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Weight Loss Articles

Jul 11
0

Why Missing Out On Breakfast Is Bad

By | Nutrition, Weight Loss Articles | No Comments

Many of my personal training clients regularly tell me that they miss out on breakfast either because they don’t feel like eating as soon as they wake up or because they don’t have the time to make breakfast before they go to work.

However the truth of the matter is that scientific study after scientific study shows that people who eat a breakfast that includes a healthy balance of carbs, protein, and good fats lose more weight than those who skip this meal altogether.

This is because after a night of fasting and inactivity when you are asleep, your metabolism has slowed down to a crawl. We need to think of breakfast as the action that switches on your body’s metabolism, allowing you up to burn calories for the whole day. In fact think of the name breakfast, it is so called as it is designed to break the fast from the previous 12 hours since your last evening meal. Some order xenical online pharmacy people skip breakfast altogether and dont eat until mid morning or even luch time and if they haven’t eaten since 7pm the night before this can mean a fast of over 16 hours.

The human body is not designed to go without food for that long and this can cause us to go into starvation mode and hold onto body fat rather that burn it. As a result of this our body will use up valuable muscle tissue as fuel and in turn this will decrease the amount of calories we need on a daily basis and make it harder for us to shift unwanted body fat and lose weight.

Studies have also shown another reason why having a nutrient-dense, satisfying breakfast is important hen weight loss is your goal is that it prevents us from overeating later on in the day.

What to eat for breakfast?

We recommend a high protein breakfast like scrambled eggs, salmon and spinach. Yummy.

Dec 09
0

Why You Should Throw Away Your Scales

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As a a fitness professional who has been helping people lose body weight pretty successfully for the last 4 years of the first things my potential clients tell me is that they want to “lose weight”. What most people actually mean when they say this is that they want to lose body fat.

Throw away your scales

Actually what most people really want is on a whole deeper level but that’s a whole other discussion for another day……anyway back to the weight loss (fat loss)

Did you know that is actually possible for someone to lose a lot of body fat and get loads slimmer without actually losing any weight at all?

This may sound crazy but its true.  I actually have a client at the minute that in the last 2 weeks dropped a dress size yet didn’t lose any weight.  This is why I always try and get people to throw away their scales because the scales don’t always tell the whole story.

So how exactly does this work?

If you are working out and training in the correct way to lose body fat on a regular basis its a given that you will be gaining some more muscle, especially if its been a while since you did some exercise or you are relatively inactive.

Lets look at it like this if you are working out for 2 weeks and you gain 2lbs of muscle while at the same time you lose 2lbs of body fat the scales are going to tell you haven’t lost any weight.

If weight is all you are concentrating on then you are going to be very disappointed, however the reality is that you will already be a lot slimmer as that 2lbs of muscle takes up a lot less space than 2lbs of fat.

fat vs muscle

5lbs of fat (the yellow blob) next to 5lbs of lean muscle.

As a rough example a lb of muscle is roughly the same size as a large strawberry and in comparison a pound of fat is about the same size of a 500g or (1lb) tub of butter. Think about it how many strawberries could you fit into the tub, probably about 6.  The pound of muscle is a lot more dense and firmer and therefore takes up less space, which in reality is most peoples goal. Check out the picture on the right for an actual comparison of 5lbs of muscle next to 5 lbs of fat.

 

This is one of the reasons our guarantee is that we can help people to drop a dress size or jeans size rather than set weight related goals.

Take a look at the picture below as an example of how 2 people weighing the same can look vastly different.

BMI vs Weight

Both of these two characters weight the same and have the same BMI, however you can clearly see that the guy on the left has more muscle and less body fat and is clearly healthier and in better shape. I’m not writing about BMI today but if the guy on the left was to go to his GP and jump on the scales, he would be told he is obese (which he clearly isn’t). Just one of the reasons that I don’t use BMI as a calculation in my assessments.

So my advice to you if your goal is to lose weight is to should throw out your scales and buy a tape measure instead or even better take regular pictures for comparison.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or would like any specific advice when it comes to losing body-fat or getting fitter and you live in Manchester.

Also check out our Ladies Manchester Weight Loss Boot Camp  in Manchester City Centre