Posted on July 30, 2014 by Jenny Cromack

 

What a busy week so far, for some reason this week all of my client’s health assessments seem to have come at once so I’ve been measuring a lot of my clients’ progress and reporting back to them about how their hard work is paying off! As a team of personal trainers we pride ourselves about offering a holistic approach to our personal training clients and this includes performing regular measurements with our clients to track their performance.

I’ve talked before about why the ‘number on scales’ shouldn’t be the only way for someone to monitor their progress (and get this……not everyone wants to lose weight!), but that the tape measure and skinfold calipers tell such a better story, in addition to those other goals you have achieved such as being able to run around with your kids without gasping for breath, smashing a pb in your local Park Run or just feeling like you have more energy and focus at work.

As I’ve chatted with my personal training clients this week there has been a lot of talk about calories, I have a couple of bug bears in life (that won’t surprise you!) One of those is the nation’s obsession with calories and the second is how much media and marketing support there is for low calorie diets. Are low calorie diets effective? I personally don’t think so. As with all things in life I can see where they fit in – for example if an obese person needs to lose weight quickly for a life saving operation then yes, I agree with them but for the general population who want to either lose weight or look after their health, then no I don’t agree with them.

Whilst being aware of the nutritional content of your food is key to achieving your goals,  making sure you eat enough calories is important too. Whilst it’s important to reduce calories to a certain extent if you want to lose weight or drop body fat, it’s important not to go the other way and drastically reduce your calories. These 800 calorie diets that are around drive me mad! How can someone exercise effectively on only 800 calories per day, let alone function in day to day life. Whilst they may have an impact on your weight initially, long term they are detrimental to your health and long term weight loss.

If we could just approach food with a healthier outlook and look at the source of the calories and where our food comes from, I believe this would achieve longer term results. For example if Mr Motive8 needed 2000 calories per day to maintain his weight, he could eat 2000 calories worth of chocolate and in theory his weight should stay the same…..but is a diet of 2000 calories of refined carbohydrates, sugar and fat a healthy diet……I don’t think so!

Why Don’t Low Calorie Diets Work

1. Reports have shown that for the first 4-12 weeks of following a low calorie diet (800 calories or less) people report increased fatigue, constipation, nausea and diarrhoea. Lovely! I’m positive this wouldn’t happen if you followed a diet of healthy fats, high protein and some good carbohydrates and complimented this with an effective training plan.

2. They are NOT effective in the long term! What happens when you achieve your goal, or even worse don’t achieve your goal because you’re fed up of starving yourself, and go back to eating ‘normally’? That’s right, because your body is used to surviving on next to nothing your body cannot process the additional calories you are taking on board and you store these as fat and put weight back on! Awesome if you want to be a serial yo-yo dieter, not so awesome if you want to maintain your goals in the long term.

3. Low calories diets can lead to your body going into starvation mode. Starvation mode isn’t good as this can lead to your body using lean tissue and muscle as an energy source as you are not giving your body sufficient energy from the food you are eating. Don’t get me wrong, eating too few calories on the occasional day won’t cause this to happen, but a prolonged low calorie diet may do.

4. You cannot exercise effectively as you don’t have sufficient energy to get through a training session which is detrimental to achieving your goals. What’s the point of investing your precious time in a training session if you can’t put your all into it?

5. High levels of fatigue can affect work and personal life, and general feelings of lethargy make you feel sluggish and more likely to obsess with getting  a quick fix of energy from food making it more tempting to reach for that chocolate bar!

6. One of the long-term health problems associated with low calorie diets are gall stones. So let’s weigh this up (pardon the pun!)…..do I drastically cut my calories, lose shed loads of weight and then have gallstones to contend with or do I lose weight more sensibly and look after my body on the inside as well as the outside?

Instead of drastically cutting calories, try these tips instead for a healthy diet:

1. Don’t just think about how many calories are in a food, think about the source of these calories…..are they mainly PROTEIN, SATURATED FATS, UNSATURATED FATS, LOW GI CARBOHYDRATES, REFINED SUGARS, ETC? If the food you are eating is high in refined sugar and bad fats avoid it like the plague! High in protein, good fats and healthy carbs, then these should make the solid foundation of your nutritional plan.

2. Reducing carbohydrates rather than calories is more effective when trying to shed the pounds. Aim to only have 1-2 carbohydrate based meals per day. On non-exercise days limit to one carbohydrate meal per day, and if you exercise on a regular basis have another smaller portion on training days. Fill up on veg with all other meals (apart from root veg).

3. My biggest tip….if you eat a ‘clean’ diet of only natural, non-processed foods you shouldn’t have to worry about calories and you will achieve your goals. So lots of meat, poultry, fish, nuts, seeds, veg, some fruit and you’ll be smashing your goals in no time!

If you’re a weight loss client then remember 1lb of fat is equivalent to 3,500 calories. So you either need to burn 3,500 calories through exercise (that’s the equivalent of 35 miles of running for most people) or eat 3,500 calories less per week (500 calories per day)….so DO NOT be disappointed if you only lose 1lb….it takes hard work to lose that 1lb.