Ill be honest, I love a read of diet books, how to lose weight with a simple diet change and being enticed with the marketer’s magic of demonising food to make you eat it.
Simply put however weight loss is as easy as counting what goes in your body versus what your body burns.
There simply is no easy way of losing fat except for reducing the amount of fuel (energy aka KCAL) and increasing the burn rate of those calories.
An analogy of this would be a water balloon; imagine that you attach the balloon to a tap, and slowly start to fill it up. The balloon will increase in size. It will continue to increase until you turn the tap off or burst. Reality is the body would not burst, but to keep with the image – the bursting can be the associated impact of being overweight and obese.
Now, lets take that water balloon and before filling it we put a little hole in it. We fill the water balloon up at a steady water flow, it begins to increase in size however with the hole some of the water comes out. Lets see this as someone sat at their desk, and having a pretty static lifestyle – a lifestyle of convenience where sitting in a car is easier than walking, where getting food delivered to their door in an evening rather than cooking.
Then we could take the balloon and add a bigger hole, this hole allows more water through. Again, putting the water into the balloon with the bigger hole, it may slightly increase in size however it will not significantly increase when the tap continues to have a steady flow. If that flow was to increase then the balloon will gain, if it was to reduce the balloon will shrink. The bigger the hole is signifying the exercise we do to enable the flow of the calories out of our body.
We as a human being are that balloon. The water is symbolic of the calories which we intake (water via the tap) through our love of food and drink, and we burn (through the water leaving through the hole).
You can use various apps to help you track the intake and burning of calories. My Fitness Pal and Lifesum are two of the popular ones. (We have no affiliation to either platform, and recommend reading about them and making your own decision on which you want to use. We are in no way liable for any data you input into these apps).
What these apps do try and do is include calories burnt through exercise to allow you to “eat more” or “top up” – don’t fall for this. Only burn the calories you need to on that day. Your body does not need more food for an hour’s exercise. It only needs more energy when serious depletion is happening e.g 3-4 hours of exercise.
We will be writing more about weight loss, healthy eating and balancing the diet and our relationship with food.
Start today though, start looking at what your intake is and what you burn. Burn more than you eat and you will lose weight.