectations. Imagine how you'll look in a year, not by next Tuesday and be happy in the knowledge that, if you follow this advice, you will be one of the few who will be successful. Permission to be smug, Sir!

So which is it to be? Fast weight loss and yo-yo dieting, drugs, gimmicks and hype or slow, steady, safe and sustainable fat loss that leaves you feeling and looking great and, more importantly, actually WORKS.

So you've read this far and I thank you for your valuable time, but now it's time to CHOOSE. You could click off this site and just pretend you never read this (9 out of 10 will do just that), or you could accept the truth of what I say and say YES to slow and sure.

Remember the old fable of “The Hare and The Tortoise”? Who came through in the end?

To all the Tortoises out there – I salute you! You'll whip the Hares; it will just take a little bit longer!

If you would like to read more common sense (and truthful) articles like this one, please visit my  Weight Loss Articles page.

All the best, and good luck to you,

Carol J Bartram
(Personal Trainer, Pilates Instructor & Massage Therapist)

How To Lose Weight Fast

How To Lose Fat

“How can I lose this fat?” is the question I’m asked time after time by both regular and prospective clients. Some say it in an interested, conversational tone, some with utter despair in their voices. And I tell them that the “How” isn’t the issue. I can teach them how to eat and exercise to lose fat. And when to eat and exercise; and even what to eat and exercise with!

BUT (And this is a big but. Just one “t” on that.)
It’s all down to them. I can’t lose the weight for them. If I could, believe me, I’d be richer than Madonna and living in the Bahamas instead of on the cold, wet east coast of England.

Many of these clients come to me hoping for miracles – the miracle fat-loss pill, the miracle exercise program which will enable them to lose fat without breaking a sweat – and so on. And when I point out to them that  losing fat takes time, effort and – horror of horrors - willpower, their little faces fall a mile. One client even offered me more money, in the hope that my line was a sales gimmick! In this world of today you can pay someone to do most things for you. With a few notable exceptions; dying, and losing weight.

Let’s face it, they already knew how to lose weight. And so do I, and so do you. Eat less, exercise more. That’s it.
So why haven’t you done it?
Or, if you have lost a lot of weight in the past, how come you put it all back on again??
There’s one simple answer to those questions: Your intent.
.
That’s right – your state of mind in approaching weight loss is absolutely essential. If you are not in the right mindset, you will fail. It may take a week or ten weeks, but your failure is as inevitable as rain in England in July. Getting into the right mental attitude is the most important thing that I – or any other exercise professional – can teach you. Your mind can move mountains – we’re just asking to shift a few pounds here! It is you who has to find the self-discipline to do the work to lose the weight – not your family or your friends; not your Personal Trainer or your boss or your dog (although he can help). You and you alone.

You need to be ready to put in a little time, effort and self-discipline. And if you are not prepared to put these three things in, then I cannot help you. Only your intent and commitment will make this work for you.
Any diet and exercise program will work if you stick to it in the long run. You failed in the past because you gave up – how many times? Once, twice maybe? For some people hundreds of times! You lost the will to continue – made excuses that you just couldn’t fit 10 minutes of exercise into your day – had to have a second slice of cake because you’d had a rough week. And that was it. Instead of putting it behind you and getting back on track, you sat down discouraged and gave up altogether. Sound familiar?

Never forget - mind and body work together. You have to really want this change in your life in order to make it happen.
So here are some pointers to help you get into the right frame of mind: -

1.  Find a compelling reason why you want to lose weight. It has to be your reason, not your partner’s or anyone else’s reason. For example, losing weight to get into that little black dress, or to play football with the kids, or even just to feel like you used to feel – all good reasons. Think “If I was my ideal weight I could…”
    
2. Imagine what it would be like if you were at your goal weight right now. Imagine how you’d look and feel – think of what you’d do, where you’d go. Make these images real – you have to be the image, really feel it, sense it, enjoy it…are you there yet? This may sound like a silly game for children, but believe me; if you can’t imagine or pretend that you are your ideal size and weight, how do you ever hope to get there?
    
3. Visualise your mind as a guided missile. Your intention is the fuel, and your image of your goal weight is your target – because without a target, how is your missile going to get anywhere? It will just fly round in circles until it runs out of fuel and drops out of the sky. And thus another weight loss attempt is consigned to the rubbish heap!

Never forget that, every time you try a diet and fail, you are sending your mind a negative message. You weaken your belief in yourself – which makes the next attempt even more likely to fail. You convince yourself that you cannot do it and, deep down, you feel that it is absolutely pointless even trying, creating an endless vicious circle.

I once had a new client say to me that she’d tried “everything” in her attempts to lose weight.

“Everything??” I queried, raising one eyebrow in a very Spock-like manner, “How many things have you tried? A hundred?”
“Well, no..”
“Okay then, fifty?”
“Er, no.”

This continued until she admitted that she’d actually only tried a couple of things – and then it came out that she’d only consulted me because it was her husband who’d suggested she lose some weight. Doomed to failure before she even started. She would have attended her first few Personal Training sessions, taken no notice of my advice, and then cancelled  because PT wasn’t “working” for her. Well, not on my watch, Ma’am! I gave her all her money back and suggested she attempt to lose the husband instead.

Which takes us back to Point #1 above. Find the right reason to lose the fat – make yourself really want it, and you’re well on your way!

So in the next few days I want you to:-
 

• Write down your compelling reasons for wanting to lose weight.
   
• Set aside 5 minutes a day where you sit down in a quiet, safe place and allow yourself to imagine you’ve reached that weight loss goal – make it real, remember?
   
• Then set your intent and do something about it. Start by reading Parts 2 and 3 of this article!

Carol J Bartram
(Personal Trainer, Pilates Instructor & Massage Therapist)

How To Lose Fat - Part 1

Is There a Virus that's Making us Fat?

There is a theory that a virus exists that can make us fat, according to a study published in the International Journal of Obesity.

Right now the research is still in the early stages, but the director of the Obetech Obesity Research Centre, Richard Atkinson M.D believes that the culprit may be Human adenovirus-36 (Ad-36).

According to Atkinson, the virus works by turning adult stem cells into fat cells in those people who carry it.

Studies have found that those who tested positive for the virus had an average BMI significantly higher than those who were clear - 9 points higher, in fact. That means that an individual with a healthy BMI of 24 would increase to a BMI of 33 if they had Ad-36 - taking them into the category of Obese.
In addition, obese people were around 3 times more likely to have contracted the virus then those who were at their correct weight.

But it's not all gloomy news. Ad-36 is quite rare and most healthy people who have an acceptable BMI (18 - 25) are unlikely to catch it. Says Atkinson, "Most people will have immunity to the virus as it's similar to the ones that cause colds - and a healthy immune system will have developed the appropriate antibodies to deal with it. Less than 20% of the population are likely to be affected, and medications are being developed to counteract the effects of the virus."

So there you have it. The best way to stay out of the 20% who may be vulnerable to the Fat Virus is to eat a healthy, balanced diet and take regular exercise. The reasons we get fat still remain the same as they always were; namely poor eating habits, too many takeouts, not enough fruit and veg and a largely sedentary lifestyle.

You have been warned!

 

Carol J Bartram
 

Article

Is There a Virus Making Us Fat 

Are You Overweight?

As a rule of thumb, you are overweight if your bodyweight is excessive for your height (unless you are a champion bodybuilder or World's Strongest Man, then the rule changes).

Usually you can tell just by looking at yourself in the mirror - be honest! Anything that wobbles when you move (apart from the obvious) is excess to your body's requirements.
Body Mass Index can be calculated here. If this is over 25, you are overweight, less than 18 is underweight - which is also not good. Over 30 is obese, over 40 is morbidly obese and will most definitely shorten your life.

10 things to do TODAY if you are overweight

• Make a decision to do something about it. Find an unflattering photo of yourself at this weight and stick it on the fridge door. You will see it every time you are about to raid the fridge. Simple, but effective.
   
• Go through your cupboards and take out  all the unhealthy items. This includes candy, chocolate, potato chips and snacks, donuts, cakes, cookies, soda and so on. Don't forget the Ben & Jerry's in the freezer!
   
• Now put back in a small amount of the things you really can't live without - we're making small changes here, remember. Try to give up too much too soon and it'll end in tears.
• Give the rest away to a skinny friend, or donate it to a shelter for the homeless.
   
• Get rid of anything "family-sized". From now on, it's minimum size treats.
   
• Put all that you've kept in 1 cupboard and close the door firmly. This way, you won't open a cupboard looking for Baked Beans and be caught unawares by a Supersize bag of M&Ms when you're feeling peckish and vulnerable.
   
• Set yourself an attainable short-term weight loss target such as "I will lose 1lb by this time next week." Write it down. This is important.
   
• Weigh yourself, measure your waist and hips and write that down as well. From now on, you will only weigh yourself once a week, at the same time, wearing minimum clothing. Your waist and hips are re-measured monthly. The reason for not weighing yourself every day is because bodyweight changes on a daily basis due to fluid intake and with ladies, time of the month. True weight loss (fat loss) is gradual, so once a week is ideal.
   
• Take the time now to plan your meals for the week. Write it up where you can see it - a whiteboard in the kitchen is ideal. You should be eating 3 meals a day, with 2 small snacks in between. That way, you should never feel starving hungry, and your blood sugar levels will stay steady, preventing you from feeling weak and shaky.
   
• If you normally are at work all day, plan to take a healthy lunch with you 2 or 3 days. It's much easier not to be tempted to go to McDonalds when you've taken the trouble to make a pack-up. Even if your mornings are manic, it only takes 5 minutes to make a ham salad sandwich in wholewheat and pop it in a coolbag with a couple pieces fruit and a carton of fresh juice. Easy!
   
• If you normally eat a lot of takeouts each week, make a decision to have only one, and plan which night you'll have it. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail!
   
• Go to the store and buy fresh food for the week. Lots of salad items, different kinds of fresh fruit and veg, wholewheat or granary bread, pasta, rice. Lean meat, canned fish, soup, eggs. The idea is to always have the ingredients available to make a quick, healthy lowfat meal or snack. Eat before you go shopping, then you won't be tempted by the freshly-baked Danish!

Congratulations!

If you've done these 10 things today, you've made a big step in the right direction. The secret to successful weight loss and weight management is small changes to your lifestyle that you can maintain.
Each step may seem insignificant, but look back in 3 months or so and you'll see how far you've come and how well you've done!
 

All the best,

Carol J Bartram

Article

Are You Overweight?