First up. I am not qualified to provide clinical advice to anyone. I did a degree in biochemistry in my youth, but i’m talking here as an untrained person. Seek appropriate medical advice if you feel the need.
Secondly, while it’s come out written as advice, it’s solely based on my experiences. It’s what worked for me, Maybe there’s something in it for you.
I lost 29kg over about 6 months at age 39/40.
I was a fat kid, and a fat young man who developed into a fat adult. I floated through life as a fat dude, settling at 120kg, with a BMI of 35ish. Obese, not morbidly so, but obese, and unhappy about it.
So…… Close enough to 30kg lighter, what happened? I joke with people that I discovered a “magic red pill” that you eat when hungry and it makes the hunger go away… It’s called an apple.
I learned a few key things that I think are worth sharing:
- Food is a decision
- It’s all about food
- 99% of what I thought I knew about weight loss is unhelpful.
- There are some key steps
Food is a decision.
Here’s the thing. The act of sticking something in your gob needs to be a conscious choice.
This is actually the hardest part. You MUST make a choice to take control of your life and only stick things in your gob that are good for you. There are NO short cuts on this.
However, there are some strategies you can use to make it easier for you. There are things that you can do to make it easier to make good choices. These are the subject of section 4.
It IS all about food.
There’s been a huge push to make us all believe that you can eat as much crap as you like, if you have a “balanced” life with enough exercise that will be ok.
This is a load of dingo’s kidneys.
Unsurprisingly, this is the strongly lobbied position of the massive processed and fast food industry, and is reflected in government policy, and the websites of the industry giants. The reality is that it’s just not possible to exercise off the excesses served up by the Forces of Fatness.
I use about 9000kJ per day just staying alive and doing all the bodily functions associated with that. An hour a day of exercise is worth about another 1000kJ. By taking about a quarter of the time I have available to me in a day once I get my basic stuff done, I can increase my kJ output by a princely 11%. One 60g chocolate bar – my hour’s exercise is wasted.
But you can halve your energy intake overnight. Just make better choices. ALWAYS read the labels. Research the food that doesn’t have a label (like fast food). There’s only one number that I read: energy (kJ/Cal) per 100g. Sugar, fat, whatever…. It’s all energy.
There’s no magic number. Just go with the best available choice. Which almost always leads you to fresh food and away from processed food, but that’s another thing. It goes without saying (but I’m saying it anyway) that high fat, high sugar foods are OUT. Almost all fast food, absolutely any sweetened drinks, lollies/candy, chocolate. All gotta go. Treats are OK, but find something healthier, and eat in smaller portions.
Analyse what you eat. ALWAYS switch to a lower kJ/Cal choice. Once I’d worked out that 20% of my daily kilojoules were coming from the milk in my coffees (less coffee that you might think once you see how they are made in cafés these days), I switched to skim. Felt like a total tosser the first time I asked for a skinny flat white. Don’t really care now.
After a while, you will find yourself almost exclusively eating whole, unprocessed foods, freshly cooked in a healthy way. But that’s your journey. And I did say almost.
There’s more on this in the last bit.
99% of what I thought I knew about weight loss is unhelpful .
Just focus on energy in versus energy out. Keep track of what you eat and what you do. Match it up. Around about 28,000kJ is a kilo of body weight. If you want to lose a kilo, you need to rack up a deficit of 28,000kJ. That’s 4000kJ a day over a week to lose a kilo a week, which is what is most often talked about as a healthy weight loss trajectory. If you want to lose 60kg, it’s just over 1.6 million kJ. At the end of the day, it’s like a bank balance. You owe your body what kJ/Cal balance you want to lose.
Which doesn’t mean that you have to document your intake/output more tightly than an NRL salary cap. Just be mindful of what you are eating.
Don’t get distracted by all the fads, food types etc. Just focus on energy in – energy out. At the end of the day, everything except energy in versus energy out is bollocks. All the fads, food mixing, times of day… All that just clutters the minds with misleading information and excuses.
Key steps.
The key things I’ve learned.
- Eat a healthy breakfast every day. It protects you from bad food choices later in the morning. This is seriously important and I cannot overstate this. Eat a healthy breakfast every day.
- Keep healthy choices available. If you can have fruit or something else healthy in your office or workplace, do that. Always make the healthy food your first choice. If you are craving something energy dense, eat a piece of fruit or something first. Find a way to have good access to healthy choices throughout the day that works for you.
- You win this at the supermarket. Read the labels before you buy it, not before you eat it. One of my weaknesses (more on this) is nuts. I love them, and in small quantities, they are great. But I’ll eat 500g in three days. And they are monstrously energy dense. Don’t expect to show restraint once it’s in your fridge or cupboard. I got nothing, probably you don’t either. If you don’t want it, don’t buy it.
- Analyse your weaknesses. Log what you are currently eating and think about it. As an illustration only, my weaknesses were:
- Breakfast. I don’t think too good in the morning. So I’d grab the first thing I could find. Usually processed or bakery. Scared me witless when I learned I was eating 4000kJ each day for breakfast.
- Snacks. Little bits of junk food throughout the day. 1000kJ here or there very rapidly erodes the day’s efforts.
- Dinner and second dinner: I’ve got a kinda manic job. Lots of us do. I’d frequently skip lunch or eat crap for lunch and be hungry when I got home. Hello peanut butter sandwich, some biscuits etc while making dinner. All very unconscious. Then I’d sit down to a “conventional” serve of dinner, usually far too large. This is after the 6pm graze job. Bad.
- Dessert. I grew up in a household where large serves of after dinner desserts, normally ice-cream, were the norm.
These weaknesses had solutions: The healthy thought-free breakfast of a couple of boiled eggs on plain wholemeal bread, the constant availability of fruits and low fat, low sugar yoghurt for snacks, the avoidance of the graze, and the switching to fruits, yoghurts etc for dessert. Your solutions will depend on your weaknesses. BUT KNOW THEM.
- Weigh yourself regularly and at least weekly as the longest interval, and never more often than daily. But don’t obsess about it. Graph it. Focus on the trends. There are day to days swings. Remember that a good bowel movement and a couple of urinations weighs a kilo. Don’t ever weigh yourself to decide whether or not to eat something.. But you are changing your life. You need to see that it’s working, and you need to be able to be honest with yourself if it’s not.
- Get moving if you can. Don’t buy into the idea that you can’t lose weight unless you do a minimum of … whatever. Do what you can, but DO as much as you can.
Again with the caveat that this is simply the advice that I would give myself if I had to do it again. Good luck in your own endeavours.
If, for any reason, anyone actually reads this and/or wants to tweet me, I'm at @CricketIsLike. Feel free, but again with the untrained amateur.
Best wishes.
No comments:
Post a Comment