For the most part, I’m a big advocate of eating on a regular basis to stay lean and trim and perform to a high level in front of the desk, on the job and training with my kettlebells.
Like training and exercise there is one unique principle, in dieting it’s to have your intake be less than what you expend to lose weight successfully but there are a few methods I could discuss and the most successful one for me and those I work with on a nutritional and psychological level is to have small meals and snacks on a regular basis.
The benefits include a faster metabolism and maintenance of muscle tissue that help melt fat. This can be done without an extreme limit of calories and feelings of hunger in the mind that can lead to overeating when energy is low.
In the media, we’re inundated with images of celebrities who seem to lose weight in double quick time so it’s no wonder people get tempted to cut calorie intakes far too much in an effort to lose weight urgently.
However, severely restricting calories will actually prevent you from burning unwanted fat stores effectively and unfortunately, this means that weight loss slows down.
Why does a very low calorie intake slow down weight loss?
Quite simply, your body goes into ’starvation mode’, a defence system for when you actually experience famine.
This means the body becomes super efficient at making the most of the calories it does get from food and drink. The main way it does this is to protect its fat stores and instead use lean tissue or muscle to provide it with some of the calories it needs to keep functioning.
Why?
Because fat tissue contains more energy than lean muscle tissue and your body wants to hang on to it for a rainy day. Your body is compensating for the loss of nutrition by understanding that this is the way it will stay in the long run. However, this type of eating pattern will not last, food will enter the system again and you will still be left with a surplus of fat tissue.
This directly leads to a loss of muscle, which in turn lowers your metabolic rate so that the body needs fewer calories to keep ticking over and weight loss slows down. If you’re trying to lose weight, it’s going to do little to help you shift those unwanted pounds, those pounds that make a difference to the shape of waist and hips for starters.
Always go for fat loss, not specifcally weight loss to improve your shape and weight.
Never get to the point of feeling hungry, it inevitably leads to overeating ofhigh sugar foods with less nutitional value for the calories being ingested.
Maintain your muscle tissue not only by training effectively but eating sensibly as well.
See you soon folks
Mike
