Weight Management

Understanding Energy Balance

We all know that successful weight management is about lifestyle choices and balancing a healthy eating plan with an active lifestyle. It sounds easy and yet many of us struggle to get the balance right. There are undoubtedly genetic, physiological and psychological factors that can all have an impact on body fat, but none of these factors alter the basic facts of energy.

Energy cannot be created or destroyed. This means that energy that you take into your body, in the form of foods and drinks, has to either be used by the body as fuel or stored for later use. Body fat is simply our store of energy to use when energy intake falls below our requirement. Unfortunately our world today is more challenging on our brains than our bodies and such an environment leads to an inevitable gain in body fat.

If you have gained weight recently the reality is that you have eaten more food than your body needs. This doesn’t happen overnight. For most people it happens over weeks, months and years with a very small daily positive energy balance mounting up. For example, an extra 100 calories consumed a day – the equivalent of a small 250ml bottle of soft drink – amounts to an extra four kg of body fat over a year.

If you need to lose weight you therefore need to reverse the situation and achieve a negative energy balance. This essentially means eating less and/or moving more. No new science here, but it’s amazing how easily we forget the basics when bombarded with so many different weight loss regimes.

Achieving Negative Energy Balance

The bottom line is that to lose weight and body fat you need to take in less energy than you expend. You can do this two ways:

1. Maximise your energy expenditure

2. Reduce your energy intake

1. Maximise your energy expenditure

Many people have been fooled into thinking that if they exercise the commonly recommended three times a week they will lose weight without having to do anything else. While such an approach undoubtedly has health benefits losing fat is unfortunately not as easy as that. To truly maximise your energy expenditure you need to think more holistically about both your exercise and activity levels each and everyday. How active are you outside of the hours you spend at the health club? This can make the difference between good and fantastic long term results. For many of us much of our time is spent sitting down; driving, at the computer, in meetings, working, watching TV and so on. Furthermore, research has shown that those who regularly workout are often less active than non-exercisers for the remainder of the day! It seems that that we reward ourselves, perhaps unconsciously, for completing our exercise session. Add to this the fact that the energy expended during the workout is easily replaced with a little extra food and it’s not hard to see why exercise alone rarely achieves the best weight or fat loss.

To maximise your fat loss success it is important that you try to avoid these pitfalls and aim to be as active as you can be every day. Setting activity goals is a good way to walk the talk and make it happen.

See every moment as an opportunity for movement rather than an inconvenience.

Ideas for building more activity into your day:

1. Climb

• Take the stairs wherever possible

• If you work in a high rise building, get out of the lift a couple of floors early and walk the rest of the way

• Walk up escalators and moving walkways

2. Walk

• Invest in a pedometer - a great way to increase and monitor your daily walking. You simply clip the pedometer to your belt or waistband and it counts the steps you take during the day.

• Park at the furthest point of a car-park rather than the closest

• Walk short journeys instead of taking the car

• Go for a walk in your lunch hour, after work or with the kids/dog/grandparent…no excuses find time to walk everyday!
  

3. Move

• Plan which TV programs you want to watch and limit watching time to two hours or less per day – even reading a book uses more energy than watching TV!

• Spring clean your house

• Take up gardening

• On the weekends plan social activities that involve some movement rather than just food and drink

Using a Pedometer

1. Record the number of steps you take each day over the course of one week.

2. Work out your average number of daily steps and add 30%.

3. Aim to complete this number of steps for the next three weeks.

4. Re-assess and repeat steps 1-4 until you are averaging 10,000 steps everyday.

5. For fat loss aim to complete 12,000 steps on days where you are not exercising and 6,000 steps on exercise days.

Exercise

There are numerous different forms of exercise and theories about which will produce the best results. While research will continue to update our ideas it is clear that the best results come from strategic planning, goal setting and working hard along the way. To maximise your energy expenditure for fat loss we recommend completing three (or more) cardiovascular and two resistance training sessions per week. If this sounds like a lot don’t be put off – the resistance training sessions can be combined with a cardio workout so it doesn’t necessarily mean five separate gym sessions. So why do both?

Cardio-vascular: These sessions will help you to burn fat, expend serious amounts of energy and dramatically improve your fitness level. You can choose from:

• Gym session - using the cardiovascular equipment

• Group exercise cardio class - eg, BODYATTACK™, RPM™, BODYCOMBAT™, BODYSTEP™,BODYJAM™

• Outdoor session – running, walking, cycling or swimming

Resistance training: Resistance training will help you to burn fat while maintaining muscle; improve the shape of your body; increase your strength and endurance and increase your metabolic rate so that you keep the weight/fat loss off long-term. You can choose a gym floor workout using resistance machines and/or free weights; a free weights class such as BODYPUMP™ or other classes that incorporate a strength training element.

2. Reducing your energy intake

While you need to reduce your calories/kilojoules intake to lose weight you also want to make sure you are getting all the nutrients your body needs for good health and vitality. This means choosing meals that are less energy-dense but are nutrient-rich. There is no great rocket science to this – it is essentially the same food choices you would make in putting together a healthy diet. What does become vital however, is portion size. To help you to reduce your energy intake consider the following six steps:

1. Fill at least half of your plate with low energy-dense foods such as vegetables and fruit.

2. Choose a quality source of protein at each meal to help you feel sated and therefore less likely to overeat. A portion the size of the palm of your hand is a good rough guide.

3. Choose a low GI carbohydrate at each meal to help you to feel fuller for longer. This prevents energy slumps between meals and reduces the temptation to snack. A portion the size of your clenched fist is a good rough guide.

4. Add a small portion of healthy fat for flavour and delivery of fat-soluble nutrients.

5. It’s a good idea to eat small frequent meals, but this does not mean constant snacking. Rather than eating only one or two large meals a day, set yourself a framework of three main meals with 1-2 small snacks in between. This will prevent you from becoming overly hungry (when you are likely to overeat) and will boost your metabolism.

6. Watch what you are drinking – energy drinks are very easy to over consume and do not fill you up in the same way that food can. Water should be your main drink and tea and coffee are both good in moderation but watch the additives - sugar, whole milk and flavoured syrups can all add considerable calories.