When it comes to fat loss, a lot of you don’t realise that it is a combination of activity and good nutrition that does the good. Not just one, but both.
Firstly, understand that what you are looking for is fat loss and not weight loss. Body weight comprises of fat mass, water mass and lean tissue mass. While the first two are self explanatory, lean tissue mass is the weight of bones, muscles and connective tissue.
Now, when you say you want to lose X kilos, realise that you don’t want to just lose X kilos but you want to lose X kilos of fat. Why? Because losing anything else would make no sense. The fat you have gained is the problem and that’s what you want to lose.
Now, like most people, let's say you start a new exercise programme but pay no attention to nutrition. Either you think you eat well or you’re just too cool to change what you eat.
On an average, your workout session lasts between 30 and 60 minutes and burns anywhere from 300 to 1000 calories totally (including the increased metabolic rate throughout the day). Now you have created a calorie deficit of 300 to1000 calories and, on paper, you should end up losing 0.2 to 1 kilo every week. But this is only true if you continue eating the exact same way as you did before starting the new exercise programme. That is, your intake has to be kept the same as your output increases. But that’s never the case.
Since you are not paying attention to your nutrition, you have no idea what and how much you are actually consuming. And more often than not, exercising results in an increased appetite and you end up eating more.
While things don’t seem too bad on paper, here is the reality.
Phase 1: You are excited about the new exercise programme and start strong by losing some weight. This is a combination of water loss, fat loss and lean tissue loss due to shocking your system with new activity, and due to inefficiency, as you’re probably really bad at your new movements.
Phase 2: In a few weeks, your rate of weight loss slows down and slowly but surely, comes to a halt. This is because your appetite has increased and you have started eating more without your own knowledge.
Also, you have now become efficient at your activity (exercise) and use lesser calories to do the same amount of work. Basically, you have started eating a little more and burning a little less compared to Phase 1.
Phase 3: You lose heart, stop exercising and see the worst happening — you start gaining weight.
This is because you have now gotten used to eating more but are not exercising.
This creates an excess of energy (calories) in the body which is stored as fat.
Phase 4: Within a few months, you get back to your starting weight and even pile on a couple more kilos. This cycles continues — you move to a new programme, lose a few kilos, give up, gain the few kilos back and then gain some more — and in a few years, you will have gained anywhere from 2 to 8 kilos.
If this is the story of your life, you are not alone. Most people who are interested in fat loss but are not willing to make nutritional changes go through these phases and, in all probability, are in one of these phases right now.
So what do you do? Fix your nutrition. I know it's not fun, but there is no way around it. In fact, if you can fix your nutrition and do no exercise, you have a better chance of losing fat and gaining health in the long term. The other way around never works.
