So you’re trying to lose weight and you’ve been doing everything “right”. All the foods are “clean” and its everything you’ve been reading about to get to your goals. You’re even tracking your cals and still the scale isnt moving.  You start to think that its your “metabolism ” and you are doomed. I’m here to give you that “phewww ” moment. Its not your metabolism, it’s your measuring accuracy.

Measuring accuracy matters. Without it will have you spinning your wheels. Portion control works well for this reason. The beauty of it is that its not your metabolism! You may have to eat less than someone else to reach your goals. There are high volume low calorie foods that will keep you full, and meal timing tools (like intermittent fasting) to help you make the process easier.

The bottom line is creating a calorie deficit. It’s a calorie deficit.  It wont last forever.  It’s a phase to help you reach your goals. When the calorie deficit is over and you bring your calories to a maintenance,  you will keep some of your disciplines to maintain your weight loss.

Hidden calories are some of the easiest things to remove once we find them! That olive oil you poured onto your chicken? Let’s remove that first.

15 ml of olive oil packs 120 calories. This is alot for a small female wanting to create a calorie deficit. Lets say she has to eat 1200 calories to lose weight (1 lb a week to every 10 days) . If she eats a 4 ounce chicken breast 3 times that day that is about 330-380 calories (depending on the calorie app you use) that she tracks. Say that each time she cooks it she puts a table spoon of olive oil in the pan to cook it with. Assuming some is burned through cooking , we are still around 300-360 calories more than we are tracking. 300 calories off when eating 1200 calories a day is a 25% error in our data. And if our calories to maintain our weight are around 1700, we can assume that we are only in a 200 calorie a day deficit. Crazy right?

This is why measuring is one of the most important factors for weight loss. It creates transparency in your eating to understand where you may have went wrong in the past. The death is in the details and many folks overlook these things.

 

See dieting isn’t an off and on switch.  There is an area of creating a new normal for you to maintain all of your hard work. Measuring is one of the new normals that we need to consider to keep the weight off. The chart 2 paragraphs ago will show you how without a scale. My other scale article will teach you to track with a scale accurately.

What about when the weight is off, now what?

You worked so hard to lose it. You feel so much better and you don’t wanna get back to where you were before.

The best way is to increase our calories and use the same principles that we used for dieting,  only more food. The disciplines we’ve enforced ourselves to use to get there need to stay. Now they need to be built upon by increasing the cals.

There are a few ways to increase your calories after your diet is over.

  1. Diet straight to maintenance. Increase calories by 400-600 right away.
  2. Reverse diet – walk calories up every 1 to 2 weeks 50-100 cals from carbs typically until you’re satisfied.

The pros of going straight to maintenance is its easier. A con is you could regain some fat and water due to the length of the diet. Sometimes the blood volume , salt, and water rebound can make you bloated, and spike the scale up. Know that if its a true 400 calories, that you are not gaining substantial amounts of adipose. Other things are going on. Mostly everything I just listed above. Allow the body to adapt. What not to do is go directly into eating 1000 calories or more per day over your diet. That will leave you back to where you started very fast.

The pros of reverse dieting is you may drop some more body fat , because you are extending the dieting phase. Not only are you extending the dieting phase, but you are allowing the body to adapt to the food that it is receiving at a slower rate. This is better for body composition for most folks. (we really don’t know if its because its extending the dieting phase or if its because with the calories out performances and NEAT increase, there aren’t enough true studies explaining it to thoroughly answer this question).Here are a few cons. One con of a reverse diet is that some people tend to binge eat and cannot control their appetite. Another con is that its mentally harder. Some people just need a break from a calorie deficit. And if that’s you just go for it and increase them.

I am not you, so I cannot pick for you. I recommend to the reverse diet. If you can’t go straight to mainentance.

I know this is short and sweet, but if you would like a free ebook I pieced together on these topics, you can email me at averyts25@gmail.com

or text me at 513-557-8029