Diet is a buzz word and has been for years. Have a wedding to go to? Diet. Need to fit into that old uniform? Diet. Summer time in a few weeks? Diet.
Then what happens? The weight from your crash diet then creeps back and you wait until the next occasion to crash diet. It's cyclical crash dieting. Plunging weight down, maybe as much as 15 pounds in one week! Then, when the event is over, those 15+ pounds come right back.
In order to have permanent change in body structure and composition, a lifestyle change needs to happen. A lifestyle change means slowgress.
What's slowgress? PROGRESS! But at a much slower pace. Slowgress will provide permanent results especially when it comes to weight gain and loss.
I know you are probably thinking that everything you read about various diets aren't possibly reasonable lifestyles to lead. You are absolutely right. All of the various diets out there aren't meant to be maintained over a long period of time because they lack a balance in nutrients, macros and minerals. These get skinny quick diets will never work and will never be backed by the FDA so, no wonder they aren't meant to be lifestyle changes.
So, back to the lifestyle change. Macros are proteins, fats and carbohydrates. These are the three heavy hitters when it comes to calories in and calories out - energy burning. The age old saying of cutting calories out of your diet and restricting what goes in your mouth is true to a point, but it's more relating to the quality of those calories. It's really cutting down the percentage of those macros that you are ingesting.
A great resource and website I love is If It Fits Your Macros or iifym.com You can input your life requirements for energy expenditure, weight loss or weight gain or maintenance and from there, it will give you a percentage breakdown on what you should be eating.
Everything we can eat will have a total carbohydrate, fat and protein content. I find it's easier to measure these in grams. If you use If It Fits Your Macros, you can then input these into your percentage allotments.
This would be a great lifestlye edition for someone who has a nagging 20 pounds of weight to lose and just can't keep it off or it starts creeping up periodically. Keeping track of your macros might sound hard to do at first but after about a week it will get easier. Then, after it becomes second nature you can edit and alter the quality of calories and macros you are eating - this will begin the weight loss journey, if that's what you are after!
Supertrick - stay away from "empty calories". Empty calories are things that have zero macros - no proteins, fats or carbohydrates -so no nutritional value whatsoever. These are your typical cheat foods and tempting surgary foods. More on empty calories later!
In the meantime, happy counting macros!
xoxoc
Comments