lose weight

Lose Weight: How to Drop 30 kilos in 3 Months With No Exercising

March 29, 2018 by

Want to lose weight? I noticed a story doing the rounds at the moment about a Sydney grandmother in her 50’s who lost 31.5 kilos in 3 months without doing any exercise. Everyone wants to know about that, yeah?

If you read the story what you find is a veiled promotion for a diet supplement product costing $130 a pop.

If you read between the lines, you find what every successful weigh loss plan involves.

commitment to action
sustained commitment until results show
a simple clean-eating plan with a focus on protein and fresh vegetables
an eye on the goal

In the entire story there was only one mention of the supplement – if it was that important I’d have expected more extolling of its virtues so I’m working on the basis it was helpful but not integral. More attention in the story was on what she ate.

She generally had

low-cal fruit for breakfast with a little yoghurt (watch out for the sugar-laden varieties!)
salad and protein for lunch
meat or fish for dinner with vegetables

What’s missing from the story is how she maintained her motivation over that three months, especially in those early stages we all struggle with. That’s where points 2 and 4 above come in. You’ve got to work on your head game.

Commitment to Losing Weight

Unless you are totally committed, your success is a puff of smoke. We all wish we were slimmer, fitter and healthier. We want it to happen. We give it a go. But our wishes and hopes fall over at the first point of stress or distress or walk past a bakery!

Dig deep and find why you want to lose weight. What’s the payoff you get from being fat? What payoff will you get from being slimmer? Which payoff is bigger? If it’s the first, cut yourself some slack and admit it’s not that important to you right now. If you want it to be not so then pump up the voltage on what you’ll get out of being slimmer – really think it through and you might surprise yourself. Paint a big picture of what you’ll get out of being slimmer. The richer and more impactful you make the benefits the easier your commitment will be.

Sustained Commitment

Don’t just do this in your head. Get it on paper. Make it large and colourful and bold – stick it up on the wall so you see it everyday to remind yourself when you’re waning of why you need to stick to this new way of living to lose weight. Can’t bend over to tie your shoelaces? Find an image of someone easily doing that and pop that picture on your chart. Images are powerful. Create a vibrant wall chart of what you will get out of losing weight – and look at it often. Add to it as you go if something new pops into your head as a why you will succeed with this.

A million diets are out there. Many work. The question is, will you work? Losing weight is hard work. To get the result you have to be prepared to recognise it is going to be hard to shift a load of mental thinking processes and a barrel of stimulus-response automatic reactions. The hard work is in sticking to a plan

Eating Plan to Lose Weight

What to Eat.

One of the most accepted eating plans on the planet to lose weight is simply eating clean, fresh food.

A palm-sized portion of protein (eggs, fish, poultry, lean meat).
Any quantity of vegetables you like if they are not drowning in sauces or dressings (a touch for flavour is fine but just a touch).
Some dairy – cheese, milk, butter (not margarine etc) and yoghurt (not the highly sweetened ones).
A limited amount of fresh fruit. More of the low-cal ones eg berries.

Sounds easy. Then why is it so hard?

Because our fresh food concept has been corrupted. Manufacturers don’t profit from fresh food – and much of our stores are stocked with manufactured food. Aim to get your food as close to fresh and picked as possible. The least amount of processing the better – none is best! Try and only shop from the outside aisles of the store – usually that’s where the fresher food is presented eg fish, meat, dairy, vegetables. The inside aisles are where the high calorie stuff lurks – biscuits, tinned meats, prepared meals etc. Watch out for the frozen aisles – choose food that was fresh but is snap frozen – avoid the packaged foods and check the label if you’re unsure.

Retrain yourself to check out those food labels to see if that tinned fish is in brine or water (hint choose the water variety). Check your yoghurt to see how much sugar is in it – keep it zero or low. Get used to reading labels.

Oh, and I know the deli section is in the outside aisles but be careful. Processed meat is not ideal and certainly not ‘clean’. Often you won’t know if it is manufactured in some way. Stick to fresh bacon and leg ham off the bone if you need deli meat at all.

Don’t even go near the confectionary, bakery or biscuit aisles!

Our taste buds have been spoilt into enjoying things that taste great and not only make us feel good but sabotage our body. We are literally killing ourselves. It’s insane. Especially when the solution for most of us in the western world is accessible.

Eat Less

I’m one of those people you hear cry plaintively, “But I don’t eat much!” when people say the way to lose weight is to cut back on food. What I didn’t admit was that I ate mostly carbs – chocolate, biscuits, chips, cakes, pasta, bread, rice. So, I truly didn’t eat a lot – but those items I ate were loaded with calories! When I honestly tracked my intake I was astounded that I was eating easily 3000 calories a day – no wonder I was putting on weight even though not eating much!

When people say ‘eat less’ what they usually mean is one of two things:

eat a reasonable portion sized meal (most of us do not need to eat a traditional wharfie-sized meal) and make sure your dinner plate is not big. The size of crockery plates have increased markedly. Find a smaller one and use that. Oh and avoid buffets!
cut back significantly on the crap. Carbs are the culprit in weight gain so minimise them – if you’re not sure what a carb is or if what you are eating is a carb, ask Google. Chocolate and ice cream are not a daily food requirement – use these sorts of things as a small treat or reward at the end of the week if you’ve stuck to your plan. Top tip – avoid keeping stuff like this at home – it’s just temptation that you know you will give in to!

Eye on the Weight Loss Prize

Be really clear on what is achieveable for you to lose weight. Set yourself some goals but make them realistic. Losing 30 kilos in 30 days is not going to happen. Losing 30 kilos over twelve months is doable – but that maybe too long a goal to aim for and sustain motivation. Make it shorter term to get going. Aim for an overarching goal weight, sure, but maybe focus more on behaviours that will get you there. For example, a goal might be to eat only fresh food for a week. Or, to go chocolate free for a day then another then another etc.

Try this method: print off a monthly calendar for the next month. At the top write out your behaviour goal then each day you achieve it, cross off the day.

The key to keeping your eye on the prize is to set your goal then write it up and put it on a wall, on your phone screensaver, on your computer – wherever you are likely to see it.

So, can you really lose 30+ kilos in 3 months without exercising? Yes. If one person can do it, then so can others. This woman claims to have done so and explains the basic plan she followed. Emulate her behaviours and you emulate her success.

Read the original news report that prompted this article.

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Weight Loss: Don’t Eat Breakfast – Lose Weight

March 24, 2018 by

What?!?!?! We’ve been told by weight loss experts for eons that breakfast is the most important meal of the day – to literally, break the fast from the last meal the night before. “Breakfast like a king” they say, meaning eat your biggest meal first thing in the morning so that the body has time to absorb all the nutrietns and your daily activity will remove the excess calories. Well that has bene the crux of the theory. The reality is raising the question: does it work?

According to an Australian specialist surgeon, Dr Andrew Renaut, nothing we have traditionally considered appropriate for weight loss is working. Not even surgery in some cases (it’s easy to cheat by melting your ice cream or chocolate – you’re still consuming those mega-calories that have no nutritional value and will not help you lose weight).

Renaut argues that we need to appproach weight loss in a new way. He proposes NOT eating breakfast. Instead, use that time to up your activity level. You know, movement. Then consume your nutrient-dense calories in a “window” of time from 1pm to 7pm.

The basis of Renaut’s theory is that by eating regularly throughout the day as we do now, we never give the chance for our insulin levels to self-correct meaning they are always raised. That process in itself leads to insulin-intolerance and we actually gain weight. He argues it is necessary to enable the insulin level to get to zero and that is achieved by fasting. Dr Renaut advocates not eating from 7pm to 1pm the next day – a fast of around 18 hours. During this period you can have coffee, green tea and water. By halting insulin production we give our body the chance to use up the fatty acids.

“When it comes to food, there are three main factors: How much do we eat, what type of food we eat, and the amount that we eat. Of those three, the most important is when we eat it.”

Given that we agree with his synopsis, and who wouldn’t, then focusing on frequency and duration of intake is sound. There has been a resurgence of focus on fasting in recent years with the most popular method being the 5:2 diet popularised by Dr Michael Mosely. Most research supports that method as an efective way to live and reduce weight over time.

Under Renaut’s method of eating, you continue to have your required daily intake of 2000 calories for women or 2500 calories for men but you focus on eating them between the 1pm-7pm window, just restricting the carbs. (We usually eat way too many carbs that lead to weight gain). Focus on lots of fresh foods – vegetables, lean meat, fish, dairy, cheese. Some fruit is fine but remember they are full of sugar so eat them in moderation. Avoid bread, pasta, rice etc.

Make better food choices to lose weight

So the Renaut method is simply eating healthy fresh food from 1pm-7pm and fasting outside that period, by drinking water and coffee/green tea.

Note: it won’t help you to drink sweet creamy coffee frequently! So those 10 caps a day are not going to cut it. Same for those low-cal soft drinks or sodas – they still raise your insulin which is a no-no during fasting and defeats the purpose of the fast ie reduce insulin overload.

Action Plan for Weight Loss

keep a time log for a few days and monitor what you eat when and how much – you might be surprised!
start by introducing the fasting period between 7pm and 1pm the next day, making no other changes until you get into the swing of it
next, remove as many carbs as you can from your intake
give the method at least a month to see the impact on your weight loss progress. If it is working for you, keep going

(As with any changes, check in with your doctor and discuss the planned changes to make sure they will not impact any medical issues you may have).

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The One Fast Way To Lose Weight

October 19, 2014 by

Here comes the news some of you did not want to hear:

There is NO quick-fix solution to losing weight.

There is also no ONE WAY to lose weight.

If there were then we would all be able to lose any amount of weight we desired at any time. But patently that is not the case. And because it is not the case there is a multi-million dollar industry all too ready to take your money by providing what they claim is the solution to weight loss.

Now there are some products that will work for a period. Diet pills, supplements, programs, methods, systems – you name it – they will work. For some people. Not all people. And possibly not you.

Exercise is great. If you can’t do it yourself there are thousands of products that will help you – ab-rollers, rowing machines, cross-fit trainers, kettlebell kits and so one. They will work. For some people. Maybe not you.

The ONLY solution to consistently lose your excess weight and keep it off for the long-term is to combine a sound nutritional diet full of fresh foods with a properly designed exercise program that stimulates the necessary hormonal and metabolic response within your body. Both your food intake and your exercise plan are important for you to get this right.

There have been studies done that divided participants into a diet-only group and an exercise/diet group. Both groups made good progress in losing weight yet the diet-only group lost significantly LESS fat than the diet with exercise combined group.

So next time you’re inclined to think you can lose weight with diet only or exercise only remember that a blend of both is far more effective.

In terms of food, the more unprocessed natural produce you can include in your diet the better.

If your diet now consists predominantly of manufactured products like ready-made dinners or take-home meals or big quantities of snacks like chips and chocolates or drinks like Cola then you are going to have to switch your food choices. No question. Did you ever watch “You Are What You Eat?” It clearly made real what people had been eating and in what volumes. Laying a week’s worth of what has gone in your belly onto a table is sobering stuff. Watch the video here or buy the book here You Are What You Eat: The Plan That Will Change Your Life. Definitely worthwhile.

So what is unprocessed natural food? True unprocessed natural foods are hard to come by. For example you couldn’t have milk unless it was raw or butter because it has be processed to be separated from the milk itself. But the least processed and most natural is what you are better to aim for. What we want to avoid are lots of additives that add to our weight!

Increase these and decrease all the junk food and other stuff you know is not healthy. Fresh fruit and vegetables. Meat with fat trimmed. Chicken with no skin. Fish. Condiments, herbs and sauces (in moderate quantities). Nuts, seeds, lentils. Look up the advice provided by the government and dietitians. But really, the closer your food intake is based on foods which have had the least processing done the more nutritional benefit they will have.

At the supermarket, pick up most of your groceries from the fresh fruit and veg section, the meat section, the seafood section and the dairy section. Go around the outside aisles to shop. The inner aisles is where the less healthy stuff sits waiting for you!