Weight Loss

Weight Loss Tips

Weight loss success will require a high degree of motivation and the ability to change your lifestyle. Also see dietary guidelines.

• Set Rules
• Utilize both diet and exercise
  • Diet to lose weight
  • Exercise to keep weight off
  • Shift stress relief from eating to exercise
• Learn what and how to eat
  • weight management is a skill
    • do not rely on will power
    • create new habits that will last a life time
  • Do not eat just what is convenient
  • Eat at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables daily
    • eat a variety (7 different colors)
  • Don't lose control
    • Eat small meals and snacks throughout the day
    • Have healthy food always available
      • Maintain a shopping list
    • Don't have processed snack foods available
    • Eat before being around processed snack foods
      • eg: party, shopping, etc.
• Find time for yourself

Exercise & Weight Loss

• With a typical exercise program, it is common to maintain weight yet lose fat and gain muscle
  • Girth can decrease since muscle is denser than fat.
  • A sheer gain in muscle results in a lower percent of body fat
  • More exercise and improvements in diet may be needed for substantial loss of fat
• Regular body composition tests can assess the effectiveness of a program
  • Absolute weight of fat and lean body weight should be tracked and analyzed
  • Caloric intake/expenditure goals can be adjusted accordingly
• A review of the literature suggests in order to achieve significant fat loss with aerobic activity
  • Exercise or activity must be performed most days of the week.
    • Progress to at least 45 minutes, 60-90 minutes recommended
  • Aerobic exercise should be between 60 to 80% maximum heart rate for progressively longer durations.
  • Lower intensities must be continued for very long durations
• Intense exercise (eg. weight training, HIIT, plyometrics, sprints) can increase metabolic rate for hours after the vigorous workout.
• The combination of anaerobic and aerobic activity results in faster fat loss than anaerobic or aerobic activity alone.
  • Intense anaerobic exercise increases the metabolism hours after exercise
  • Aerobic exercise burns fat during exercise, but has little effect afterwards
• Exercise (particularly weight training) develops muscle
  • Restores muscle that had been lost over the years of a sedentary modern lifestyle.
    • One pound of muscle can burn 30 to 50 Calories a day
    • One pound of fat burns only 3 Calories a day

Energy Balance

• Neutral energy balance is when the calories you take in is equal to the calories expended.
  • Weight is maintained.
• Positive energy balance is when the calories you take in is greater than the calories expended.
  • Weight is gained and fat stores are increased.
  • One pound of fat contains approximately 3500 Calories.
• Negative energy balance is when the calories you take in is less than the calories expended.
  • Fat stores are used for energy to make up the caloric deficiency.
  • Weight is lost and fat stores are reduced
• The metabolism adjusts to changes in diet and exercise
  • If calories are increased
    • Thermo-genesis
      • Body heat is produced
    • Metabolism increases
    • Muscle mass may increase
  • If calories are restricted
    • Thyroid hormones decrease
    • Metabolism decreases
    • Muscle mass may decrease
  • Anaerobic exercise can increase metabolism for hours after exercise is finished
    • 3-14 hours: dependent upon intensity
    • HIIT study: for every calorie expended during anaerobics, 9 times as much fat (per calorie expended) was metabolized as compared to aerobic activity.

Misconceptions About Weight Loss

• Exercise burns relatively few calories and therefore makes an insignificant contribution to changing the energy balance.
  • Even though total calories expended during exercise seems to be low, a negative energy balance of as little as 200 calories a day can result in weight loss over time.
    • For example: A 170 lb person decides to add one hour of tennis, three days a week to their schedule. Adding this will replace 1 hour of watching television.
      • Calories burned playing tennis = .045 calories a minute per pound of weight
        • So: 170 lbs X .045 X 60 minutes = 459 calories
      • Calories burned watching television = .008 calories a minutes per pound of weight.
        • So: 170 lbs X .008 X 60 minutes = 81 calories
      • 459 calories - 81 calories = 378 more calories burned for each hour of tennis
  • Intense activity (anaerobic exercise) can burn fat hours afterward; 3 to 14 hours.
• An increase in physical activity will automatically result in an increase the amount of food eaten.
  • In lab tests, when moderate exercise is performed food intake either remains the same or decreases. At the same time, weight will decrease. With longer periods of sustained activity, food intake will increase in response to increase caloric expenditure. In this case, weight will remain the same if the diet is ad lib.
• Exercise can be used to reduce fat from a specific area of the body.
  • Fat loss will occur in a preprogrammed proportion dependent upon genetics, sex, and hormonal levels.
    • Areas with the largest amount of fat lose more fat although although these areas will seem to be totally reduced last.
    • With adequate fat loss muscular definition will be achieved in the peripheral and gradually toward the waist, hips, or thighs.
  • Exercise will help burn calories and maintain lean body weight which can result in fat loss. Increases in muscle in specific areas can change the appearance of those areas but will not result in specific loss of body fat.
  • If the muscle mass improvements out pace fat loss in a specific area, girth can be greater.
• Sauna and steam baths are effective for losing weight.
  • Any weight loss occurring in saunas or steam baths is fluid loss. These fluids will be replaced and the weight will come back.
• Passive exercise machines can be used to reduce body weight.
  • Many machines exists that are electronically powered, which do the work for you. These types of machines won't assist in weight loss or fat reduction.

Why Diets Fail

95% of people who lose weight with diet gain most of the weight back within 3 to 5 years. Often times more fat is gained back due to yo-yo dieting.

1. Most diets restrict your caloric intake so much that your metabolism slows down.
   • Drastically reducing calories can slow your metabolism and hinder the weight loss process
   • Very subtle decreases in calories may result in more permanent weight loss
   • If too few of calories are being consumed, simultaneous adjustments should be made
     • increase calories throughout day by eating 3 balance meals and 2-3 snacks
     • increase anaerobic activity and aerobic activity
2. Dieting may result in depression, which is counter productive to losing weight.
   • Depriving yourself of food can lead to depriving yourself of social events. You may give up eating meals out or eating with friends because you don't want to eat something off your diet. This can lead to depression and possible overeating to compensate for what your missing.
3. Most diets don't encourage lifestyle changes.
   • Making temporary changes in eating habits or eating prepackaged foods from weight loss programs will facilitate weight loss. However, when you reach your goals or go off the weight loss program, you maybe more likely to return to old eating habits and gain the weight back (and possibly more). To have permanent weight loss, you must make permanent changes in food choices and eating habits.
4. With very low calorie diets, weight loss is usually lean body weight.
   • Diets that severely restricts caloric intake, facilitates loss of lean body weight as opposed to fat weight. This can result in a person who isn't overweight, but has a high body fat composition.