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Tuesday tip: Get back on track 🚂

One of the most important things about trying to lose weight/fat is to accept that you’re not always going to be perfect. There will always be days when you end up eating more, when you can’t control your choices easily, when you just crave a takeaway or chocolate or whatever it is. If you go over your calories it doesn’t mean your whole progress is lost, it doesn’t make you a bad person, it doesn’t ‘ruin your diet’. Just get back on track. Draw a line under it, and get back on it the next day. One day of over eating won’t ruin weeks or months of work.

However on the flip side, if you really want to make progress you can’t do it every week. If you find you’re in the habit of letting it all go out the window over the weekend, but thinking it’s ok because you’ll get back on track on Monday then it might be worth stepping back and thinking about what you’re doing. Yes it’s vital to get back on track but it’s also important to maintain some consistency. You can’t use every weekend, every social situation, every bad day as an excuse to over eat on the basis that you’ll get back on track on Monday. If you’re doing that 2 or 3 days a week you won’t make progress. At the end of the day there has to be some sacrifice. Yes you can enjoy whatever you want to eat or drink, but it does have to be in moderation, if you want to lose weight/fat. You’re going to have to make some changes somewhere.

So just be careful – yes, be kind to yourself and if you have a blip then you definitely can and should just get back on track. But if you’re doing it every weekend and using it as an excuse then you may need to rethink your approach to those days. You definitely don’t need to be perfect, but you do need to aim for some level of consistency. Or perhaps you need to accept that now isn’t the time to be trying to reduce your calories to lose weight and make peace with that. Which is also totally ok too!

Happy Tuesday 🤗
Xx

Tuesday Tip: Will that day of overeating make you fat? 🍔

With the Easter weekend on the horizon I’m sure there will be lots of chocolate eggs and family roasted etc. We can all relate to that feeling of eating way too much and worrying we will instantly gain fat. But is this really a cause for concern? Can one ‘binge’ really make you gain fat overnight? In the main – no!

It takes approximately 3500kcal extra calories to gain 1 lb of fat. That’s about 500kcal extra per day over the week. Even if you did that for a week that still wouldn’t guarantee that you’d gain 1lb of fat immediately because your energy expenditure is never the same each day.

But what about if you eat it in one day?When we overeat, we think that all that extra food is going to turn into fat, but that’s not necessarily true. But then why do the scales go up the next day? And why isn’t it stored as fat?

Some of the calories are used for digestion and absorption of food itself. When you’ve overeaten your body temperature also rises and you get more ‘fidgety’ as your non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) inceases (all the subconscious movements increase e.g. respiration, blinking, etc ). Some of the extra food will be used to replenish glycogen stores in the liver and muscles. For each 1g of glycogen 3g of water is retained. Even if the glycogen stores are full the body still doesn’t prioritise converting carbs into fat. This only happens if you’re consistently eating more cals than you burn. Storing carbs as fat is the body’s least preferred method of using excess carbs. Sodium also increases water retention so if part of what you overate was carb and salt heavy then there’ll be significant water retention – not fat! In addition you have the weight of the actual food in your digestive system.

So one single day/meal probably won’t lead to too much fat gain. The weight gain you see is mostly fluid and glycogen stores. It’s longer term overeating that leads to fat gain. If you get right back on track you’ll be ok! If however your average daily cals are consistently over your calorie requirement over the course of days/ weeks then that will lead to fat gain.

Happy Tuesday 🤗xx

Tuesday tip: Strategic Snacking 🍪

Often clients tell me they ‘just need to stop snacking’ and they’ll lose weight, but that’s rarely the solution. Snacking has a bad rep, but there’s nothing wrong with a snack in itself. Many of us need smaller intakes of food spread across the day rather than 2 or 3 large ‘meals’, it’s mindless snacking that’s the real issue.

Remember whether you call something a meal or a snack is basically meaningless; some snacks are more cals than meals anyway! It’s just a window of time when you eat. So try to view them all as part of your overall daily food intake, they’re just names! The key is planning them in. If you don’t then you will end up feeling guilty every time you have a snack and that can lead to the f*ck it mentality and then overeating.

Identify first of all when you tend to or want to ‘snack’ and then allocate some calories for it; the same way you might for breakfast or lunch etc and adjust your meals to accommodate. By factoring it in not only are you ensuring you’ll be within your calories, you’re also managing your expectations and giving yourself permission to have that snack. It doesn’t matter what it is, choose snacks that work for you; if it’s biscuits fine, if it’s fruit that’s also fine, within the context of a balanced diet you can have anything you want!

If you find the problem is that once you start you can’t stop then try getting your snack item out at the start of the day and having it on show and somwhere easy to grab. That way hopefully you’ll be more likely to stick to it rather than rummaging through the cupboards or heading to a shop to get it at the time you’re most ‘snacky’ and will power is lower.

Everyone is unique and the desire and need to snack are influenced by age, emotions, activity, main ‘meals’ etc so you have to work out what’s best for you. One good approach is strategic snacking at around 3/4pm to help stave off evening hunger, and there is some scientific evidence to suggest a plan of three balanced meals and one snack (4 windows of time where you eat) works well for weight loss.

Happy snacking! 🤗xx