Guess How to Ensure Fat Loss Failure?

     If you are trying to regulate your food intake in order to lose unwanted bodyfat, but you are hitting a brick wall with your results, you may be beating yourself, or your diet plan, up unnecessarily.

A crucial element of successful fat loss is balancing out the overall calorie intake, which means eating less than you burn so you can tap in to that stored energy.

It is not the only important factor, as the quality of foods you eat makes a huge difference on optimal hormone levels: two diets with the same calories can have vastly different effects on your body composition.

So if all you are doing is counting calories, then I recommend you begin to make changes to the quality of the food you eat!

But, for this article I am going assume you have the quality side dialled in, but are still struggling. What is going wrong?

It is likely a very simple explanation - you are taking on board a few too many calories, without realising!

It is really difficult to know exactly how many calories we use up in a day, and almost as hard to figure out how many we take on board.?But unless you have some kind of guide in place to ensure you are on target to get yourself into a calorie deficit (meaning you are eating fewer than you are burning) fat loss will elude you, despite all your efforts!

You can eat a really healthy diet, getting all your vegetables in every day, with plenty of lean protein and good fats and moderate amounts of 'good' carbs and still not lose weight, if you overdo the calorie dense foods.?I can say this from experience, as it used to be me!?I would drizzle a little too much olive oil on my salads and have a serving too many of healthy nuts, and before you know it you are eating more calories (albeit healthy ones) than you burn and your fat loss stalls. I went through this for a long time before becoming a trainer, and even in the early days when I hadn't quite figured it all out yet.?I was under the impression that calories didn't really count, so long as you ate 'healthily' and got rid of the starchy carbs, processed foods and sugar.

I was healthy, and very fit, but still fat! And I really didn't want to be.?But what was I doing wrong? Well, for one, I hadn't quite got the exercise dialled - I was still under the impression that long bouts of cardio were the way forward for fat loss, whereas now I know that resistance and interval training, with enough rest in between to recover is key. But on the nutrition front, it wasn't till I began to log my food intake on Fit Day (I have also used Calorie King) I realised just how all these little mouthfuls and drizzles of food were really adding up. I had days where I was eating more than 2500 cals, without even realising.

So I began to take action, with the help of my logging tool.?I realised that certain things weren't necessary - I was getting plenty of good fats from avocados,nuts, oily fish & fish oil supplements, so decided to stick to just apple cider or balsamic vinegar on my salads and veggies.?I began to measure out portions of nuts and nut butters (eventually banning even the natural peanut butter altogether as I struggle not to go a little overboard!).?I cut down on my weekend wine consumption as I realised just how many calories were in each glass - and also how I invariably ate more, including the usually 'off-limits' foods, after a couple of glasses.

In combination with some kettlebell training, this has resulted in over 20lb fat loss - that was achieved in 6 months and has been maintained ever since.?But it hasn't been hard!?I have a new habit of making sure I log everything, and usually planning days in advance, but the actual day to day experience is not so much different from how it was before, yet I'm keeping my calories between 1500 and 2000 a day easily.

The first step you should take, is to simply write everything you eat down in a little note book - and make sure you write it down as soon as you have eaten it as it's very easy to forget!?This will immediately make you realise that there are foods you are eating that are totally unnecessary and also make you see that you probably are eating a bit more than you thought.?Getting to grips with this concept is vital - so many people who have gained weight come to me for help and tell me that they don't really eat that much, but those calories have to come from somewhere. It may be your daily coffee, or glass (or two) of wine.?Or the mindless grazing on chocolate during the day, when you are not really even aware of it.?br />
Once you have done this for a period of time, you can begin to make changes and substitutions, cutting out the unnecessary.?This also means you can choose the treats that are most important to you and keep them in the plan!?I would prefer to enjoy a meal out with my partner and indulge in some otherwise off-limits foods than grab a junk food lunch out.?I will indulge but make sure I truly enjoy it, while keeping an eye on the bigger picture so I will still reach my goals. Logging on an online tool or software like Calorie King or Fit Day takes you a step further, so you can see exactly how many calories you are eating (as well as estimating how many you are burning) so you can make sure you hit your target each day.?br />
This takes the guesswork out of things, which actually makes life a lot easier.?If you eat a cheeseburger you simply enter it in, and see how many calories that has used up.?Rather than thinking that you have blown your plan and might as well scrap it and start again tomorrow, you can see that actually, you have only used a certain amount of your days calories so far, and that the best approach is just to keep the calories down for the rest of the day.?Suddenly the potential disaster has been neutralised - whereas if you had decided to just keep eating junk you really would have done some damage.

Logging your food intake has several benefits - it makes you aware of your daily intake, it means you can easily spot where you are going wrong, it makes substituting foods simpler and it means you are less likely to go way off track when you make a minor slip-up.?Give it a go!?Even if only for a week or two - you will learn a lot and it may just be the missing link you need to finally achieve fat loss success!

Copyright (c) 2010 Caroline Radway

1. Prev:2 of the Best Healthy Low Fat Recipes
2. Next:On-line Weight-loss Applications:  How They Work