By Derek Howes on Jan 25th, 2010 in Articles, Dieting, Health, Nutrition | Permalink | Leave a comment
I think it’s safe to say everyone at some point has complained about trying to lose weight, how they can’t lose weight, or that they just don’t know how to lose it. We’ve all heard about the latest and greatest diets popping up every other month that claim to do what most people have trouble doing…losing that unwanted weight. Well the thing with all these “latest and greatest” diets is that (and I’m not saying they are all bad) 99% of the time it’s a waste of money and/or extremely unhealthy. Losing weight is only as hard as you make it. Really, if you want to lose weight, it’s not even as close to as hard as most people think it is. Use the K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple Stupid) way of thinking when it comes to weight loss. I will try and make you understand how simple it is to lose weight. If you do not somewhat understand how to lose weight after reading this article, I will do my best to create a time machine and refund your time.
There are two parts to losing weight (diet and exercise). The first and most important part of losing weight is diet. You can live in the gym, but if you’re diet is not in check you aren’t going to make much progress. This is by far the hardest part of losing weight, and by hard, I mean easy. The concept is simple: Continue reading…
By Derek Howes on Oct 17th, 2009 in Articles, Dieting | Permalink | 1 comment
1. If you’re trying to cut off a lot of weight, don’t try and do it all at once. The maximum amount of time I would put a trainee on a fat loss diet would be 12-16 weeks. After 16 weeks (if you cannot achieve your weight loss goals by then) I would take a minimum of 4 weeks off an eat at a maintenance level or higher. This doesn’t mean go on a free-for-all and eat fast food everyday, it just means bump your caloric intake up to maintenance or a bit higher. This will give your metabolism a rebound as well as a mental/physical break from dieting.
2. Log and weigh all the food you eat. This is one of the most important things you can do when dieting. No, you won’t be able to guess a serving size on 90% of the foods you eat. Chances are if you aren’t weighing out or logging your food, you are not eating anywhere near what you need to be. Eventually you will be able to eyeball a serving size, but not at first. This is a must. Here is a review to a cheap digital scale I reviewed earlier this month. Click Here
3. You don’t need to eat the same foods everyday. Be creative and think outside the box. Most everyone I have talked to has said they are sick of eating chicken, tuna, oatmeal, etc…so don’t eat it. Eating something you dread will only make dieting harder than it needs to be. Use low calorie, no calorie, fat free, sugar free, etc condiments an of course spices to make your meals more appetizing. The only thing you need to worry about are your macros, if these are in check you will have no problem reaching your goals. I will go over more about macros in a later article this month.
4. Crashing dieting aka extreme caloric restriction doesn’t work. You know, the people who go on the diets where they basically eat nothing but salad all day? Yeah, not gonna do much besides shut down your metabolism and catabolize (make you lose) a lot of muscle. All you need to do is reach a decent deficit in order to lose weight. Restrict 400-600 calories under maintenance along with a decent amount of cardio and you will create this deficit. Of course, this will vary with everyone. Some may need to bump up the cardio, others may need to increase their caloric restriction. If you aren’t losing 1-2lb/weeks you should try either adding more cardio into your routine, increasing your caloric restriction, or changing your macros up (playing with your carbs/fats/protein intake).
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