I would love to say to lose weight and body fat, you just need to eat less and move more. And that could be a case with most of the cases, but not all the cases. And yes, in ideal world that would be the simplest solution to the problem. Eat less and move more …. but unfortunately, the world is not ideal.
Yes, in some cases you just need to cut your calories (caloric deficit), and move more (exercising, more walking etc). And then you loose weight. If you start doing Resistance Training and eat more protein, you will even lose fat rather than just weight. Because let’s be honest …. you want to lose body fat more than weight unless there is an obesity problem.
Let’s say that we are living in ideal world, and we want to lose body fat / weight
There will be a few steps to follow:
Calculate roughly now many calories you need to maintain your body weight. Let’s say you need 2000 kcal to maintain your body weight. Create caloric deficit by having less then 2000kcal per day. 10% less would be safe to start with and seeing sustainable results. So it would be 200 kcal less, which would give us a number of 1800 kcal per day.
Other way of creating caloric deficit would be moving and exercising more. At the end of the day we want to use more energy (calories out) then we are getting in (calories in)
By exercising more, we are using more energy and in the same time creating bigger caloric deficit.
When you cut on sugar and replace is with whole grain, your hunger level goes down and you control your food much better.
Each meal should contain:
Start moving more, jog, bike or join to the gym and start doing any form of resistance training. Resistance training and balanced diet will improve your body composition and help you to lose weight and burn body fat.
Note one very important thing … DON’T TREAT TRAINING AS THE CALORIES BURNER, but use it to improve your stamina, cardiovascular system by doing cardio training and strength by lifting weights. Of course, you will burn calories by exercising, but this SHOULD NOT be the main reason you are exercising.
Be more active outside the gym. Walk, jog, use stairs etc. Extra activity creates more and easier caloric deficit.
What if you follow the steps above and still can not lose weight?
Sometimes, there might be other factors, that prevent your fat loss. As I mentioned at the very beginning of this article, the world is not ideal.
Stress
Stress and especially the chronic stress can be very dangerous and should not be ignored or overlooked. It is like a silent killer and can mess up loads of systems in our body. Starting from the nervous system, cardiovascular and endocrine (hormonal) and even can affect our cognition and digestion.
Stress is huge and can affect weight loss.
And we just need to know HOW and try to manage it.
Sleep
Sleep is so linked to stress. Stress can cause the sleeping problems, and lack of sleep can cause increased stress.
Again, we just need to make some steps to improve our sleep, and it will get easier to achieve our goals, when it comes to weight loss and body composition.
If you struggle with weight loss and need help and advice, don’t hesitate to contact me.
Your Coach
Marcin
MA Fitness
