In order to have a successful weight loss program, you need to include four ingredients. Here's what they are.
Weight loss and brownies, how do these two go together? Sorry, I’m not releasing this new, amazing, scientific discovery that shows if you eat a brownie a day, you’ll keep the weight gain at bay. No, no, I’m talking about how just like making brownies, your weight loss program has four essential ingredients.
For those of you who’ve made brownies, or at least know how to make brownies, there are four ingredients: brownie mix, oil, water, and an egg. What happens if the egg is left out? The brownies turn out wrong. Well, the same can be said with your weight loss program, or really any type of program for that matter. There are four essential ingredients to weight loss: resistance/weight training, cardio, nutrition, and supplementation. If any of these ingredients are left out, your weight loss results won’t turn out right. You can be working harder than ever in the gym, but if you’re eating like a slob, you won’t get the results you want. On the flip side, you may have the best eating habits, and may even be losing weight, but if you don’t combine exercise with it, the weight you lose has a greater chance of coming back on. Plus, it’ll take you longer to lose weight without combining exercise with proper nutrition.
Let’s look at the first ingredient: nutrition. As I wrote in an earlier article, nutrition really is the secret ingredient to the whole mix. Weight loss is a huge calorie battle. You can’t be eating more calories than you burn off. In a weight loss program, your nutrition needs to consist of the right amount of calories and the proper foods (less sugary and fatty foods for example). If you’re eating an unbelievable amount of calories, that just means you’ll have to exercise for an unbelievable amount of time. Doesn’t sound that fun does it? So make sure you keep your calorie range where it needs to be. The easiest way to accomplish this is to start your weight loss program incorporating all four components. If you continue not to lose weight, then decrease your calorie intake per day by about 200 calories (decrease the portion size of each meal by just a little bit). Continue to follow your program for another two weeks, and if you still aren’t losing, then cut your calories by 200 more. Continue this process until you start to see results, but never drop below 1200 calories per day for adults and 80% of your recommended daily calorie intake for kids under 18 years old. For some though, if you’re consistently losing weight but your body fat percentage is staying the same, you most likely are not eating enough calories and need more. Weight loss should really be looked at as fat loss; the weight you want to lose should be fat, not muscle. Not eating enough calories can lead to muscle loss and not fat loss. The majority of people need to eat less calories though; only a very few people need to eat more. If you’re not sure what you should do, then see a fitness professional or registered dietician.
The next ingredient is cardio training. We have established that weight loss is a calorie battle; you have to burn off more calories than you consume. Having calorie intake at the right level is the first step. The next step is figuring out how to burn off even more calories than consumed. The good news is your body already burns off a large amount of calories in order to function daily. This is called your RMR, or resting metabolic rate. The easiest way to explain this is if you were to lie in bed all day, this is how many calories your metabolism (your body’s fire) would burn to keep your body alive and well. So your body burns off calories just to function, but you still need to burn off even more to make sure you are at a calorie deficit each day (you’re burning off more than you’re consuming). The biggest source of extra calorie burn, as well as an increase in your endurance level, is through cardiovascular exercise such as walking, riding a bike, running, jumping rope, etc. So we now know when it comes to exercise, cardio is your biggest source or calorie burn. The only problem with just sticking to cardio is, when you do cardio, the calories being burnt off are coming from muscle and fat. Ok, I’m sorry but I’m about to get all scientific on you. If you take five pounds of muscle and five pounds of fat, pound for pound, muscle will burn more calories than fat. It may not be a huge difference, but it’s a difference. So if you burn off muscle while doing cardio, that’s probably not a good thing, right? Right; you want to keep muscle on your body because it will keep your metabolism higher, which will help you burn off more fat and lose weight.
So what do you think the next component is? You guessed it, resistance/weight training. You need to make sure you incorporate lifting weights into your program because it will counterbalance that muscle that was burned off with cardio. By doing weight training, you’ll help build your muscle so that the muscle burnt off with cardio will be replaced with weight training. On top of that, you’ll also burn more calories off by combining weight training with cardio, as well as improve balance, core strength, bone strength, reaction time, energy levels, sleep, etc.
The final ingredient is supplementation. What I mean by supplementation is taking a multivitamin every day. By taking a multivitamin every day, your energy levels will increase, your immune system will be strengthened so you won’t get sick as easily (you’ll be able to work out more consistently), and your muscle will remain healthy. A multivitamin ensures that your muscle will get the proper nutrients it needs to stay healthy, and as you know, muscle burns the most calories, so the healthier your muscle, the greater the calorie burn. Another huge bonus to a multivitamin is you’re able to get all the vitamins and minerals you need in a 0 calorie form. In order to get these same vitamins and minerals in food, you would need to consume a huge amount of calories to get them. Before deciding on a multivitamin, it’s always a good idea to talk with your doctor or pharmacist about which one is right for you.
By combining these four ingredients into your program, you’ll ensure that you’ll achieve your weight loss goals faster, and the chance of the weight staying off will be a lot greater. Though you’ll achieve better results, you still need to understand this whole process will take some time. Weight loss is like a game of tug-o-war. At first it’ll be really hard to budge the scale, but as the scale starts moving, momentum will kick in, and you’ll start to see results at a steady pace. Just remember, be patient! You might not even see results in the first month. In fact, you may even gain weight because your body will initially hold onto carbs for energy, and carbs contain water, so you could see an increase in a pound or two. After your body gets used to the new stress of exercise, it’ll release these carbs, and you’ll see the water weight drop with it.
Like I said, this process will take some time, but just like fertilizer in grass, a personal trainer can help you achieve better and faster results. That’s because a trainer can keep you accountable with proper nutrition, develop the right cardio and resistance training program for optimal results, as well as monitor you multivitamin use. On top of that, a trainer will ask more of you than you’ll ask of yourself during a workout. All of this equals better and faster results.
Dan Falkenberg is the co-founder and co-owner of Your Live Trainers. He can be reached at DanFalkenberg.com.