A number of years ago when I was overweight and very unhealthy and I didn’t know there was a healthy way to lose weight. I thought that the only way for me to drop the excess weight was to dramatically cut my calories…

I remember one particular time I was living in London and I’d been following the famous Cabbage Soup Diet!

I was into my third day and I was waiting at the subway for my train home.

All of a sudden I came across incredibly dizzy and thought I was going to pass out, luckily for me my partner was right beside me and grabbed me just as I was going to nose dive the platform!

Not a good idea when a train is speeding into the station…

They sat me down on the nearest bench and that’s where stayed. It dawned on me pretty quickly why this had happened.

I’d been consuming around 500 – 600 calories for the past 3 days and my body just couldn’t take anymore. My partner came to the rescue once again and whipped out a snickers bar and had to almost force feed me.

Ah the days of unhealthy living how I don’t miss you!!

Unfortunately my ignorance meant that this cycle continued for a while, I continued to cut my calories because I was under the impression this would make me lose weight…

Truth is all it did was slow down my metabolism, so every time I went back to eat normally I’d put the weight back on and then some!

It wasn’t until I decided to enter the health & fitness industry that I finally understand, that by doing this on a regular basis my body would go into starvation mode when I cut my calories. Then when I started eating normally it would hold onto the food and store it as fat because it didn’t know when its next meal was coming.

I soon learnt that when you do this to your body it loses water and muscle mass which then slows your metabolism right down making it harder and harder for your body to lose bodyfat.

The more muscle you have, the higher your metabolism and the fastest you burn body fat…

It’s a win win situation if you ask me.

So, I hope that we are now agreed, in order for you to lose body fat you need to make sure that you’re eating the correct number of calories for your individual body.

I want you to know that healthy eating isn’t about nutrition trends and giving up the foods you love. It’s about feeling great from the inside out and discovering that you can have an abundance of energy if you just take care of your body.

Working out your total calories is extremely important in your success for a healthy lean body.

I always insist this when you are starting out and there are times when clients say that they “couldn’t possibly eat that amount of food each day, its impossible!”

But by following my proven advice they start to see the weight come off in a faster time period than they ever thought possible…

At the end of the day it’s about how many calories you consume on a daily basis and how many calories you burn off.
Nutrition is 80% of the battle when it comes to weight loss but there is also the 20% remaining which is the exercise part of the big picture. You must be willing to put in the work to achieve 100% success…

This is how you Workout your daily calorie allowance ->

One very important factor on the nutrition side is working out your daily calorie requirements, and making sure that you stick to them every day.

Please use this formula to work out your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). This is the number of calories that your body burns everyday just to maintain you at minimum capacity. Meaning, whilst doing absolutely no activity what so ever.

655 + (9.6 x weight in kg) + (1.8 x height in cm) – (4.7 x age in yrs)

Example

You are 30 years old
You are 167.6 cm tall
You weigh 54.5 kg
BMR = 655 + 523 + 302 – 141 = 1339 calories

1 inch = 2.54cm and 1kg = 2.2 pounds

It’s important to take into account the workouts that you are doing so please use the table below to work out exactly how many calories you now need to consume each day.

Sedentary (not very active) BMR x 1.2
Light Activity (1-3 days of light activity) BMR x 1.375
Moderately Active (Exercise 3-5 days a week) BMR x 1.55
Very Active (Intense exercise 5-7 days a week) BMR x 1.725

The number you now have is to maintain your current weight and obviously you want to remove any excess weight that you are carrying around…

A pound of fat is 3500 calories. If you want to burn 2 pounds of fat a week you need to create a calorie deficit of 7000 calories per week and this is what you will be aiming for.

Now take 500 calories off your daily calorie allowance that you have just worked out, which will equate to 3500 calories over the week = 1 pound fat.

The remainder of the calories will be burnt off through exercise.

Right, now you know what calories you need each day start writing everything down in a food journal or creating a table on your computer that you can fill in each night.

Initially this may seem like a chore but it’s proven that people that keep a food journal have far better continual success rates becuase they know exactly what they are consuming each day.

Over time you will know how many calories a small chicken breast or a portion of brown rice contains you will also know how big the portions sizes should be without measuring them.

It will all become second nature to you. Measure and write down everything, including the foods that you ate, how they were prepared, total calories, protein, fat and carbohydrates each meal contained.

This is a proven way of creating new habits with your diet.

Make sure that when you measure your food it is raw as food that is cooked is far more calorie dense.

Another great trick is to make sure that you eat slowly. It takes 20 minutes for your brain to let your stomach know that you are full.

Savour your food, after all it doesn’t take 2 minutes to prepare nutritional wholesome food so you shouldn’t do it the injustice of wolfing it down in seconds.

As always I want you to eat only wholesome nutritious foods and organic where possible.

Follow this plan and you will have discovered the true way of how to lose weight by eating more food and will avoid the pitfalls of fad diets like I failed to way back when!

Let me know how you get on over the next few weeks with your weight loss and as always if you have any questions, please leave a comment on the blog or email me directly.

Stay fit, keep focused and feel fabulous!

Steph.

Author of The Flat Stomach Solution

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