Now the author is pleased to report that some small changes in life have resulted in a major and stable weight loss over the last six or seven months.
I have gone down 12kg from my maks weight and around 7 kg from my best low weight - that is 30 llbs and almost 20 respectively in old money.
How have I done this? Well firstly, why was I not achieving this when in fact I was training maybe five hours a week?
1) Training is not enough, Train, train some more and do other activities
2) Avoid the Fat Gain / Maintain traps
1) Training was something I luckily did a lot of before. However I wasnt quite doing enough and I was falling into one of the traps of injesting compensating calories with high energy snacking.
Often too if I trained I would do little else that day. All my training for four years was conditioning Cardio too. So the three things I have done are:
i) Focus on being physically active IN ADDITION to cardio training
ii) Extend the duration and / or intensity of cardio vascular sessions
iii) Take up weight and stregnth training
Combined with dog walking and going the the shops, gardening and so on, together with training I am up around 8 to 12 hours a week movement. Weight training is also important, although I am not a full believer in muscle mass, it is maybe that the bodies' own steroid hormone production rises enough to burn fat. Regularity has been important and I have had tips on very effective body buuilding techniques which dont use large lifts. Rather you hold tension in the muscle in stead of locking out, come off the lift 4 time slower than you press or pull into it, and do some light lifts which use the muscle group in between your set and thus hold blood pressure in them without straining the muscles into injury.
I eased up from two session a week in the gym, where in addtion I must say I nearly always do some conditioning and work in leg sets or sit ups with upper body sets so my heart rate is higher than the usual gym lizard. I was conscious of then of being active in addition to these sessions as in dog walks etc and also take outdoors cardio on the bike, or earlier in the year it wa XC skis. Just grab the time, the kids are older and I found that I could nab an hour or two on sunday mornings, friday or saturday evenings, the odd afternoon or mid evening.
Regularity is important because it helps maintain muscle mass and grow it, and keeps your metabolism higher all the time, this all also meaning your hormonal switches are telling your fat cells to give up their content for use elsewhere!
Those hormones you will have heard of - adrenalin of course, plus noradrenalin and cortisol. All work to force the body to use burn sugar a little more and more importanly act directly on fat cells ( adipose cells) to release their fat content via hydrolisis. A heightened level of these then breaks down fat, and if you can maintain that from a good regular training programme with intensity which leads to their production, ie grunting and straining quite a bit, then you will magically burn off fat.
In relation to this, we mention that weight training is good and it releases other anabolic hormones too which divert energy to building the body. It can be that other sports get your adrenalin going more than the usual condiitoning on the treadmill, for example an hours football where you take it a little too seriously and get the adrenalin going and the stress to win and not lose up!
I noticed it first on my face, then on my beer gut and now I have only my love handles and some loose fat on my thighs to work on!
2) The Fat Traps
One i have mentioned, so lets list them all anyway.
1) Peaking blood sugar
2) Snacking with high calorie, refined foods after training
3) Starving your body too long
Lets start with the last one first, because it is the big surprise to me and many others.
That you are in fact starving and getting fatter!
In western culture the most common form of "temporary starvation" is from dinner to breakfast, and people who miss breakfast may find they are slimming, but may well find they rebound back once they try to eat normally again. The body does not like being depleted of calories from digestion more than average 10 hours. From dinner at say 6 pm to breakfast at 7am there has gone 12 hours, a little less when you take digestion into account, but it is too long.
For care homes it is recommended residents eat four meals a day, which are quite small portions compared to what young people eat, but still make up 1500 - 2100 kcal a day. Supper is seen as important and some there is room too for fruit and bread inbetween those times, and higher calorie treats for those who struggle with their appetite too.
Here though we come into a slight dilema and that relates to the other two issues. Snacking is bad if we injest too many simple carbohydrate and oil/ fat content and carry on to eat the same ahem, generous portions for dinner.
Starvation though leads to a simple set or hormonal responses in the body. Lay down some of your calories as fat because you have experience a fast. You need to teach your body that it isnt going to starve!
2) Snacking - as said above we want to snack actually, but what we are doing is spreading our calorie intake out over the day and meeting our body's need for replenishment after in particular exercise or a long time between meals.
What we also want to snack on is not chips (crisps to you and me), nuts, chocolate and those dairy and other energy drinks high is maltodextrines and simpler sugars. We want to snack on fruit, especially bannanas and pears, bread slices with protein topping or small portions left over dinner with a protein content.
If we snack we can either then count our calories, or we can just be conscious and reduce the amount of main meal we eat.
3) Avoiding blood sugar peaking
Here we get into a major crux of being sporty yet fatty, when taken in combination with that self rewarding snacking or huge hunger pangs at 5 pm after work and / or training right after the jhob.
Let us start with the low hanging ahem, fruit, or rather dessert. With a typical western lifestyle and main meal diet, you do not need to eat dessert. Nor do you need to have a starter. A decent portion of dinner will maks give you 800 kcal, and on average around half that. Dessert brings in additional, high sugar calories on top of a western high starch based dinner, and your blood sugar will peak beyond that which can sensibly be stored as glycogen in muscles and liver, and the body will lay this down as fat. Just a few micrograms maybe per dessert, but it is teaching itself to lay down fat fgor hard times because you are experiencing plenty now!
You need 2200 kcal -2500 kcal per day as a more active man, 10 -15% less for women by in large to keep up your energy level if you are physically active 8 or more hours a week. Otherwise you risk starvation mode. The issue is then to spread out your calorie intake such that you avoid peaking over blood sugar.
Unfortunetly our modern wheats, white rice and use of potatoes have a draw back, in that they both have a lot of simple chain starches which are rapidly broken into blood sugar by enzymes like amylase. Spelt and other tubers like sweet potatoes have branched starches in higher amounts and this takes more time to digest, Also of course, higher fiber grains lock away this starch more so it takes longer to digest. This means we can peak over max sugar and lay down fat from too large a meal eaten quickly.
Another really good thing to slow down digestion then is to combine protein with those carbohydrates, which in the west we tend to do for lunch and dinner but not so much for breakfast. Breakfast is an absolutely key meal in dieting and good nutrition. I started eating a BIGGER breakfast than ever before, almost of bruch like proportions and was very decided about waht I really liked, Luckily I am up 0550 week days so my brain is not too fussy to demand variety. I went over to eating porridge AND an egg AND an open sandwich with protein content.
Protein when taken in reasonable quantities together with carbos does two things. Firstly it gives a quite quick signal to your brain that you are sated, you are satisfied, your hunger is abated. This may be in fact because of the second effect. Protein mixed in slows down the digestion of carbo in the gut because maybe there are more protealases needing to be made which gut cells then divert some energy and effort from making carbo cracking amylase.
Protein has been a key in the (otherwise unhealthily practiced ) Atkins Diet. Atkins worked a little for me, but I rebounded quite quickly after. It did make me think of the carbo loads I need and how they might peak, but it wasnt until I came into BIG BREAKFASTING that I realised how effective protein is. I go from roughly 0650 to 1130 without feeling at all hungry most days at work or college.
Then I eat a bigger lunch that before, with three slices of bread (two protein, one sweet topping) and two or even three pieces of fruit. This is with wholemeal bread, low fat protein toppings and a moderate amount of jam.
I do then get hungry late afternoon and will try a banana on my commute BEFORE i reach the gym to avoid this hunger, eating it by the clock at 1515 to 1545 rather than waiting to be gymn, Also I then eat around 2030 to 2130 with a simple fruit or a single slice of bread and say small glass milk.
Refined sugar is also a key area to reduce, and that includes grapes, oranges and apples and juices of those fruits because they contain high levels of sucrose and fruktose which are easily digested. Sweets and especially sugar sweetened fizzy drinks, and those new energy drinks are definetly to be taken in very, very small quantitie or infrequently. You can have it all, but in much smaller quantuities and take them instead of your snack rather than just after a meal as is often tradition in the west.
Protein then helps slow down carbohydrate digestion and absorption and this reduces the chances that you go into peak blood sugar. Combined with whole grain carbos this makes for very healthy eating and is a bit part of the plan to diet effectively and stabily, by small changes in lifestyle which dont annoy or fatigue you!
