Dear readers,

Welcome to Week 1 of our series on Trim and Tone with Pleasure – S²ER²: The secret to lose weight and keep it. Sorry for posting one day late. As promised, for the next 8 weeks, we are going to inform you and give you useful tips on nutrition and how best to consume food. Not only that, but we are also here to help you lose weight and keep it – without going hungry, without giving up on any nutrients. Yes, you can lose weight on a full and saturated stomach. Last week, we had some basics on the necessary tools for weight loss. Today, we will delve a step deeper and discuss some of the reasons why we gain weight and the errors we make while dieting. These are necessities to know in the process to your perfect body size.

Dieting: Why we gain weight

Calories Intake: If you eat more calories than you burn, you gain weight. This is a popular knowledge for being the number one factor why we gain weight. While this is true, there are many other factors that contribute in our piling up the kilo. Just keep in mind that, to maintain your weight, you need ca. 2360 kcal/day. To lose 0.5 kg/week you need an intake of ca. 1,860 kcal/day. To lose 1 kg/week, you need an intake of ca. 1,360 kcal/day. Minimum calories intake for weight loss for women is 1200 kcal/day and 1500 kcal/day for men.

Multiple Diets: Actually, diets are supposed to make you lose weight. But if one diet follows the other, they tend to make you fat instead. This is so because, when you start a new diet, your body realizes this and it goes into an automatic “saving” mood. It uses less energy so as to get along with the tight supply. When you end your diet, your body continues in its saving mood and saves up the increased calories (for rainy days). What happens is a jo-jo effect. Your weight climbs up. This is especially true with crash diets.

Fats: No other food nutrient has as much calories as fat. Fats contain more calories than proteins and carbs put together. While our body easily absorbs fats, it uses up carbs for energy. Thus consuming carb rich foods such as bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, vegetables and fruits, will not only fill you up, but you will take in fewer calories as well. How much fat you should consume and its health benefits/damages will be the topic of our next week issue.

Stress and Heartache: For some people, when they are stressed up, when they want to calm down their nerves maybe after a stressful day at work or a stressful presentation, or they just want to feel good after a stressful situation, they turn to food. Eating comforts them. For others, they turn to food because of boredom or heartache, making you eat erratically, most often the wrong things, gaining more weight.

Age: as you grow older, your metabolic process slows down and the muscle percentage in your body drops. Already at the age of 25, your calorie intake should reduce. If you keep eating as usual and also do not exercise, you start gaining weight slowly but continuously.

CWT Chicken stew (4 pers.)  Read the rest of this entry →