You have made the decision to lose some excess fat weight. You cut calories and you exercise. You do exactly what they say – your calories out are more than your calories coming in. You should be losing fat. But apart from a little when you started you aren’t.
Perhaps you are not paying attention to the most often forgotten aspect of body fat loss – your metabolism which is the measure of the amount of fuel (calories) you are burning each day. It is likely that you have allowed yours to slow down so it is burning fewer calories than it should be so the weight has slowly piled on over a period of time.
Just as there are things that you do in your lifestyle that boost your metabolism there are also things like the type of food you eat, the type of exercise that you do that can slow it down and have a significant impact on how you turn the food you eat into energy and how and when it is used by your body.
For example if you go on some ‘fad’ diet that restricts calories too much (instead of following a healthy eating plan) your metabolism will slow down. If you fail to do enough muscle building and maintaining activity – it will also slow down.
Just three things have the most impact on your metabolism – eating the wrong types of foods, eating too much of them and not enough muscular exertion. These are the main things that you do or don’t do that will determine how fit or fat you are. They will determine if you have a fat storing body or a fat burning one.
So it makes good sense to lose weight that those things need to be addressed as they are at the root cause of the problem of being overweight. You need to fix your sluggish metabolism and bring it up to speed first. Dieting, low carbohydrates, low fat, long duration, low intensity activity will do nothing to help do this. In fact these are the things that will further put you into a ‘metabolic hole’.
So then, how do we fix it? Firstly we get the muscular system toned back up so we are burning more calories every minute of the day and night. There is only one way to do this – a program of proper strength training exercise. Just 2-3 sessions each week are needed but some effort will need to be put into them to make the changes right down at base level. Muscle cells are where fuel is burnt for energy so their health is vital if body fat is to be lost.
Next get yourself back into the kitchen and start preparing and cooking natural whole foods from scratch. Packaged, convenience non-nutrient foods have no place in your healthy eating plan if losing weight is your goal. The chemicals and additives in them will always have your appetite stimulated so the chance of sticking to a healthy eating plan is unlikely. Small meals (5-7 of them) are needed each day – each with a source of quality protein.
Just by addressing these two factors that can slow your metabolic motor – allowing your muscular system to weaken with inactivity and poor eating habits such as a diet of mainly processed foods you will be back on track to reclaim your slim body. These are the things that change the chemistry and hormonal response of your body and will favor fat storage hormones instead of fat burning ones. Once you have these things sorted that strong, lean, healthy, slim body will be yours.
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