A fairly common conundrum that people face is that they aren’t losing weight even though they don’t really eat that much. On the face of things, this doesn’t really make much sense and can understandably lead to a lot of frustration for people. If this applies to you, then you’ll definitely know what I’m on about.
Daily Grind
For someone who eats as I described above, a typical day could look like a small breakfast of something like cereal, a small bowl of porridge or a slice of toast, lunch would be a sandwich or a small salad, tea (Or dinner depending on which part of the world you’re from) would be something a bit more substantial like a home cooked meal and there may be the odd spattering of fruit and veg as a snack throughout the day, or even a packet and crisps or a chocolate bar.
A large amount of people eat like this on a daily basis with the thought process that the less they eat the more chance they have of losing weight and not putting weight on.
However, this is where a lot of people tend to fail with they weight loss journey so let me explain!
Less isn’t More
Eating in such small amounts can and probably will be good for weight loss when someone initially starts a diet or weight loss kick, but after a while this weight loss slows down and eventually stops and there is a very good reason for this.
The overall reason why we lose weight is if we are in a calorie deficit – what I mean by that is when we are eating less calories than our bodies are using! So, if someone currently overeats a lot and suddenly goes into a massive drop and sticks to it perfectly then they will lose a decent amount of weight because they are in such a big calorie deficit. Awesome!
But, after a while, our bodies adapt to this consistent level of low calories and enter what is called ‘starvation mode’. This is when our bodies slow down our metabolisms because we have been in such a big calorie deficit for so long and it needs to hold on to what it has got in order to survive – if this process didn’t happen then everyone would be walking around as thin as skeletons!
More is Less
So, if this situation occurs what do we do about it?
Well, what we have to do is increase our calories up to our bodies maintenance level (The amount that it is actually using on a daily basis) and this will mean our metabolisms and hormone levels return back to normal (Which is what we want!).
Once we have hit this level, we can then either stay at that level if it turns out that we lose weight (Yay eat more and lose weight), or we can look at dropping calories down to reasonable deficit (Around 500 calories is right for most people).
Summary
Doing the process we have looked at above will help get your metabolism back up and running again and then will make sure you can get rid of those pesky pounds that have been hanging around.
Adam C. Morris - Fitness Coach 