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Time To Stop Dieting

7th March 2017 by josgym

If you feel as if you’ve been “dieting” for years with little to show for your efforts, this article is for you!

Dieting has become a habit for an estimated 100 million people in the United States, many of whom say they diet four or five times a year! Surprisingly enough, the answer might be to — wait for it—stop dieting!

Time to stop dieting and get rid of the scales

By understanding how your body reacts to dieting, you can make fundamental changes and finally attain that physique you keep starving yourself for!

Outside Your Comfort Zone

Our bodies view dieting as a stress, not some sort of weird Survivor-type fun vacation. It’s stressful, because eating fewer calories than your body needs pushes it beyond its comfort zone—the body-fat percentage (or weight) where your body feels most comfortable.

This is the weight where your body — not you you — feels most comfortable.

To get back into that comfort zone (also known as your “body-fat set point”), your body starts sending all kinds of messages to your brain to tell you to stop dieting. The two big messages it sends are “I’m tired” and “I’m hungry.”

To deal with the calorie deficit your diet has created, your body conserves energy by reducing the number of calories you burn each day. Less calories burned means less energy, so, naturally, you feel tired and lethargic!

To make matters worse, your hunger hormones (leptin and ghrelin) go through an abrupt change as your dieting ways continue. It’s not fair, but it’s true.
The more you consistently you take in fewer calories than you burn, the more desperately your hunger hormones tell your brain that you’re hungry.

Diet Induced Reactions

  1. Decreased resting metabolic rate
  2. Decreased thermic effect of food
  3. Decreased non exercise activity thermogenesis
  4. Decreased thyroid hormone (T3) production
  5. Decreased leptin
  6. Increased ghrelin

Now to explain what this means to your body:

Your RMR Resting Metabolic Rate is the energy required by your body to perform the most basic functions when your body is at rest, Like breathing, eating, circulating blood etc.

Thermic effect of food (TEF) is the amount of energy expenditure above the resting metabolic rate due to the cost of processing food for use and storage.

Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) is the energy expended for everything we do that is not resting (as above) or sports – like exercise. It ranges from the energy expended by walking to work, typing, gardening, household tasks and fidgeting.

Thyroid Hormones control metabolism, growth, body temperature, muscle strength, appetite, and the health of your heart, brain, kidneys and reproductive system.

Leptin is a hormone that is tied closely to regulating energy intake and expenditure, including appetite, metabolism and hunger. It is the single most important hormone when it comes to understanding why we feel hungry or full. When present in high levels, it signals to our brain that we’re full and can stop eating. When low, we feel hungry and crave food.

Ghrelin is a hormone that is produced and released mainly by the stomach with small amounts also released by the small intestine, pancreas and brain. It has numerous functions and is termed the ‘hunger hormone’ because it stimulates appetite, increases food intake and promotes fat storage.

How Your Body Responds to Diets

If your goal is to lose a few pounds before a holiday and you use a combination of exercise and eating fewer calories, within a few weeks you should be seeing results. You go on holiday and eat normally….when you return you step on the scales and you’re heavier than before you left! But it probably wasn’t necessarily because you had eaten more food.

Your body has grown accustomed to burning significantly fewer calories during the dieting days. When you started to eat normally, your body literally doesn’t know what to do with those extra calories, so it did what any sensible body would: it stored them as fat for the next time you go on a diet. So the next time you try and lose weight by cutting calories your body your body knows what’s coming and can go into “Operation Energy Conservation”, burning fewer and fewer calories. Even with a harsher diet! And that’s what is commonly known to most as “yo yo dieting” bigger weight gains resulting in harsher diets to try and keep control of your weight!

The answer is to NEVER starve yourself…. dont let the bathroom scale run your life, focus on energy, exercise performance, recovery and well being. This is not a strategy for sudden weight loss but about working toward a healthy more energetic body, a stable healthy weight and feeling great when you look in the mirror.

Woman with a tape measure round her bicep

Breaking the cycle

  1. Cut back on “weighing in” What you weigh at any given moment isn’t the best measure of your progress, pay more attention to how you look and feel in your clothes.
  2. Increase your calories slightly If you’re eating a low calorie diet (1200 calories) increase it slightly with healthy snacks of good carbs and proteins, this will give you more energy and your body will respond by ramping up your metabolism…your metabolism will increase if you’re not starving yourself.
  3. Stay patient, and be consistent As you increase calories, you should start feeling more energetic, which will improve workout performance. The more calories (within reason) you take in, the more you’re able to exercise, which increases your metabolism and helps your body burn even more calories. Plus, once you’re taking in enough calories, your appetite hormones no longer need to send those hunger signals to your brain.
  4. Give your body a chance Your body weight will find its own happy, healthy weight if you don’t over eat, make healthy choices, stay active, get enough sleep (Sleep-deprived individuals have a decreased ability to manage blood sugar levels and also may find themselves hungrier particularly for high carbohydrate foods), drink plenty of water (Hydrating with water also saves calories and plays a key role in helping to regulate whole-body metabolism) and don’t forget protein (protein intake has a profound effect on metabolism and results in a higher energy expenditure at rest).

Filed Under: Advice from Jo's Gym Tagged With: diets, fitness, healthy eating, nutrition

New Year, New You?

11th January 2017 by josgym

Thinking of hitting the gym this January?? Here’s some things you need to know!


You can’t out-train a bad diet

I can’t stress enough how important it is to educate yourself and become aware of the food you’re eating, and the impact that it is having on your health. Many people will eat clean for a few days and then feel they deserve a treat and blow it all in a few mouthfuls. Where I don’t believe in calorie deficit diets personally unless you are dangerously overweight, just making smarter, healthier food choices and eating the right amount of calories and macros for your metabolic output is the answer for long term weight control and good health. If you’re eating more than you’re burning off you are going to get fat that’s the harsh truth!

I don't Diet. I just eat according to my goals

Train for the goal you want

All too often people resort to what they know when it comes to their fitness routine. If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.

If you want to build muscle and lose fat, then lift! The spinning class that you do three times per week is not going to change your body shape drastically. If you’re a busy parent or struggle to make time, train smart! Try HIIT training which burns more fat than steady cardio in less time and continues to elevate your metabolisms for hours even days after, but its not suitable for all, for lean muscle and weight loss add in Circuit training with weights, steady cardio on the other hand although it wont burn massive amounts of fat, increase stamina greatly or build any muscle, for a low-key workout that reduces your stress level and improves recovery while delivering general health and an efficient aerobic engine, old-fashioned steady-state cardio.


Have a plan

Do yourself a favour and have a S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timed) plan. Don’t set yourself up to fail! One of the worst mistakes we can make is embarking on a program we do not understand or cannot achieve. This often results in failed attempts that were either too difficult to be sustainable, or something our current fitness or movement abilities made impossible to follow.


Keep going

If at first you don’t succeed, that’s human, keep going. We can be our own worst enemy when it comes to being strict with ourselves, rewarding our “good behaviour” and chastising ourselves for being less than perfect. This is not useful and will only ever lead to giving up or feeling miserable. If you’re exhausted, take a rest but do not quit! If you hit a plateau, change it up!


Stay motivated with mini goals

These goals are often the building blocks to something life changing. Keep these goals small enough to be achieved regularly, always moving closer to that ultimate goal. A mini goal could be to swim an extra lap per week, do 5 more press ups each week? Don’t try to do everything at once, be kind to yourself, but keep pushing to the next goal. Fitness is not about being better than anyone else, its about being better than you used to be!

It Doesn't get easier, you just get better!

Ditch the excuses

Even the most organised of us can become a victim of unexpected complications at work, in our social lives, or our family life. You have to learn to be flexible and make time to exercise and eat well. Whatever is happening, prioritise yourself. I find planning my meals for the week ahead simplifies things and ensures I eat balanced. You are no good to anyone if you aren’t firing on all cylinders and taking care of number one. BE BETTER THAN YOUR EXCUSES!


Power in numbers

Training with a friend or a Personal Trainer can have several benefits, the most obvious of which is motivation. I refer to the motivation not only to start, but to remain consistent to the program. This can also provide added accountability by having another person to answer to when we may have otherwise allowed ourselves to skip out on a training session. Having a friend or trainer to share and your success with will provide encouragement to continue on your road to success and beyond. At Jo’s Gym I offer a special rate for you to bring a friend and train together.


Know your ‘whys’

Why are you doing this? When it comes to changing your lifestyle to achieve your new goal, is there enough ‘why’ to keep you going? In order to succeed and stay motivated, the reason why you’re doing something needs to be at the forefront of your mind. Having an exact vision of where you want to go can be a constant source of inspiration, motivation and of course, reward. Goals change though! So update them, tick them off, and create bigger and better or just different goals.


Beware of the scales

Otherwise known as the biggest liar in the fitness industry. More often than not, the scales can do major damage and derail a newbies best efforts if it shows little or no movement. Keep in mind that the scale only reads weight, not fat! During the initial weeks of training it is not unusual for trainees to gain valuable metabolic boosting muscle to help burn fat, hence why sometimes the scales show a result that you are not happy with. I personally don’t use a scale to monitor progress (unless specifically asked to) because we have significantly better information at our disposal – our eyes,! Keep a picture diary… pictures, clothes and mood show you what progress you’ve made so before consulting the scale, think, do your clothes fit better? Are you starting to get more compliments? Are you liking what your seeing in the mirror? Remember, progress is not all about weight or numbers, it’s about confidence, strength, health and much, much more!


For any further information on the topics in this blog please feel free to get in touch at training@josgym.co.uk

Filed Under: Advice from Jo's Gym Tagged With: diets, fitness, january, jo's gym

THE LATEST BLOG POSTS

  • Get Your Weight-Gain Hormones Under Control to Lose Weight
  • Time To Stop Dieting
  • New Year, New You?
  • Fat is Good For You
  • How Core Fitness Exercise Benefits The Entire Body

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