Advice and Tips

When it comes to fat loss, we really need to find out what works for us, individually, and learn how to apply lifestyle changes to our lives, in a way we actually enjoy and can maintain for life. We also need to take full responsibility for making these changes, and doing all we can to make them work for us.

Incremental changes to our diets and lifestyles mean that our new habits have a chance to become second nature. If you follow the newest ‘fad’ approach you will have some success while your willpower is involved, but these approaches do not stand the test of time as the minute you stop focusing on the diet you will slip up, going back to old habits.

This highlights another problem with relying on willpower, especially while following some faddy or extreme approach. By definition you are thinking about your diet a lot more than you would otherwise – so you are essentially tormenting yourself with your deprivation! Being aware of ‘being on a diet’ all the time, which is needed if you are going to succeed with willpower, means that your chances of success are immediately lowered – it is much easier if you are not constantly focussed on what you can and can’t eat, and if you can just get on with your life and keep yourself busy.

So, how can you avoid this all-too-common pitfall?

Well, firstly, a long term approach is vital. You can force foods you dislike down you in the short-term in order to achieve a short-term goal, but where does this leave you in the long run? Still reaching for the old favourites, that’s where. Instead, think about finding foods you actually do like and incorporating these into your life – this takes a bit of trial and error to get right, but means that the healthy foods you are eating are ones you really enjoy. Then, who needs willpower? Over time you will proabably also find your tastes change and eventually the foods you used to eat or even crave no longer have the same appeal. Once you realise how good you feel when you eat healthier foods, junk really does lose its appeal.

We need to enjoy the changes we make to our lifestyle, although I would also add that change can be hard and uncomfortable. We need to persevere with certain things even if we aren’t that excited about them immediately, adapting our approach to find ways to make the changes as enjoyable as possible. For example, we all need to up our vegetable and fruit intake to 5 – 10 portions a day, but for many this is extremely hard. At first you may resist, insisting that this nutritional programme cannot work as you absolutely hate vegetables. But there are universal laws of good nutrition, of which vegetables are one!

The solution is, again, in the long term approach. So try out several different methods to find something that works for you. When it comes to eating your veggies you may realise that while you hate boiled broccoli you love it when it’s added to a stir-fry with herbs, spices and garlic, for example.

If you struggle with this side of things, you will need to begin experimenting with new foods and methods of preparation: you can try stir-fries, mashes or purees (mashed cauliflower and / or butternut squash is a fab alternative to regular white potato mash for example!), roast veggies (roasting sweet potato or celeriac ‘chips’ instead of regular chips!), various salads, exotic foods, new combinations, spices and herbs. You can always find healthier alternatives to your favourites and all these small replacements can add up to big improvements to your diet as a whole – which will be evident in both your energy levels and your waistline!

For any plan to succeed for you in the long term you need to have the freedom to make choices. It is freedom to choose that empowers you, and as you learn which choices are going to support your goals and which are going to take you further away from achieving them.

Rather than focusing on deprivation and willpower, focus instead on how you can make yourself feel great, while eating foods you enjoy and that take you a step closer to your achieving goals.

Caroline is a Personal Trainer, Yoga Teacher and Kettlebell Instructor based in the UK and runs Fit Body Fix bootcamps.

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1. MINDSET.

A can-do attitude is so important. The foundation of this is a real desire to achieve. Think about what you want and why. Think about how highly you prioritise a healthy lifestyle and what you are prepared to change to achieve this.

2. GOAL SETTING & GETTING.

Be clear about what you want to achieve. Write it down. Write it where you can see it regularly. Be precise and aim high! Then break it down into manageable chunks and work on one piece at a time. Remind yourself of your goals regularly and don’t be afraid to update them. Keep an index card in your bag or by your computer (or on the fridge…) so you can keep your mind on the prize!

3. ACTIVITY.

Increase general activity any way you can. This is so important and can cover the effects of the odd missed workout! There are people who never ‘work out’ officially but are still fit as they are naturally active in their daily lives – walking or cycling around, using stairs not lifts, performing manual work etc. Look honestly into your life and seek out the pockets of activity you can exploit.

4. PLANNING AND PREPARATION.

Without planning, how can you expect to succeed? We don’t leave for a journey with no map, otherwise we would only end up getting lost, or back where we started if we are lucky!

This applies to planning your approach (what am I going to eat, how and when am I going to exercise etc.) as well as planning the details (e.g. menu plans for the week’s meals feeding into a shopping list that you stick to). Plan what you are going to choose when you go out, looking online for menus if you can so you can make healthy choices in advance. On the exercise side, you need to decide which activities you want to take part in and schedule them into your diary – if you wait for a free 30 mins you are never going to find it! Schedule it in and commit to your appointment.

5. NUTRITION.

Clean it up! Eat lots of veggies, plenty of fruit, lean proteins, good fats and plenty of water. Minimise anything packaged or that does not fall into the above categories. Experiment, play with your food! Focus on enjoying the good stuff rather than the foods you are minimising or avoiding. Improving the quality of the diet should automatically result in the weight dropping off, but you also need to pay attention to eating moderate portions and ensuring you don’t over-do the more calorie-dense foods, as ultimately calories do count.

6. EXERCISE.

Daily activity is one part of the equation, and the other is including periods of more structured intense activity. This should cover both resistance and cardio training and ideally you should aim to spend around 45 – 60 mins, 3 – 5 times a week on this element.

7. RECOVERY.

Yes, rest is encouraged! Ensure you have adequate rest between intense training sessions. A common error is going too hard at the outset and putting yourself off or causing injury. Plan your workout days in advance and stick to it, letting yourself recover but staying active. Active recovery is great and can include walking, cycling, swimming etc. to help keep the blood flowing through the muscles and actually ease out any soreness from a previous session.

Getting enough sleep is also crucial: 7-9 hours a night is optimal. Your training will suffer if you are not getting enough sleep, as will your mood and energy levels.

8. STRESS AND TIME MANAGEMENT.

You need to prioritise your health in order to effectively deal with all that life throws at you. Once you have acknowledged that you are going to make this a priority it is then time to look into how you can achieve this. Are there things cluttering up your life? Are they all really that important? Could you spend 30 mins less time on the internet or watching TV in the evenings and use that time to squeeze in a training session? Can you delegate certain tasks? We often feel that ‘to get a job done properly I might as well do it myself’ but sometimes we need to let it go, allow someone else to ‘learn’ to do it for us! It may not be perfect, but it will free you up some time!

9. CONSISTENCY.

No matter what nutrition or training plan you choose to follow, you will get success if you stick with it, so long as it is a quality approach and not some quick-fix fad. Any ‘magic bullet’ promise means you start out with the view that you will deprive yourself for a short period of time and then go back to ‘normal’. You will find that certain approaches work better for you than others, but you need to focus less on the detail and more on ensuring the changes are being implemented consistently and ongoing on a regular basis.

10. LOG AND REVIEW.

In order to find out if things are working, you need to take measurements at the start and then re-measure on a regular basis. Logging what you are doing is also very important. Logging food intake is one of the most important things you can do to ensure success as it provides you with some accountability, as well as an historical record so you can look back on things that worked well and things that didn’t.

To Sum Up:

So, to conclude, you are in the driving seat and it is up to you to take control! No plan or advice is worth anything if the plan or advice is not implemented, and only you can do that. So you need to decide to make changes and to visualise success, acknowledging the fact that there will be obstacles to overcome.

The important thing is to take action – moving, no matter how slowly, in the right direction!

Caroline is a Personal Trainer, Yoga Teacher and Kettlebell Instructor based in the UK and she runs Fit Body Fix bootcamps.

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I’m a Personal Trainer and my job is to get people fit and help them to lose body fat. So you may be surprised that I am making such a bold statement! Should this not mean that my entire existence is pointless? Well, as it is my job to ensure that my clients get results, I need to make sure I am up on all the latest research, and when research tells me exercise doesn’t work, I need to take notice – as do you.

A study by researchers at the University of Texas came up with this conclusion, after studying 100 previously sedentary participants – half of whom stayed sedentary and half began exercising. The exercisers followed a programme of 5.5 – 6 hours of activity per week, including weight training and interval training for a total of 12 weeks. The rest did nothing. The subjects were between 35% and 40% body fat to begin with. All the training was designed by Dr John Berardi, a highly respected trainer and nutritionist, although significantly there was no dietary intervention.

The shocking result was that the exercisers didn’t do much better than the non-exercisers. Yep, without changing their nutrition, 12 weeks of high intensity training resulted in a loss of only 1 pound of fat with 2lb gain in lean muscle (weight gain!). Another recent study published in April 2008 issue of Nutrition and Metabolism showed a very similar result – 10 weeks of intense training showed hardly any change in body composition – there was some fat loss, but nothing exciting. Not when you consider that most of us really want to ‘burn fat fast’ and are desperate to get results, this is not encouraging. Most of us would be so discouraged that we would give up on the exercise altogether – which is absolutely not what we should be doing.

So what is the ‘take-home’ point I’m making here? Well, that you cannot out-train a bad diet for one! And you definitely cannot exercise and then ‘reward yourself’ with a larger portion at dinner or a dessert! It is absolutely critical that you look at making changes to your diet as well as increasing your exercise levels, otherwise all your efforts could be a waste of time.

So, where to start?

• Eat 5-10 portions of vegetables EVERY DAY!
• Eat a portion of lean protein with every meal (and ideally some protein in each snack)
• Limit intake of white, starchy carbs (wheat-based products, sugar, pastries, cakes, cookies, white rice, white potatoes, white pasta etc.) and replace with vegetables, adding small portions of wholegrain carbs (sweet potatoes, oats, quinoa, brown rice, wholegrain pasta, wholegrain – ideally sourdough – breads) unless you are especially carb sensitive in which case these will have to go too.
• Include good fats: cook with coconut oil, drizzle a little extra virgin olive oil on veggies or salads (with apple cider vinegar for extra fat burning and health promotion), have small portions of nuts (almonds / walnuts) with fruit as a snack or in your salads, try avocado instead of mayo…
• Drink plenty of water, eliminating sodas altogether, even the diet ones! Tea and coffee in moderation and without sugar or excessive cream (a little organic cream in coffee can be OK)
• Keep an overall check on calories – to reduce without counting calories just reduce your current intake by 10%. If you see no results after a couple of weeks, reduce by another 10%.
• Think 90:10% – let yourself off the hook occasionally, but make sure it is only 10% of your weekly total, so as not to obliterate all your results.
• Experiment! Try a new whole food every week and make it your mission to find healthy foods that you positively love to eat – I certainly love my food, eat plenty of it and feel great, as it is nourishing me, not sapping me.

Exercise is definitely a vital part of the fat loss equation – as well as having a hugely important impact improving health, wellbeing, energy and performance. Dieting to lose weight results in muscle loss and a reduced metabolism, propagating the ‘yo-yo’ weight loss / gain cycle most people are well aware of. But exercise alone is not enough!Exercise and nutrition, along with sufficient rest and recovery, are the keys to losing fat and maintaining your new physique for life.

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Drastic action is often what we feel like we need but drastic changes all in one go can be very hard to take. We might be successful in the short term but soon return back to the old habits that got us out of shape in the first place.

The best, and most painless, approach is to take one step at a time. And where better to start than breakfast?  Breakfast is one of the hardest things to get right due to all the ‘pseudo foods in boxes’ (otherwise known as breakfast cereals) that we have become so accustomed to eating and our perceptions of what we are ‘supposed’ to eat in the morning.

Ideally we would all be eating some form of lean protein, such as eggs, with some green veggies and maybe fruit at breakfast (I just had an omelette with spinach and broccoli with apple cider vinegar and olive oil). But we are conditioned into seeing toast and cereal as our only breakfast food options.

The first step to lifelong change is to make sure we choose the best options – so replacing sugary cereals (read the label, even the supposedly healthy ones usually have added sugar) with steel-cut oats (not the sweetened / quick cook versions) is a great idea.   You can prepare the oats into a bowl of porridge (even consider making with water and stirring an egg through at the end for added protein – honestly, just try it!) served with fruit and chopped nuts and maybe a dollop of plain, live yoghurt.

Or you can hunt out a really good muesli – but check for the sugar content, even ones packaged to look healthy and organic are frequently sweetened with too much sugar-laden dried fruit, and often the tropical dried fruits and cranberries have further added sugar.

Even better, make your own muesli with oats plus other whole grains of your choice if you like, plus chopped nuts, seeds and chopped fruit. Apple and cinnamon is a great combination (works with porridge too).

Toast-wise you can choose the wholegrain breads – but this is not just ‘brown’ bread! The ‘brown’ options are often not much better than white. Instead try the German-style rye breads or the more ‘bread-like’ sourdough ryes that are absolutely delicious toasted. For maximum results serve with a poached egg! You can also get protein in by smearing with some nut butter – get the no salt / no sugar peanut butter or even try almond butter for a delicious alternative.

If you are prepared to leave out cereals and toast then plain, live yoghurt with berries or other fruits, plus a small handful of chopped walnuts is a great option.  You could add a sprinkle of your home-made muesli into the yoghurt too.

The key point is to keep an open mind about what breakfast ‘should’ consist of. Then try things out!  The idea of eggs for breakfast might sound strange to someone still hooked on starchy carbs, but once you get into the habit, it becomes second nature and quite normal! Try things for a while and see what works for you.

Good nutrition is an evolution: making small but significant changes on a regular basis means that you gradually build better habits over time. These changes are then embedded into your lifestyle so they are no longer a challenge, just a way of life. You will be seeing results with relatively little effort! If something doesn’t work straight away, just keep trying until you find something that does. So long as you don’t give up and revert back to old habits you can guarantee you will see the results you are after.

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