I’ve got a lot of experience in nutrition – I am not a dietician, or a registered nutritionist, I am simply an athlete, who has experienced the ups and downs of weight loss and weight gain like all other normal people. The difference for me, is I was raised by a body builder and a cook, who both made it one of their key missions in life to educate me about food, how to look after myself and how to stay healthy. As an athlete, I carried that passion into my daily life and now do plenty of research for myself. It’s something I have a real penchant for; I am intrigued by the modern day diet, our obsession with food and more importantly, the differences it can make to our mental and physical performance as well as the impact it can have on our appearance.
If someone tells you calories don’t matter, they have no credibility. But if someone tells you calories are all that matters, they have even less.
Martin Berkhan
3 weeks ago, I started a little weight loss challenge. I’ve got a bit doughy. I don’t quite fit the camera lens like I did before. It’s been a strange year, with no racing, no real fitness goals and although I’ve been training well, I’ve had my cake and eaten it in one sitting… Noticing my physique is not what it used to be, I decided I’d set myself a 6 week mission to tidy up my eating habits again. I’m half way through my challenge and already I look and feel visibly healthier. I have more energy, my athletic performance is improved and I can see the waist appearing where it had started to fade. But how do you make results like this happen? What’s the secret?
The C Word…
Calories. Stop rolling your eyes. Calories are simply a measure of energy:
“The amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of 1g of water by 1°C”
That’s all. That’s actually not a lot of energy, so we tend to talk about “kcals” as being a “calorie”, but this is actually equal to 1,000 single calories. Anyway, that’s enough numbers. Calories are basically the way we humans have decided to quantify the amount of energy in a food. That’s it. Not complicated.
Yep, I’m going to say it: Counting calories WORKS. Why do people shy away from it?
- It’s a pain in the butt. Everything you put in your mouth adds some sort of energy to your body. If you’re not using that energy, you’re going to store it in someway. For us humans, that’s more often than not going to be fat, put simply. That means you need to record EVERY. SINGLE. THING that you swallow. It’s all going to have some kind of impact on your digestion, metabolism and energy status.
- It’s hard. It’s actually really hard to work out the energy value of food. We use generic values for things like fresh fruits and vegetables, but in our modern diet, we tend to mix lots of different ingredients, cook them, change them, process them. All this can change the calorie content of food – they might take more or less energy to digest, the energy in them may be more or less energy when our body digests them. So being accurate about calorie counting is actually really difficult.
- People think it doesn’t work. This is an article for another day, but if you scour the internet for long enough, you will pull up hundreds – nay thousands! – of articles telling you calorie counting doesn’t work, one of my favourites is “It doesn’t matter how many calories you’re consuming, as long as you’re eating CLEAN food…”, heck, I’ve fallen victim to believing some of them myself before I did my own research! But the fact is, done properly, calorie counting is a great measure of energy and forms the basis of all sustainable and effective weight loss programmes.
While I don’t recommend it, we have enough evidence to show that if you’re eating fewer calories than you’re burning, you will lose weight, even if your diet is entirely made up of junk food. Of course, this is not at ALL a great way to do it, since you won’t look or feel that healthy due to all the healthy vitamins, minerals and other nutrients you’ll be short on, but it’s proof that on a basic level, weight loss simply is kcals out>kcals in.
How to use calorie counting to lose fat, stay well and not go mad.
I’m not saying you need to count calories forever, nor am I saying it’s the only thing that matters in a healthy, balanced diet, aimed at weight control. What I am saying, is that it’s the first place we need to start when we are thinking about shaping up. There are other factors that play a huge role in our body composition – that is, our ratios of fat, muscle and other tissues (generally we think of fat vs muscle tissue in terms of how we look and perform). When we’re aiming to lose fat, it’s important to keep tabs on our protein intake to ensure we’re not eating away at precious muscle instead of using our fat stores for energy. We also need to consider what effect eating fats, carbohydrates and protein has on our energy storage; put simply, cutting calories without considering what they’re made up of (i.e. protein, fat, carbohydrate), will not necessarily result in fat loss, while it does result in weight loss.
But calculating the “macros” of diet plans is difficult and probably something you should either do some extensive reading on (I recommend bodyrecomposition.com and syattfitness.com if you’re curious), or get some coaching help with. But if you just want to get started and make the first step towards your weight or fat loss journey, here’s my top tips (the ones that I utilise all the time whenever I’m on a mission to get a bit leaner and ready to race!):
- Use a TDEE calculator. Total Daily Energy Expenditure is probably the most reliable calculation you can do to ensure a steady and sustainable weight loss programme. There are billions of apps for mobiles, websites etc to churn the numbers up for you, so do check out a variety to give you an idea of the average. The reason they will give you slightly different scores, is they will all be using slightly different methods. Neither is right or wrong, but they may work better for different people based on how quickly you want results and how easy you find sticking to the plans.
- STOP COUNTING CALORIE EXPENDITURE FROM EXERCISE. Okay, I’m shouting. But I’m not sorry. Your exercise tracker isn’t as good as you think it is. There is no way to accurately measure calorie expenditure, even by monitoring your heart rate relative to your height, weight and age. Your tracker could be out by as much as 93%! That’s a lot! If you’re exercising simply to give you 1,000 more calories to binge on that day, then you’re not going to lose any weight. Sorry. You can’t exercise out a bad diet. While you need to refuel after hard or prolonged bouts of exercise, you need to be mindful that you may not have expended as many calories as you think and could be undoing all your hard work by treating yourself to that extra doughnut…
- Record EVERYTHING – Even the bad days. A lot of people count calories, get very pleased with the deficit they’re creating, then have a little wobble. The worst part is, they don’t record the “wobble”. If you record everything, even the days you’ve slipped off the wagon, then you’re accountable. It’s no good shying away from the problem – you have to admit everything. It will help you identify what’s getting in the way of your success and how you can adapt to do better next time. Plus it will motivate you to keep going!
- Set a sustainable goal. Sure, eating less and less will accelerate weight loss, but you’re probably going to feel hungry all the time and it’s going to be even more difficult to keep up your progress. You’re probably going to end up bingeing at the weekend and undoing all your hard work and in the end, you’ll give up before you’ve had time to see results.
- Give it time! You might lose some water weight pretty quickly. You might also find you don’t see immediate results. This can be because of loads of different factors (again, probably best saved for another day…), but essentially, you need to give your body time to adjust and see progress. A healthy, balanced diet with the right calorie intake works. What DOESN’T work is bouncing from fad diet to fad diet or changing your macronutrient and calorie profiles over and over.
Go get success!
So that’s a very simplistic and straightforward guide to the healthy and sustainable way to lose weight. It’s simple – not necessarily easy, what I can’t give you is willpower I’m afraid! But it is based on sound science, evidence and above all, experience.
For me, 3 weeks in to my 6 week challenge, I’m looking and feeling great; I’m more confident, I’m faster and importantly, my jeans fit better!
As I say, calories are not the be all and end all and it is a good idea to consider your macronutrients with a nutritionist, coach or dietician, but it’s a great place to start.
Good luck! I would love to hear how you get on if you do decide to take the first steps forward on your journey towards you weight loss goals! Let me know in the comments section, or find me at instagram.com/wonderclinic or facebook.com/wonderclinicSW. I also have a brilliant, engaged community on facebook that I’d love to have you on board with!