We all love to lose weight but rapid weight loss can have serious health consequences, I will give you a personal step by step guide for you to follow in the program and it will consist of the following, a nutritional 7 day food program and exercise strategies, the nutrition information will be a day by day calorie spreadsheet with the following, protein, carbohydrate and fat, the aim is to maximise fat burning and to minimise muscle loss.
Research and personal experience has shown that diet and exercise activity are a great combo for weight loss and you are more likely for long term success, there is no miracle solutions or short cuts to this.
First question is, can you still train hard while losing weight? Weight loss diets don’t provide enough calories to support intense training and then the crash dieting and yoyo nutrition starts? wrong, you can continue to train hard, as long as you stick to the diet plan provided and reduce your calorie intake by 10%.
Rapid weight loss by dehydration will diminish your strength and endurance in exercise, for example exercise lasting more than 30seconds your body automatically slows down in nutrient exchange, slower waste removal and reduced plasma volume which will have an effect in performance.
So, our weight loss strategy will be in place:
- Realistic goals (will work out your goals and write them down, goals should be specific, positive, realistic)
- Monitor body composition changes (simplest method is keeping a record of the combination of girth or circumference measurements)
- Keep a food diary (very good way to help me understand your eating habits and see how well balanced your diet is)
- Trim saturated and hydrogenated fats (looking carefully into your food dairy to identifying foods containing these, as too much fat increases body fat as its stored)
- Include healthy fats (your body needs essential healthy fats in order to help make up the structure of all cell membranes, seeds and oily fish help you burn fat by assisting the transport of oxygen to the body’s tissues)
- Include low GI meals (eating low GI meals improves appetite regulation and helps increases the feeling of fullness)
- Eat more fibre (fibre helps give the food more texture and slows down the digestion and absorption of carbohydrates and fats which equals a slow but steady energy uptake)
- Eat regularly and frequently (this has been shown beneficial for efficient glycogen replenishment
I will also have to look at your lifestyle and see if I can make any changes, this can be one of the biggest barriers in the attempt to lose weight but will have to be considered.