Posts Tagged ‘lose weight’

Exercising to lose weight? Here’s why it may not be the BEST strategy.

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

In a classic study on weight loss, researchers discovered after six months:

  1. People who exercised 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week and did NOT change their diet lost two pounds. fit woman running
  2. People who reduced calories below their daily burn lost nearly 20 pounds.
  3. People who exercised AND reduced calories lost 23 pounds.

Why is that the case? Basic human physiology. To lose weight, your body must be forced to use its stored energy (meaning fat). This ONLY happens if you burn more calories than you consume. At my weight, 30 minutes of brisk walking burns about 150 calories. (The more you weigh, the more you burn.) If I do this 5 days a week without changing the number of calories I eat, it will take approximately 23 days to lose one pound. Here’s the math:

  • 3,500 calories are contained in one pound of body fat.  (Approximately 10% of fat tissue is water)
  • 3,500 calories per pound divided by 150 calories per day = 23.3 days.

If you’ve been gaining weight slowly over time, you may not lose anything but you may stop that creeping waistline. To lose one pound a week by just exercising, you’d have to walk for 2 hours, 7 days a week. (Yeah, you have time for that, right?) Compare this to shaving 500 calories from your diet each day. Do this and you’ll lose a pound every week. Add exercise and you’ll lose more, feel better, and get a myriad of other benefits. Bottom line, it’s time consuming to burn a considerable amount of calories through exercise.

If you don’t know how many calories your body burns, how do you know how much to eat? It turns out that most people don’t know. Surveys have shown that fewer than 2 out of 10 people don’t know how many calories they should eat to maintain their weight. And if we judge by results, most people are mismanaging their weight. (Seven out of 10 Americans are overweight or obese.) For the modern lifestyle of sedentary jobs and plentiful food, managing your weight is just like your balancing checkbook. You have to know what’s going in and out in order to avoid overdrafts and bounced checks. If you track your spending and deposit more than you spend, you save money. In the human body, when you put more in compared to what’s going out, you save calories, which turns into fat yet no one intends to become fat. For most people, it happens gradually over time. So to lose those extra pounds, reduce the calories you’re taking in, add exercise to speed up the process and to keep the weight off once you reach your goal. To find out how many calories you burn, take the Free Fitness Profile here www.dotfit.com. Tune in for next week’s blog where I share practical tips for reducing calories WITHOUT feeling hungry or deprived. Yes, it IS possible to lose weight without suffering.  YAY!

– Kat

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About Meal Replacements

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

Eat like the pros

You’ve probably been told or have at least heard that you should not skip meals. In fact, you may have heard you should eat 5-6 smaller meals a day. If done properly it is true that it can be helpful, and the trainers and fitness minded folks who generally give this advice definitely benefit from it. However, life is tough. There never seems to be enough hours in a day. You’re not even hungry half the time. Well, don’t despair. You want to know the trick that trainers use to get those 5-6 meals a day? Want to employ an aid that is associated with successfully losing more weight and keeping it off longer?

Meal Replacements! You know all of those bars and powdered shake mixes? That’s what I’m talking about. Despite the bewildering marketing, they are not magic, but they are a tremendous help in developing a real life, sustainable plan to lose weight, keep it off and/or perform your best.

Why do they work?

Some of the biggest problems people have today are

  • They don’t eat when they should, so hunger makes eating decisions (and not smart ones) for them
  • They eat with their eyes, clean their plate or eat portions that are way too big
  • They get in a hurry and grab whatever is convenient (usually junk food)

Meal replacements solve for common problems associated with trying to eat healthier and properly to lose weight. dotFIT meal replacement bars and shakes can

  • Provide a portion-controlled meal. There are no second helpings and the calories on the label are accurate!
  • Allow for ideal timing of calories and nutrition. Pre- and post-workout are great times for a meal replacement/snack as they give you the energy you need for a productive workout and help you recover better so you see the result sooner.
  • Provide quick and convenient nutrition in times of hunger instead of fast food, as a guiltless dessert and as a good-for- you snack.
  • Help to reduce overall calorie intake as a meal substitute or increase calories as nutritious snacks.
  • help you be prepared for life’s little unexpected hassles — a delayed flight, working late, no time to eat, off your normal schedule.

As a long time exerciser and trainer, I can tell you that people in my industry plan for the worst and make meal replacements a fact of life. I never go on a road trip or flight without a stash of bars in my bag (cheaper and way better tasting than airline/airport food). As a trainer working 10-12hr days, the only way to stay fed was to knock back a shake or two between clients. Only takes a minute and you are good to go for several hours. And you never have to worry about eating properly before and after a workout. Like the Cub Scout motto, always be prepared!

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Are you struggling to lose weight? Maybe it’s time for a change.

Monday, June 29th, 2009

Let’s get real. Gaining weight is way easier than losing it OR maintaining a healthy weight. And dieting stinks. Period.  No one intends to gain excess weight – it sort of happens over time if you don’t pay attention. And as a registered dietitian, personal trainer and working mom, I’ve come to realize that I have to make a conscious choice to maintain a healthy body weight – everyday.

Some days are easier than others (ladies you know what I mean) but it IS a choice. If I blame it on my overweight parents, negative relatives , my busy schedule, the economy, my finances, PMS or stress, I give up my power. And in the end, I give up on myself. I’m NOT doing that and neither should you.  When you take the time to nurture yourself, you’ll have more energy, you’ll be less stressed and you’ll be much more pleasant to be around. If you don’t do this, you’ll start to lose yourself, if you haven’t already. So maybe it’s time for a change. A change in the way you view yourself AND the way you approach weight loss.

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Proven Strategies for Weight Loss, Maintenance of Weight Loss, & Prevention of Weight Gain

Monday, June 8th, 2009

Dieting to lose weight is difficult at best, and generally ends in frustration for the average person. The majority of people gain most of the weight back within the first year (1,2). However, there are three strategies that have consistently proven to be effective in losing weight and maintaining the loss. When combining all three, a person may have the greatest chance of succeeding in accomplishing their desired weight loss (when compared to all current conventional methods of weight loss). When incorporating the three simple methods shown below during caloric restriction, the dieter should significantly reduce the overall effort generally associated with dieting. This allows the participant to more comfortably achieve and maintain the desired outcome.

1.    Self-weigh as often as possible and chart your progress

All studies investigating self-weighing as a weight control strategy have demonstrated that the more you weigh yourself the greater the weight loss , maintenance of the loss and prevention of weight gain (3,4,5,6).  Research also validated the reverse: the less frequently subjects weighed in, the lower their chance of success, and  those who checked their weight the least or never gained weight. Presumably by the time they would weigh themselves, if ever, it was too late to undo the damage without a significant lifestyle change, hence they continued to gain weight.

Figure 1 captures the significant results of regular weighing. More significant is the fact that as time went on the subjects who consistently weighed themselves continued to reduce their body mass index (BMI). This is completely opposite today’s norm.

Subjects weighing multiple times a week reported that any time weight was not trending in a desired direction they would make a simple adjustment. Sometimes eating slightly less (including skipping a meal) or an alteration in exercise would allow them to maintain an easy, steady course to the goal (7).  Additionally, the fact that one has to weigh each day (or most days) influences people to “think twice” about consuming something that might give them an undesirable weigh in.

12 Month Weighing Frequency

24 Month Weighing Frequency

Figure 1 shows the results of weighing frequency: the red bars were subjects attempting weight loss. The black bars were subjects attempting to prevent weight gain. These amazing results clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of regular weighing.

2.    Use of pharmacological agents (prescription drugs) to assist weight loss

The goal of incorporating a dietary supplement or drug into a weight loss program is to assist the participant in complying with the conditions necessary for weight reduction. In 19 studies, participants using weight loss drugs that prevent dietary fat/ calorie absorption and speed metabolism significantly increased total weight loss combined with a dietary/lifestyle regime than when compared to subjects using the dietary/lifestyle regime and placebo (8).  The treatment groups were, on average, three times more likely to lose more than five percent of their total body weight and four times more likely to maintain the weight loss after two years.

The problem with drug therapy is that prescription weight loss drugs should not be used for extended periods of time because they bring along known side effects. Therefore, the goal would be to find safe, natural alternatives in dietary supplements that have the same basic actions (increase calorie burning and block unneeded calories), thus potential to assist in weight loss (9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22). The dieter would cease supplementation once the weight goal is reached or when they have their daily routines under control to continue making progress without the supplements.

3.    Incorporating meal replacements into daily diet

In all studies, meal replacements (MR) have been shown to be an extremely effective aid to weight reduction (23) and in almost all cases more effective than conventional methods of dietary restrictions (24,25,26,27). Additionally, meal replacements have been shown to be just as effective as dietary restriction combined with pharmacological therapy. (8) And most importantly, continuous use of meal replacements may be the most effective means of all treatments when it comes to maintaining weight loss (1,28,29,30) (see figure 2).

Meal replacements are generally used to replace one or two meals a day and allow the individual complete freedom for their remaining daily calories.

Meal replacements allow

* Portion control: people generally attempt to consume meals to completion (31,32); therefore, meal portion size significantly impacts a person’s total calorie intake. (17,33) Overwhelming evidence validates that the smaller the portions, the fewer daily calories consumed33 and vice-versa – i.e. people tend to “eat with their eyes not their stomachs”. Use of portion controlled meals has proven to yield greater weight loss than conventional diet therapy alone. (34,35,36,37)
* Accurate calorie counts of total daily food intake when compared to having to estimate the calories of self-prepared or unmarked meals. (38)

Figure 2: In all six studies the groups using meal replacements (PMR) as part of their overall calorie intake lost significantly more weight than subjects using the reduced calorie diet (RCD) alone. Heymsfield SB (2003)

Figure 3: In a 1-year follow-up in the groups that were tracked, the subjects still using meal replacements maintained significantly more weight loss than the RCD group. Heymsfield SB (2003)

References

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