Feel like you are eating healthy and exercising but not losing the weight? You may be eating too much, not enough, or overestimating your calorie burns. Losing weight is a science and in order to lose weight, you have to be a calorie deficit. To be in a calorie deficit, you need to know how much you burn and how much you are eating! Don't just guess! Here are some tips on setting up a plan that will work for you and produce results.
How much should you eat?
Find out how many calories you should be consuming to create a deficit. Don’t just guess. The best way to do this is to use a total daily expenditure (TDEE) calculator. There are plenty of free ones online, like this one. https://tdeecalculator.net/ This allows you to get a ballpark idea of how many calories you burn in an average day. Once you know that, you can create an appropriate deficit. If you want to lose 1 pound a week, you need to burn 3500 calories, so subtract 500 from your daily TDEE and that is your daily calorie goal. That being said, NEVER go under 1200 calories. If subtracting 500 from your daily TDEE puts you below 1200, stay at 1200 and make up the difference with exercise, or adjust your weight loss goal to lose ½ pound a week. And you should never attempt to lose more than 2 pounds a week.
Know what you are eating.
Log it. Log every bit of food that goes into your mouth. That handful of chips you ate while you were packing your kid’s lunch? It counts. That peanut butter you put on your toast? Did you measure it? Did you log one tablespoon but really eat two? Yes, I know it is a pain, but you should be measuring (or better yet, weighing) everything you eat. Once you have done this for a while, you will be able to eyeball your portion sizes, but until then, measure or weigh EVERYTHING. There are plenty of food tracking apps out there, but my favorite is Lose It! It has a bar code scanner that makes logging food easy!
Plan what you are going to eat and prep your food ahead of time.
I grocery shop, and cook all my dinners for the week on Sunday. My breakfasts, lunches and snacks are easy to pack up in the morning before work. I carry my cooler around with me pretty much wherever I go. Yes, this can also be a pain, but once you make it part of your routine, it gets easier and you will wish you started doing this sooner.
Know how many calories you are burning with exercise.
You shouldn’t go by what the treadmill at the gym says, or even your fitness app. Those things don’t take into account your heart rate or your level of effort. Buy a good chest strap heart rate monitor and use it.
Be consistent.
Now that you have created a plan, you have to follow it. Log your food daily. Stick to your exercise plan. Consistency is what produces results. You don’t have to be perfect, in fact, I encourage you to have a cheat meal every 7-10 days or so. Without one, you will feel deprived and demotivated. Who can avoid chocolate chip cookies, wine, or ice cream for the rest of their lives? But aim to follow your plan at least 90% of the time and you will see results, I promise!