However you want to look at losing weight, one simple truth of any program which holds a chance of success is that a calorie deficit is required.
There are a million ways to create a calorie deficit through food and exercise, and there are a million ways to make it harder or easier through specific food choices and other habits.
Losing weight really should never become a game of maths. Thank goodness, really, as maths is not my strong point. Filling your body up with the nutrients it needs is crucial for long term progress, adherence – and health.
But still, the truth remains that a calorie deficit is required if you’re going to see the scales move and your jeans get looser.
If you are eating a diet full of processed food, a simple change to eating what slimming clubs call ‘free food’ is almost guaranteed to lead to weight loss. It should easily create a natural calorie deficit, show you how much better you can feel when you’re eating a less processed diet and hopefully lead to long term adherence.
This is, of course, excellent news, and pretty much sums up my preferred first-step for clients coming from a place of little knowledge about nutrition: eat whenever, and whatever you want, as long as it is real, unprocessed, food.
Starting a weight loss plan when you already have a relatively healthy diet, however, needs a real life understanding of how even unprocessed food adds up calorie wise. And this is where slimming clubs often fail their members.
It is not beyond the realms of possibility that you could already be eating a real-food or ‘free food’ diet at the start of your weight loss plan, but, no matter how healthy a food is – if you’re eating too many calories, you simply won’t lose weight. This is when a true understanding of how to make the right food choices becomes essential to unlocking further weight loss.
If you’ve ‘run out of results’ from a slimming club, it’s time to learn more about point-free and syn-free foods and how to choose the right real-foods to get you to your target.
I’d be delighted to help you work out how to change up your diet to get the scales moving again, send me a message and we’ll have a chat about the first step.