Tag Archives: weight loss

Sensible Weight Loss

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Active.com recently posted an article with 10 sensible tips, some of these are common-sense, others are standard answers, some we agree with and others we find wrong:

  1. Eat healthy to stay healthy
  2. Lose weight at a safe rate
  3. Learn how to control emotional eating
  4. Control calories and portions
  5. Keep a journal
  6. Weigh yourself often
  7. Get support and rewards for your successes
  8. Eat small, frequent meals
  9. Choose the macronutrient content of your meals wisely
  10.  Include strength training, not just cardio

The first point falls squarely within the range of common-sense avoid sugar, avoid sugar and then when you are done with that avoid sugar.  Fast-food, all mono and hydro fats should also be avoided.  It is a pretty simple rule but apparently difficult to stick to.

Point two is also comonsensical – if it took you several years to add fat why should you expect to lose 45 pounds in two weeks?  It takes time for your body to reach metabolic equilibrium   Made for television fat loss and infomercials sell a pack of lies and false expectations regarding safe and effective weight-loss.

Conventional wisdom tells us that we must count every calorie in and every calorie expended. Your total caloric intake is important, you obviously cannot eat all the healthy food you want and still lose weight.  That is not the point – the point is that healthy food is simply more filling than junk.  Watch your portions, pick the right food and counting calories should be a thing you “used to do”.

“Weigh yourself often”…we say hardly ever.  If you follow a proper nutrition and exercise program you will both gain and lose weight – you will add muscle and lose fat.  Why frustrate yourself with a scale everyday and question minor fluctuations.  You will lose fat and you will begin to see it as will others; you do not need a scale to tell you these things.

And lastly – for goodness sakes add strength training to your exercise program.  Muscle burns calories when you rest, it looks good and it protects you.

+Sandy Clark

Eat More to Lose Weight

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Want to lose weight and keep it off?

Try eating more. Seriously. Sounds strange? Well, there actually is some truth to it, if you do it right.

All too often, when people are trying to lose weight, they eat too little or skip meals and then end up being so hungry that they overeat or eat all the things they have tried to avoid. A new study, published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association looked at this very subject. (Toronto Sun)

It sounds counter-intuitive but even without science to back it up we ought to know deep down that skipping meals or eating too few calories  just make you hungry, lethargic and grumpy.  Starvation may be a quick way to lose weight and shed pounds but you cannot maintain it for a lifetime.

Sensible eating combined with regular activity will work and is something you can maintain for a lifetime.

Eating for Weight Loss and Vigor

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With so many “get fit fast” diet schemes and promises it is often difficult to discern truth from fiction.  The fact is many methods will produce results, if by results you simply mean losing weight.  Plain and simple starvation will do a fabulous job of drastically reducing body weight.  However, one need only look at prisoner of war photos to determine this is not an ideal method.

The problem with most diet plans is that it is not that simple.  If a program produces results for some and is marketed properly it is possible to believe the system must have merit.  However, such casually observed results do not equal fact nor do these prove the overall sustainability and effectiveness of a particular diet.

A method that we recommend is something called the Primal Blueprint.  As stated above this is not the only method of nutritional weight-loss that works but we believe scientifically it is the most sound and it is the most sustainable lifestyle available.

No matter your views of the creation or development of man the premise behind the blueprint is sound.  In man’s early days we lived on a diet that differs greatly from the commercial agriculture, grain heavy diet that modern man lives on.  In fact, conventional dietary wisdom has resulted in a population that has become increasingly obese. The simple fact is our reliance on grain and grain products coupled with copious servings of sugar is killing us by the pound.

The Primal Blueprint is more than a diet, it is a way of eating, moving, playing and relaxing that is in line with the way God made us.  In essence the theory behind the Blueprint holds that we are 80% what we eat and the remaining 20% of results should come from full body movements.

If you are truly interested in losing weight and keeping it off we encourage you to step away from the fast results claims and accept that massive changes occur over time and the best forms of change are those that are sustainable for the long haul.  The Primal Blueprint combined with a exercise program that uses our bodies as intended will result in such a change that you can maintain.

Sandy went cavegirl!

-Sandy+

 

Easy Weight Loss

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Unfortunately there is no such thing – no pill, exercise program, wrap, cleansing, injection or grinding dance routine (aka Zumba) can or will shed the pounds you spent months or perhaps years accumulating quickly and safely.  In fact the most effective means of weight loss (lap-bands and gastric bypass) are the most dangerous, potentially life-threateningly dangerous.  Weight loss should not be dangerous, it should enhance health, happiness and vigor.  It is impossible to imagine how a 500 calorie diet and dubious injections can actually met that goal fully.  Worse still such methods do not fully address the circumstances that lead to an overweight condition in the first place.

Weight loss should be part of a holistic approach to health.  Improved eating habits, food choices and impulse control are important but these are learned behaviors.  These are part education, knowing what and how, and part motivation, mastering one’s weaknesses.

Exercise too must play a role and again the approach must be holistic.  Movement, any movement, is a good thing but movement alone, even energetic movement such as the type displayed in a zumba class is not enough.  In fact of program of zumba alone, or any aerobic activity alone very well might cause a person to actually add fat. How could this be you ask?  During a 30 to 45 minute aerobic session you burn glycogen first and maybe some fat toward the end.  Typically our bodies store about 600g of glycogen and replace it each day.  When we use up our stores of this reserve energy we become hungry.  Many people actually fail at losing weight even though they work out hard in an aerobics program each day simply because their bodies demand they restore the glycogen, and often they replace a little bit too much at their meal and actually add weight.  The term “cardio queen” describes this cycle.

Effective weight loss requires an exercise program that burns fat through short high intensity bursts combined with longer steady low intensity work loads and an increase in muscle mass.  To effectively lose weight and keep it off you must also add muscle tissue.  Muscle, beyond its many other benefits, actually burns calories while you rest and sleep, it raises your resting metabolic rate. A slight increase in muscle mass can have tremendous long terms effects on weight control.

If you are considering a weight loss program for the new year give us a call and consider our program.  Joining a gym and hitting the treadmill each day will not fundamentally change your body composition and provide a sustainable solution. Neither will zumba or any other aerobic program.  Our boot camp training and functional fitness personal training combined with personalized nutritional counseling and support will help you achieve a total body transformation.