Some times you just have to stand in front of the mirror and be honest with yourself.
There we are, that was not too hard.
A quick way to verify the fact is to use an on line calculator of BMI, or Body Mass Index. For my height and weight my number is 26, when it should be between 20 and 25 to be a "good" weight. By playing with the weight number on the BMI calculator I can see if I lose 10 kgs, I currently sit at 106kgs, then my number drops to 23.5.
If I dropped 15kgs my BMI number would be 22.3 and I can assure you, I would look quite unwell although the number itself would place me in a very respectable zone of the BMI index. BMI is a measure for sure but it is a little crude as we all have different bone structures, shapes and so on. But it at least confirms what I have already told myself. An independent source has confirmed my suspicions that I am overweight and I am a little annoyed as it means my wife was right!
If you Google the question, "What is my ideal weight?" you will be provided with a number of answers. The site www.calculator.net/ideal-weight-calculator.html suggests a good range of weight dependent on the original researcher that devised the calculation method. It provides a wide target to aim for if you are thinking of losing weight. It will hopefully keep you in weight loss sanity mode rather than the stressed out, exercised out, starved, objective obsessed nutter space we are all unfortunately familiar with, if not from our own circle of friends family or work colleagues, then at least from the regular parading of these characters in the media.
" You my lad are overweight!"
There we are, that was not too hard.
A quick way to verify the fact is to use an on line calculator of BMI, or Body Mass Index. For my height and weight my number is 26, when it should be between 20 and 25 to be a "good" weight. By playing with the weight number on the BMI calculator I can see if I lose 10 kgs, I currently sit at 106kgs, then my number drops to 23.5.
If I dropped 15kgs my BMI number would be 22.3 and I can assure you, I would look quite unwell although the number itself would place me in a very respectable zone of the BMI index. BMI is a measure for sure but it is a little crude as we all have different bone structures, shapes and so on. But it at least confirms what I have already told myself. An independent source has confirmed my suspicions that I am overweight and I am a little annoyed as it means my wife was right!
If you Google the question, "What is my ideal weight?" you will be provided with a number of answers. The site www.calculator.net/ideal-weight-calculator.html suggests a good range of weight dependent on the original researcher that devised the calculation method. It provides a wide target to aim for if you are thinking of losing weight. It will hopefully keep you in weight loss sanity mode rather than the stressed out, exercised out, starved, objective obsessed nutter space we are all unfortunately familiar with, if not from our own circle of friends family or work colleagues, then at least from the regular parading of these characters in the media.
But yes, I do need to and I do want to lose some weight. It will be a positive thing for both my mind and my body and importantly my heart. I am a committed patient from now on. I have had advice, well to be truthful I discovered advice as previously blogged, and I will act on it bit by bit. not bite by bite.
The bit by bit aspect is important when it comes to losing weight as I have discovered previously. Fads, fasting, flogging and forgoing do not work in the longer term. Weight loss or weight management strategies have to be sustainable and the more normal the process, the more likely is success predictable for the future.
It is unnatural to starve oneself. Quoting from a 1997 publication titled; “Handbook for Treatment of Eating Disorders” by D M Gardner, it states, “One of the most important advancements in the understanding of eating disorders is the recognition that severe and prolonged dietary restriction can lead to serious physical and psychological complications.”
One of the breakthrough pieces of research is a story in itself. One of the problems of looking at eating disorders and diets is the people under observation often have issues and so cannot be considered to be a normal cohort of subjects to observe. However, during the Second World War an experiment was undertaken. A group of thirty six healthy, psychologically normal men underwent a restricted calorie diet for six months.Initially they were fed normally, for three months, whilst base data was collected. For the next six months, the men were restricted to half of their previous food intake. At the end of six months, the men were slowly brought back to so called normal levels of food intake.
This group of so called normal men had varying responses to the lack of food .The stand out change in the subjects was the huge increase in a preoccupation with food. Men would dream about food, asleep and awake. They would talk about food, collect recipe books or food related items like coffee cups and kitchen utensils. Many would hide food and consume it over long hours away from others. They took on hoarding behaviours even to hoard things that were not related to food. During the rehabilitation phase, these new behaviours did not miraculously disappear. For a number, binge eating continued well after the restrictions to food intake were removed.
There were other changes in their emotional states, personalities, social interaction and how they thought and functioned.
The starvation experiment or the Minnesota experiment, is an interesting study for anyone having difficulty with their attempts to diet.
There is a very simple basic formula for weight loss;
What rules do you live by? “I always have a take away food on Friday nights.” “I like to have a snack when I watch television”. “I must have a cake with my coffee”. There will be a host of things you like and a raft of things you would not like to go without.
When you know what you can’t live without, don’t try to, you are highly likely to cheat, deny and fail.
Do you love a snack after meal time as you watch television? Make the snack smaller in volume and substitute where you can, healthier alternatives- a piece of fruit, a vegetable stick. But you still want your biscuits too don’t you? Instead of three biscuits, have one and make it a beauty. Boy, does it taste good! Instead of a bar of chocolate why not try one piece but of the most expensive chocolate, lip smackingly good chocolate, the sort you could easily club your partner on the back of the head to get to first.
The answer is to make diet part of a lifestyle option, a positive move that does not see you flogging yourself for being the miserable weak piece of filth that magazines and the media try to push you feel about you. Increase your energy output.again by appreciating the sort of exercise you could see yourself doing and knowing which ones you know you would never do. Don’t bother buying the full set of Lycra swimwear or cycle wear if you hate swimming or cycling.. Do something you like and start off gradually so you will continue to enjoy it. Exercise does not just mean running, swimming, gym, aerobics, cycling and the like. I feel tired just thinking of those things. What about walking, gardening, dancing to music, shopping. Yes shopping! Maybe park your car a little further away next time. Hate mowing the lawn? Make it one of your exercise options. Mow, one two three, Mow one two three….
Energy in must be less than energy out.
However simple that fact is, simple is not always straight forward.
To get an idea of what energy you should consume in a day, the website below is a good start.
https://www.walkingwithattitude.com/fitness-tools/basal-metabolic-rate
It is straightforward and easy to select metric or imperial measurements and daily activity level. Looking at your sedentary energy requirement is worthwhile for those days where you do struggle to do much and compare the energy needed for those days where you are on the go.
There are plenty of calorie or kilojoule calculators out there to assess how much you might be consuming with your eating pattern at the moment. If you are motivated you will have the motivation to work it out. For your interest though, type ""What does 100 calories look like" into your search engine, the images are interesting.
 |
| images courtesy of sparkspeople.com |
In short, there are some really simple food choices that can be made to make you feel full or satisfied that have very few calories e.g celery, carrots
But back to weight loss there are some pretty useful things to consider that might help.
You are you and do not try to pretend to be otherwise. There are some foods that maybe you should not eat but really you will feel you are starving yourself if you do without them. There are some food rules that unwittingly you live by. You have to abide by yourself. Go back to the starvation diet, it ain;'t going to work and you are setting yourself up for failure if you do not take these into account.
Make a list of the foods you love and could not do without, the foods you could do without and the ones you can take or leave. There is likely to be a scale of “Yum” to “Yuk!”
Make a list of the foods you love and could not do without, the foods you could do without and the ones you can take or leave. There is likely to be a scale of “Yum” to “Yuk!”
What rules do you live by? “I always have a take away food on Friday nights.” “I like to have a snack when I watch television”. “I must have a cake with my coffee”. There will be a host of things you like and a raft of things you would not like to go without.
When you know what you can’t live without, don’t try to, you are highly likely to cheat, deny and fail.
Do you love a snack after meal time as you watch television? Make the snack smaller in volume and substitute where you can, healthier alternatives- a piece of fruit, a vegetable stick. But you still want your biscuits too don’t you? Instead of three biscuits, have one and make it a beauty. Boy, does it taste good! Instead of a bar of chocolate why not try one piece but of the most expensive chocolate, lip smackingly good chocolate, the sort you could easily club your partner on the back of the head to get to first.
The answer is to make diet part of a lifestyle option, a positive move that does not see you flogging yourself for being the miserable weak piece of filth that magazines and the media try to push you feel about you. Increase your energy output.again by appreciating the sort of exercise you could see yourself doing and knowing which ones you know you would never do. Don’t bother buying the full set of Lycra swimwear or cycle wear if you hate swimming or cycling.. Do something you like and start off gradually so you will continue to enjoy it. Exercise does not just mean running, swimming, gym, aerobics, cycling and the like. I feel tired just thinking of those things. What about walking, gardening, dancing to music, shopping. Yes shopping! Maybe park your car a little further away next time. Hate mowing the lawn? Make it one of your exercise options. Mow, one two three, Mow one two three….
There will be something that works for you but you need to understand what you really like and what you can forgo, in order to make the necessary changes.
If you want to lose weight, you will do so. If you feel you should, you will not. Make the change because you want to and it will work. The key to dieting is it has got to be easy. Punishment only works in the short term.
Slowly does it. Slowly is like the tortoise and the hare, the slow and steady wins and sustainably as it is more like a lifestyle plan rather than a prison programme. Once you know your own daily energy requirement, if you eat 500 calories less than that requirement, you will lose 500 grams or one pound of weight per week. That is a huge change but one that is manageable.
No comments:
Post a Comment