Health  &  Fitness

Copyright ©  Eoin Franklin 2009

PRINCIPLES OF WEIGHT LOSS

For the majority of people, losing weight can be an arduous task, discouraging, and over-whelming. Successful, long-term weight loss is almost a mythical pursuit, with most people falling by the wayside of the all-consuming “fad” diet. However, with the clarification and application of a few fundamental principles, it is possible to achieve your desired physique no matter where you begin. Anybody who successfully loses weight and manages to maintain their new physique must follow these basic principles;

THE ENERGY BALANCE

Simple put, this is the principle that body weight will not change if a person achieves a daily caloric balance.

In conclusion, the only version of this marketing strategy that can be trusted is the food marked as 0% fat. Any other advertised value is inaccurate and needs to be ignored, and re-calculated as shown above. When you have calculated a true calorie fat percentage, any food that is 30% fat or more needs to be carefully considered as part of a healthy diet. The calculation above may appear slightly laborious, but we all have calculators in our mobile phones, and the ability to calculate the real fat content is a very useful tool in taking control and indeed responsibility for how you incorporate food in your diet.

Finally, a healthy diet is not simply based on how much fat we have. This is a very important factor, but there are many others, and not all fats are bad fats. However, the above calculation is a very useful first step in establishing a healthy diet.

An unhealthy high-fat diet can increase your risk of cardiovascular disease by up to 300%.

In Ireland, cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death.

Daily caloric intake is the total number of calories we consume in one day from  food, fluid, and supplements. It is generally estimated as an average intake over a 3 - 7 day period. As a point of interest, if you had a daily caloric intake that was only 67 kcal (calories) more than your body needed every day, at the end of the year you would have gained 7 pounds of fat! 67 calories extra per day is not that much.

Daily Caloric expenditure is the total number of calories we burn in one day through the combination of our resting metabolic rate, physical activity, and the thermic effect of eating. Resting metabolic rate (RMR) is the amount of calories that our body burns for vital functions; such as breathing, pumping blood, etc. It can account for up to 70% of the calories we burn throughout 1 day. Roughly, for males; RMR is 1700 calories per day, and for females; RMR is 1300 calories per day. The thermic effect of eating is the amount of calories that our body burns in order to digest food, fluid, and supplements. It accounts for roughly 10% of our caloric expenditure throughout 1 day. Physical activity includes calories that are burnt during activities from sweeping the floor, to your daily work, to structured fitness training.

For sensible and successful fat-loss, an overweight person should lose between 1 and 2 pounds per week. The reason for this is simple mathematics. 1 pound of stored fat on the human body contains 3500 kcal (calories), therefor, 2 pounds would contain 7000 kcal. If you want to lose 1 pound of fat in 1 week, you must create a caloric deficit of 500 kcal per day. Although there are many promoted ‘fad’ ways of achieving this, the only sensible, long-term solution is to reduce calorie intake through modifying your diet using appropriate dieting methods combined with increasing caloric expenditure through progressive physical activity.

Weight loss is not a complex process. Every single ‘fad’ diet that has been, is, or will be in fashion must abide by the above principles if they are to be successful. By understanding the principles outlined above, continued, successful weight loss can be achieved through sensible adjustments in daily dietary intake and progressive physical activity. Doing this will allow anyone to achieve a successful solution to permanent weight loss.