The secret of weight loss

This is not going to be a full blown physics lesson, just a simple idea that could enlighten you. Amongst all the bull out there about low carb, low fat, low fructose, low everything foods and diet plans, only one thing has been scientifically proven to work.... EVER. 

Want the physique of your dreams? Listen up

Losing weight is a game of energy in v energy out. What does this mean? Well, in order to slim down, you have to either decrease the amount of energy coming into your body on average (those last two words are very important), or you have to increase the amount of energy going out of your body. Simple huh?

When you are in an energy surplus (more coming in than going out), that energy has to be stored (the body will not waste it unfortunately, millions of years of evolution have ensured that). Where is it stored? Fat cells, muscle cells, liver are the main places. Theoretically, we would prefer the body to store the excess in our muscle or liver, although in reality, regarding pure weight loss/gain, this is completely irrelevant. If you are an athlete needing to replenish muscle glycogen (muscle fuel) stores quickly, then it becomes more relevant, but most reading this will not fall into that category.

Bottom line is, as we take in more energy than we burn, we will put on weight; And the reverse too, as we burn more energy than we take in, we will lose weight. Some of this will be muscle, some will be fat. The influences for this are;

• Genetic - people will tend to gain fat and muscle and lose fat and muscle in the same ratios. For example, random Joe puts on 10 pounds, 7 of this is fat and 3 is muscle. This also works in reverse - Joe loses 10 pounds and 7 of it is fat, 3 of it is muscle. This is called our P-Ratio, and is largely genetic. 
• Gender - Men will tend to lose less muscle than women will with the same weight loss.
• Your current fat% - the more fat you are holding, the higher proportion of fat you will lose when you lose weight. Obese people can lose almost exclusively fat with no muscle loss. As you get leaner, more muscle tissue is lost as a percentage. But this is generally not a problem until you're in the athletic ranges of bodyfat %
• Age - Regardless of gender and genetics, we all get worse P-Ratios as we get older. In other words, we will tend to gain less muscle and more fat when we gain weight. Life's a bitch eh!

None of the above things are in your control. The below things ARE;

·         The types of food you eat - can influence (to a lesser extent) where that excess energy is stored. Eating certain macronutrients (you will know these as Carbohydrates, fats and proteins) can increase the amount of fat lost through decreasing the amount of muscle lost during dieting (and also the reverse during weight gain). This is not the magic bullet that most people think it is though.

·         Exercise – certain types of exercise (click link) can decrease the amount of muscle lost during a dieting stage, thusly increasing the amount of fat lost.

·         Drugs – steroids, clenbuterol, testosterone, HGH etc can all improve your body’s ability to both store excess energy in muscle tissue, and decrease energy losses from muscle tissue during dieting. That’s why bodybuilders use them – although none of my advice will involve any of this. Some other drugs can improve or worsen your energy expenditure through metabolism drops/increases.

Regardless of the above information, if you are in an energy deficit YOU WILL LOSE WEIGHT, some of it will come from muscle, some from fat. Why would we want to maintain muscle? For guys, this is a no brainer. For girls, maintaining muscle is going to keep everything toned and firm leading to the look you probably want. And I am talking about maintaining as much muscle as you can – building muscle is a different game, and you are not going to do that with your female hormones in a dieting situation. So no worries about waking up liking like the hulk, you are more likely to wake up looking like the below picture. The muscly women you see in bodybuilding mags are usually either insanely low bodyfat (like Maddonna) or taking huge amounts of steroids to achieve that look.

In Conclusion

• Decrease average amount of energy in (within reason)
• Keep energy out as high as possible (within reason)
• Improve the partitioning of those energy sources, so that more of it comes out from fat stores
• Maintain this for long enough to see a noticeable effect on our physique

The last one is very important, I will go through all of them in more detail. Look out for the next updates (follow my posts by putting your email address into the bar at the top of the page), I will be explaining how to do each of these thoroughly. I will also get to the good parts - how can we eat whatever the hell we want in large quantities, and still lose weight. 

An introduction

I have an insatiable appetite; I can sometimes go through 2,500 calories in a single sitting and 5,000 calories in a day. I also have a sweet tooth. I love cakes, biscuits, sweets (candy, for our American counterparts), chocolate - is your mouth watering yet? The problem with this combination is that you can easily put on weight, and left unchecked I can easily put on 10 pounds in a week or two. Do this over the course of a year and you have serious problems.

Luckily for me, I have managed to maintain my weight consistently over the last 10 years. Sure, there have been some fluctuations, but I have found ways of staying well within the healthy range whilst enjoying foods that I want in quantities that I want. I want to share some of those concepts with you, so that maybe you can be freed of the helplessness you feel regarding controlling your weight.

I hate hearing when others are on a ‘diet’ as it always signifies that they are going to be depriving themselves for the next 2 weeks (or however long their weak willpower lasts). If you have ever seen me on a diet, you will realise that I certainly don’t deprive myself – often people make comments more in the range of “you are so lucky you can eat so much and still stay thin”. What they don’t realise is that I am not lucky at all, but through certain strategies I use, I am able to still indulge in large portions of delicious food whilst dropping weight.

The typical story for a dieter goes like this - realising they have 20 pounds to lose before their next beach holiday, they quickly research the latest fad diet which involves cutting out everything they love. Usually they will have to do something very strange as a ‘hook’, such as drinking a glass of bath water. There will usually be some idiotic scientific explanation for why drinking a glass of bath water will somehow use the lost bodily salts to supercharge your metabolism (please people, don’t try this – it is just a sarcastic example). After a week, they are already craving everything they cut out of their diet and are pretty sick of the bath water, but as they have lost 6 pounds in their first week, they continue on. Second week comes, they step on the scales and nothing, didn’t budge an inch. All that effort and missing out on good foods, only to see the same reading on the scales as last week. Very quickly, the diet is abandoned and a binge fest of epic proportions begins. Within a week, they have put back on most of the weight they lost, within a month they have gained a little more than original. Now, the cycle either begins again with the next fad diet, or the person feels that dieting simply doesn’t work for them.

Is this someone you know – or you? It doesn’t have to be this way. I am going to try and write a few articles in my spare time - different strategies to help you break free of the above destructive cycle. It will allow you to consistently lose weight and still maintain the ability to go out, have drinks and meals without sabotaging it. I will also try and go through some quality foods that can add a nutritious punch to your meals, as well as fill you up better. The foods and strategies suggested will also enable you to maintain as much muscle as possible during your weight loss, so it will leave you much more toned than most other diet plans.

This is a serious passion of mine, I have spent many years researching this stuff and putting it into practice through tinkering and experimenting with variants and extremes to see what works. I hope that this can influence people in a positive way, and make them think a little differently about dieting and have a more healthy relationship with food. Taking care of yourself and being in shape is one of the best things you can do for your health and general wellbeing. And now, it doesn’t have to be a chore either. Bookmark this page,  share it, add it to your favourites or add your email address at the top of the page to keep track of the updates. I hope it helps you.


Enjoy your food :)