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Eating For Weight Loss
by Nev Dodds
author of 'Fat Loss For The Rest of Us'
"How Does 'Eating For Weight Loss' Work?"
I know - 'eating for weight loss' sounds like a contradiction in terms. But you'll understand what I mean once you've read this article through. Bear with me: it's worth it!
One of the most frequent reasons that people become overweight is that they don't know how much they're eating. It's very easy to 'disregard' this or that thing – a snack here, a nibble there. Trouble is, that's where much of the damage is done!
It's precisely when you're rushed or caught off-guard that you tend to grab whatever's handy – and that usually means fast food. With all the resulting high-fat, high sugar, high-sodium intake, it's easy to get far more calories than you need. Do this often enough, and you can soon have an overweight body.
Eating For Weight Loss: How Much?
So, how much of everything should you eat? If you're overweight and want to slim down, you should eat a little less than the amount that would maintain your present weight.
What's 'a little less'?
A safe target is about 15% less calories than your maintenance figure (the number of calories that would maintain your current weight).
You can find out what your 'mainenance calories' figure is by using a suitable weight loss calculator. These help you to establish the number of calories needed for your height, weight and age. They then allow you to choose a factor for your activity level and give a figure for your Basal Metabolic Rate (often written as 'BMR'). If the result of such a calculation was that your BMR was (say) 3000 calories, you subtract 15% - that's 450 - and your target calories are revealed as... 2550.
(That was a hypothetical example of course. Your own BMR might be higher or lower than that value.)
Eating For Weight Loss: Mindset
One of the most frequent obstacles that people encounter when they try to lose weight is a lack of focus. They decide one day that they've had enough with the overweight thing and they cut back – too drastically – on their food. Result? Instant misery, a craving for foods that can become overwhelming, and – sometimes – a body that has switched into 'famine mode' and won't lose fat however little is eaten!
That is a 'worst-of-all-worlds' by any definition!
You're overweight and don't want to be.
You're not eating much, and you're missing it.
Worst of all, you're not even losing weight, though you might be starving yourself and working out twice a day!
That's what I mean by 'lack of focus'.
Eating For Weight Loss: Knowledge
Here's something to ponder...
... A gram of fat has 9 calories. That's a harmless-looking statement, but it carries huge overtones if you're overweight and unhappy about it. Why?
You could have 1 gram of protein and one gram of carbohydrate and you'd only take in 8 calories. That's less than for that single gram of fat! Until you appreciate what fat does to your caloric intake, you won't get anywhere with weight loss.
Not that fat is 'bad', notice. In fact, without fat in your diet, you wouldn't be able to function, either physically or mentally. Fat is essential.
But you only need so much of it, whereas your normal intake probably gives you an excess.
If you feel that you need to lose weight, you probably need to limit the amount of fat you eat. At least while you're in the 'slimming' phase. Once you've achieved your desired weight loss, by all means experiment and see how much fat you can eat without gaining weight. But while you're 'losing', you need much less of it.
A good starting point for most would-be 'slimmers' is to aim for 50% to 55% carbohydrates, 30% to 25% protein, and a maximum 20% from fat. But remember, that's 20% by calories, which is only about 9% by weight, because 1 gram of fat has 9 calories. So you see, it is an important statement after all…
… Because it means that, while you're overweight, only 9 grams out of every 100 that you eat should be from fat.
Of course, managing those amounts means that you need to pay much more attention to what you're eating and to how much of it.
But, that's where that much-needed focus comes into play. When you know what you're eating, you're in control…
…and well on your way to achieving the body shape you desire.
To summarize:
Eating for weight loss - with the correct approach, anyone can do it.
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