The most common misconception new people in the world of fitness have when they first enter or even approach the world of fitness is that working out is enough of a leverage for you to eat anything. The concept of calories is absolutely alien to them and they fail to understand that it is something like money: easy to spend but tough to earn. To provide you with some perspective, one snicker bar consists of 250 calories while you'll have to swim very intensely for half an hour or even more to burn 250 calories. I think before educating teenagers on how to put a condom on a banana, we should start teaching them about what to put in their mouth (pun very much intended).
The key to losing or gaining weight is calories. This is not debatable. For gaining you need to be in a hyper-caloric state whilst for losing you need to be in a hypo-caloric state. Each of us have a BMR or Basal Metabolic Rate; an average male has a BMR of 2000-2300 and an average female has a BMR of 1500-1700 calories. So for gaining weight, the average male can consume around 2600-2700 calories while the average female can consume 1900-2100 calories.
Jeff Cavaliere of AthleanX.com, created an analogy wherein losing weight is similar to digging a hole in the ground. You might be gifted with a good shovel, a poor shovel or even a spoon. However, if you keep digging you will eventually make a hole either way. Now, with a good shovel it might be easier but work is required nonetheless and with a spoon if you don't give up at all you might end up with better results. So, genetics might be different, we are all different, even if we eat the same diet and train the same, one will be losing more fat and the other a bit less, but progress is always progress, undoubtedly . Hence, never compare yourself with others and use yourself as a yardstick. Use your mirror to check your progress and even the smallest of results will provide massive motivation for the next steps to come.
Now, weight loss can take place due to several reasons, namely, muscle loss, fat loss, water/waste loss etc. Hence there is a constant fluctuation between the weight in-between days. Therefore, it is advised to expand the frame of reference from days to weeks or maybe even months, in order to notice whether you are eventually gaining or losing weight. Now most of us want to focus on fat loss; we want to lose those love handles and that infamous belly fat. That's when we need to focus on the nutrition and the workouts.
1) Strength training can tear up muscle fibers and the body shall prioritize repairing them and hence you can reduce the muscle loss on your weight loss journey.
2) Consuming whole foods, such as salads and grilled foods as compared to deep fried garbage provides your body more resources to build muscle while losing fat.
3) Cardio. Check out our previous article on why cardio is essential for losing fat.
Now the key to all of this is taking it slow. If you have been surviving on KFC and Taco Bell all these years, it will be a herculean task to start eating Kale and Arugula for lunch along with a sous vide Chicken breast. It is all about making good choices, start trusting food labels:
1) Start choosing low-fat dressings instead of the high-fat Mayonnaise.
2) Start consuming lightly sauteed food instead of deep frying it
3) Stop adding unnecessary oils and start counting calories.
4) Start consuming flavoured Greek yogurts as deserts instead of milk and sugar ice-creams.
There are a million recipes online and one of the famous cookbook is Anabolic Cookbook by Sensei Greg Doucette. Furthermore, if you find calorie counting hectic and cumbersome, try doing it for 2-3 months and you will understand the know-hows and then you won't need to check myFitnessPal every now and then before something enters your mouth.
Now let's talk about cheating; on your diet of course. As I stated above, you need to be in a hypocaloric state in order to lose weight. So it doesn't matter if you consume fried food and still remain under your BMR, you will still lose weight. Yes, do keep in mind that when you shift from whole foods to deep-fried foods you will have to drop drastically in volume in order to remain hypocaloric. For example if your BMR is 2700 calories, then consuming a entire 12" Cheese-burst Domino's Pizza will exhaust your daily limit, and it might not even be that satiating. Hence with whole foods you can eat a lot more with a lot less calories and of course gain a million more nutrients than cheese and pepperoni. But don't get me wrong, I love a good pizza and I love my French Toast drizzled with Maple Syrup and Peanut Butter and that is specifically WHY we all cheat. Now personally my BMR is around 2700, but I consume around 2000 calories every week day. Hence I have saved up (700*5): 3500 calories, and I spend around 3000 of them on my weekdays along with their allotted 2700. Now that's a lot to cheat and still remain in caloric deficit. As Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson rightly says, "Treat yourself, don't cheat yourself".
Finally, genetics play a vital role in defining your end goals. Yes with enough hard work and dedication you can reach sub 8% BodyFat but the question for you is whether that is your goal or not. Personally, I cheat heavily on weekends and I am fine with staying at a BF of sub 15%. But if you are ready to give up on all those guilty pleasures and ready to make some sacrifices not only in your diet but also affecting your social circle, that is up to you, since at the end of the day, these are YOUR goals. Hence, don't compare your body with say, Cristiano Ronaldo's 7% Body Fat, you might not need it and hence might not need to spend those extra bills just on yourself, just for looking good when you take off your shirt. Know yourself and know your goals and of course learn to love yourself.
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