Category: Nutrition and Calorie Tips

Reasons you think you can’t lose weight.. 🤔

We are all used to reading or hearing about reasons why we can’t lose weight/ fat. Commonly people will blame the fact that they’re eating too many carbs, or that they need to cut out sugar. Sometimes the blame is laid at fat in the diet and that’s what supposedly needs to be cut out. Perhaps it’s those ‘toxins’ in your diet?

As well as food groups we like to blame things like our hormones (particularly towards and after the menopause), or perhaps it’s the fault of a slow metabolism or lack of exercise? You’ll also hear people blaming the fact that they eat too late at night.. or even that they don’t eat enough (and are therefore storing fat).

The reality is the only reason you aren’t losing weight is because you’re eating a calorie surplus. It is physiologically impossible to gain weight without a calorie surplus so if you’re putting fat on then I’m afraid you are eating more than you need.

Now that’s not to say these things don’t have an impact. Whilst individual food groups don’t inherently cause you to gain or not lose weight, some foods will affect your ability to stick to you calories. It is far easier to overeat if you’re having lots of fat and carb heavy foods – by which I mean things like cakes, biscuits, pizza etc etc. Despite what people tell you we don’t need to detox to lose weight – our kidneys and livers do that just fine! The only thing we consume regularly which is a genuine toxin is alcohol but even that is fine if you’re accounting for the calories.

Hormones and your natural resting metabolic rate (and how it changes as you age) will have an impact too. They affect the amount of calories you need to maintain your weight – so all that means is you have to adjust your goal down a bit to lose. The time of day you eat has zero impact except in terms of your own behaviour and likelihood to over or under eat. And no, you definitely aren’t eating too little – if you were you’d be losing weight!

No matter what the underlying cause, a calorie surplus is always the reason for lack of weight loss.

🤗

Xx

Reasons to lose weight… and why I talk about calories so much… 🍔

Many of my posts talk about calories, tracking and fat loss , so you could be forgiven for thinking that my main goal for myself and clients is weight or fat loss. It’s true that for a large proportion of my

Clients fat loss is a goal, but it’s not everyone’s goal. I have clients for whom building strength, increasing fitness, improving mental health and well being etc are their goals.

Knowledge is power and whatever your goal is it is important to be aware of the caloric values in various foods. For many that could involve tracking calories , as it’s almost always the most successful method of long term, sustainable fat loss. But the beauty of tracking is that you don’t have to do it forever because by the very act of tracking you become aware of the calories in foods and can then adjust your diet, should you want to. And that’s what it comes down to. Do you WANT to lose weight/fat? If the answer is yes then the knowledge of calorie content will help that.

However, it’s worth considering what your reasons are for wanting to losing fat. If it’s because someone’s told you to, or commented on your body shape, or because you think you need to because ‘everyone’ is a size X then consider whether they’re really important enough reasons? If losing weight becomes so all consuming that you can’t possibly maintain the weight without being super restrictive with your food, or cutting food groups, if you’re irritable and miserable all the time, if you’re skipping social events, if you’re female and your periods have stopped, then maybe, just maybe losing more isn’t such a good idea?

Medical conditions aside, at the end of the day, YOU need to weigh up the pros and cons. Does the pursuit of weight loss outweigh the pleasure you get from food? Does being a size X make you happy enough to overcome the necessary restrictions in calories?

How can you do any of this without knowledge of calories? So please remember that, whilst my posts often focus on calories, knowledge is the main goal of these posts – not a never ending pursuit of fat loss at all costs.

🤗

Xx

Volumetric vs Weight measures…. 🧭

This tip doesn’t just apply to tracking your calories, it’s also important for baking too! You will often find that certain items on tracking apps / recipes are measured in cups. This method of measuring though is very inconsistent. For a start – which cup? What size is the cup? Well usually this means measuring cups, but UK and US cups are actually different sizes so even that is inconsistent! The other issue is that measuring cups and spoons vary slightly in capacity from manufacturer to manufacturer. In addition people differ in their perceptions of how to fill them e.g. do you have it loosely packed, compressed, levelling off the top, heaped etc. So whilst these measures give you a ball park figure they aren’t that precise. For some things this won’t matter – a cup of lettuce for example is so low in calories that it won’t make much difference. However with certain things it can make quite a difference.

In this example, oats are often measured in cups, especially on tracking apps. A serving is half a cup which is assumed to be 40g. So you may think it’s ok to just go with a half cup when scooping out your oats. In reality though a loosely filled half cup is actually closer to 55g. This is an extra 56 cals per portion. 56 cals may not seem like much but if you were also measuring other things in your oats with cups/measuring spoons (like a tbsp peanut butter, tsp jam etc etc) and all those are out too then you’re consuming quite a bit more than you realise. If you’re doing that daily that’s over 390 cals a week, which is enough to affect your progress.

So where possible go for metric measures i.e. grams or ml on a kitchen scale if you want to track your calories more accurately, especially for calorie dense foods.

Enjoy 🤗

xxx