Weight-Loss 101: The Basics Of Losing Weight!

By Stephen Smith BSc

In this article I would like to cover some of the ‘grass roots’ strategies to lose weight; some of the simplest strategies that can help you get the weight off fast. These are strategies that anyone can do straight away, that can be easily maintained with very little impact on your lifestyle and that have little, if any, cost.

Gaining weight, for most people, is ‘insidious’. This means it occurs gradually, stealthily, without notice. All of a sudden one day you wake up and realise, you’re FAT! It usually occurs over many years. Let’s say you put on 30 grams of fat a day, which is quite common. In a week, you’ve put on 210 grams; after a month, 900 grams, almost a kilo! Then after 12 months, you’ve put on almost 11 kilograms of energy-sapping, artery-clogging, sex-repelling fat!

Just think about how easy it can be for this situation to occur. It is just like going trekking through the bush with a faulty compass. If your compass is out by 5 degrees and you have to trek 10 kilometres, what’s going to happen? You’re going to be off course! If your current lifestyle causes you to put on 30 grams of fat a day, we call that off course! Whatsmore, it only takes a few, small errors in judgment over time, to put you off course. Do you really think you’ll notice an extra 30 grams of fat on your body? Probably not. You may not even notice a week’s worth of stored fat! That’s why we call it insidious!

Just as fat takes a long time to accumulate on your body, it also takes a long time to be burnt off. Mind you, how do most people try to get the fat off their body? Fast! Just like someone cramming for an exam, once people make a decision to lose weight/ fat, they try and force it off their body as quickly as they possibly can. Unfortunately this approach is doomed right from the start. The body is a very clever mechanism and since fat tends to be the fuel source it uses if it is ever faced with a famine, it will try and find others way to overcome the rapid weight/ fat loss. For long-term results, fat needs to be burnt off the body very slowly.       

If you try to burn the fat off your body quickly, the body will immediately adapt to this stress by invoking its ‘starvation mechanism’. A number of things occur in the body when this happens. For example, your body reduces its thyroid hormone output, which slows down your metabolism, preserving fat stores. It increases its output of cortisol, a catabolic hormone that breaks down muscle tissue to be used as fuel so your metabolism slows down even further. Your body also increases the activity of fat-storing enzymes, to promote the storage of fat in your body. It also increases your appetite so you eat more. All these things occur when you try to get the fat off your body fast. So let’s face it, if you want to lose fat and keep it off, you have to do it slowly. 0.5-1kg loss per week is the accepted norm.

So now let’s look at some simple ways you can help to create an energy deficit in your body and therefore shed the excess weight.  We will consider each of the 4 major lifestyle factors: nutrition, supplements, resistance exercise and aerobic exercise, and how you can easily fit principles from the 4 areas into your lifestyle.

NUTRITION:

  • Don’t skip meals
  • Reduce your portion sizes
  • Eat more protein and less carbohydrate and fat
  • Use low-fat alternatives
  • Drink more water
  • Cut the fat off meat
  • Use oils to cook with sparingly
  • Don’t go shopping hungry
  • Reduce your alcohol intake
  • Be conscious of your ‘snack food’ intake

SUPPLEMENTS:

  • Use a protein powder/ meal replacement
  • Add psyllium husks to your breakfast cereal
  • Use a good quality multivitamin/ mineral supplement
  • Use Omega-3’s
  • Use a thermogenics
  • Use a glucose disposal agent

RESISTANCE EXERCISE:

  • Perform household chores vigorously
  • Do some exercise with rubber bands while watching TV

AEROBIC EXERCISE:

  • Use the stairs when walking to your office
  • Park your car in a distant parking bay when going to the supermarket
  • Take the dog for a walk
  • Go for a regular walk with your partner or friends
  • Take the kids down to the park to play

There are probably dozen of other slight changes you can make to your lifestyle as well as ways to add ‘incidental exercise’ to your daily routine. Add to this list as much as you possibly can, make the changes in your lifestyle and watch the weight fall off your body!