weight loss

We are approaching the most glorious eating day of the year. Don’t ruin it.

Zoey · November 27, 2015 · 1 Comment

It’s only four weeks until Christmas which means already the food shaming has started. IT’S HERE. There are actual infographics on how many minutes you have to run to negate your roast dinner. ACTUAL INFOGRAPHICS. And whether they are a traditional roast meal with calories pointing to every last one, or a chart of donuts based on how far you’ve run or pumpkin pie. Hey guys, if you run a marathon you get whipped cream with your pumpkin pie. And helpful little tweets from elite runners telling you that you better go off and have that run before you eat.

JUST NO.

Let’s not do this.

For starters it’s a whole pile of crap because calories burned will vary depending on your weight. And how much you want to consume daily depends on your general level of activity as well as your metabolism and your goals. If you have a kick ass metabolism and are living well above the 1,200 calorie line of where happiness goes to die, then your calorie counting days are probably well behind you.

But even aside from basic logic or science, let’s just not.

This is just an example of everything that is wrong with everything. If I picked up almost any magazine aimed at women in fitness or running there would be practically no headlines related to fitness or running but I would get some helpful tips on how to be sexier, get abs in five days and finally achieve my dream of a bikini body. Well, it’s not my dream. Because that kind of achievement is pretty meaningless. Will I be able to run faster or further, will I be stronger? None of those things actually impact on my fitness or strength or endurance.

And once you set up appearance as the most important thing then it’s really easy to fall into the trap of exercise being punishment for food. And then you ruin the glorious time of year that is Christmas and New Year. A few days enjoying some of the most awesome food ever is not going to derail your nutrition goals or your fitness goals, but if you buy into this load of crap it might rob you of joy or zest for life or the will to live.

But the worst part is, it might take away some of your joy of running or lifting or moving. You might forget why you do this. You can’t put a calorie number on a run and define it in such meaningless terms. And it is totally meaningless. If I looked up my run today I could find out how many calories I burned: 809. Which let’s get real, I didn’t burn that many calories. My body is used to running, it is highly efficient at running, I don’t need an extra 800 calories in food today because I went for a run. And what does 809 tell me? Does it tell me about the ducks I saw out for a walk this morning? Does it tell me about the moon I saw at sunrise? Does it tell me how I totally aced my pacing (which I’ve been struggling with)? Does it tell me anything at all about how going for a run makes me feel purposeful and alive and home?

It does not.
Pass the cream.

Does running for weight loss work? Here’s an even better idea

Zoey · June 19, 2015 · 3 Comments

Not everyone starts running to lose weight, but a lot of people do. You might have come here wanting to know things like:

How do I start running for weight loss?
What are some tips to get me started running for losing weight?
How much do I need to run to lose weight?
Does running for weight loss even work?

And the answer is more complicated than you might think. Everyone has been taught the calories in – calories out method of weight loss. It’s simple. All you need is to consume less calories than you expend. But the reality is that it is more complex. Not all calories are created equal. A lot of it depends on your metabolism. And sometimes the challenge with starting running is that your appetite increases.

None of which are reasons not to run. There are so many things to love about running that have absolutely nothing to do with diet and weight loss. And if you are looking to lose weight, moving your body is a great place to start, that and breakfast.

But the main reason why weight loss and starting to run might not be such great companions is that learning to run involves developing your aerobic system. Which means lots of running at low intensity. That’s why most learn to run programs have walk/run intervals. But the way weight loss works is that it is most effective with running at high intensity intervals. So running for weight loss and running to improve your fitness are two very different things with very different outcomes.

And where weight loss is often focused around restricting calories or carbohydrate intake, performance is based around fuelling your body for everything it needs. Because if it’s not getting everything it needs it will start burning muscle to get it. Unfortunately, your body sees muscle as less necessary than fat – so if you aren’t eating enough – muscle will be the first thing to go.

But I have an even better idea than weight loss. Weight loss is an outcome but what is the goal really? To feel like you have more energy? To feel more comfortable in your clothes? To feel strong and energised? Then maybe focus on the way you want that life to look like and the weight loss will follow.

Learning to run has so many benefits for the body and mind. But rather than stepping into another cycle of deprivation and weight loss, look at how you can reward your body with movement and fuel to support that movement. Look at things that you are going to enjoy. Look at a lifestyle that you are going to enjoy and is sustainable for you.

The problem with traditional diet and running exercise programs is that a few things happen:

1) You are probably not eating enough, so your body starts burning muscle
2) The more weight you lose, the more your metabolic rate drops so to maintain the loss you have to eat less and less and it becomes increasingly less sustainable
3) You end up abandoning it because you are miserable

You might not have a dramatic body improvement in 4 weeks, or even 8. But if you learn to run, eat food that is good for your body and food that you enjoy to eat, in 6 months or a year or 2 years – you will like how your body looks, you will love how your body feels, you will enjoy your running and the lifestyle you have created for yourself.

Do yourself a favour. There’s a reason that those diet programs are called ’rounds’ because you go in circles and don’t get anywhere. Imagine what you want your life to look like. And just do that instead.

The Great Diet Con

Zoey · April 30, 2015 · 7 Comments

How many times have you heard someone say that a diet ‘worked’ but then later on they put the weight back on? Seems to me the diet didn’t work so well.

First Lie: Weight Loss is a Diet’s Success, Gaining the Weight is Your Failure

It’s kind of perfect isn’t it? If you lose the weight, the diet is proven effective, but if you put it back on it’s because of your own personal failure. But the reality is, for everyone who goes on a diet about 90% of them will not only put back on any weight they lose, they will put on a bit of extra weight as well. Diets are probably the only product you can sell to a consumer that doesn’t work but will still have them coming back for another round.

Second Lie: Just Count Calories and Exercise

It sounds easy, but really you know it’s not true. Because to believe this you have to believe that all calories are created equal. And they can’t be. Because the fact is that eating a chocolate coated ice cream is not the same as eating a vegetable stir fry. But the calories say they are the same. And it’s just not true.

Third Lie: If you are slim, you are healthy

This isn’t exclusive to the diet industry. There is a pervasive belief that how you look is an indicator for how healthy you are. But the fact is that you can be slim and internally obese and you can be obese and internally fit. There is no real way of knowing how healthy or unhealthy you are based on how you look. But it’s convenient to sell you this idea because then you have to be a certain weight to achieve a certain health factor. But the reality is that generally health benefits are linked to activity level, not weight loss.

Fourth Lie: Fat is bad for you.

If you believe this then it might shock you to know that low-fat dairy is a risk factor for obesity. It destabilises blood sugar, which is a key factor in food cravings. Because low-fat foods tend not to taste as good they often have added sugar and are less satisfying so you eat more.

Fifth Lie: Weight Loss is a Good Goal

It can seem like a good goal when part of what you want is to lose weight, feel a bit more comfortable. But the thing is, when you achieve that goal you don’t have it anymore, so you lose incentive and you lose motivation and you put on weight because food is yummy. And guess what? Come back, here is another diet for you.

Sixth Lie: You can train like an athlete and diet like a celebrity

Unfortunately you can’t. Eating for weight loss and eating for training are two very different things with very different goals. And you probably can’t do both at the same time. If you eat for training you will probably have very gradual weight loss, but that is all. And you would only want it to be very gradual because otherwise you would not be physically capable of getting the most out of your training. And if you severely restrict calories you just aren’t going to have the energy to train.

Seventh Lie: You don’t need to lose weight to start your life.

You don’t need to look a certain way to walk into a gym, or go for a run. You don’t need to look a certain way to get married or wear a bikini or wear a fancy dress.

Eighth Lie: The scales tell you what you need to know.

They don’t. They are probably the most inaccurate measure of where your body is at. They fluctuate based on hydration, what you ate, what you’ve had to drink, muscle composition and any manner of a million other things. So basing a set of goals based on that is a recipe for failure.

Ninth Lie: There is such a thing as ‘toning’

There isn’t. There is no such thing as toning. There is building muscle. Apparently ‘toning’ is the word used when describing women building muscle but there is no difference, it is all just building muscle.

Tenth Lie: Shame will Motivate You

Shame will not motivate you. Self-loathing will not inspire change. There is nothing wrong with you. Your body is capable of so much more than you believe it is.

If you want change, you have to love the body you have right now for everything it has already done for you and everything it is capable of doing in the future. You have to respect it. And appreciate it. And you have to believe in it. Food and exercise are not reward and punishment. There is no punishment. And you are the reward, just like you always have been.

So where does that leave you?

A while back I read a comment (I can’t remember the author unfortunately!) that said in response to restrictive diets that you should live the healthiest life you can enjoy, not the healthiest life you can. And that has stayed with me.

I think over the four years since I had my youngest I’ve made a lot of changes and they stuck because I enjoyed them and because they were small and just built up over time. The other part was that I set goals that weren’t weight-based. They were things like run further or run faster. Things that were easy to measure as a matter of performance, not aesthetics.

There is nothing wrong with weight loss as a goal – plenty of us at any given time might think I’d feel a bit more comfortable if I lost a bit of weight and there is nothing wrong with that. But often it’s actually representative of a different goal it might be that we want more energy because we are feeling sluggish, or we want to be able to have more stamina to keep up with our kids or it might be that we want to run a little faster or have more confidence in ourselves. So my approach is that I focus on those things and everything else follows.

If you want to change, a diet is a setup for failure. Start by choosing the life you want and see where that leads you instead.

Is strength training the missing link in your program?

OperationMove · January 28, 2015 · 1 Comment

“Can you open this Mum? You’ve done Crossfit like a hundred times and you are stronger than me because your muscles are bigger.” – 6 year old, getting what she wants as per usual.

Kid has a point. Unless it’s the day after arms work and I’m rendered a useless weakling unable to lift my own coffee. But I digress.

There are a lot of myths about strength work but most of them aren’t true. It won’t bulk you up, unless you want it to. Anyone can do it. You don’t have to be fit first. The people aren’t as intimidating as you think they are.

What you find in strength training might surprise you. You might find a greater love for your body. You might find more self-confidence. And you might find it changes the shape of your body in a way that cardio just doesn’t.

Weight loss has never been my primary goal but it has been a secondary one. I prioritise performance over weight loss any day of the week. And if you are trying to lose weight, here are some words for you.

Every now and then something happens to pull into sharp focus that you are never that far away from that person you used to be. If I could go back and talk to her I would say:

Shame will not motivate you.
Self-loathing will not inspire change.
There is nothing wrong with you.
Your body is capable of so much more than you believe it is.

But if it is something that you would like to work on then strength training is something you should consider. It will raise your metabolism (that means more food, right?) It usually involves some high intensity interval type training which helps to stimulate weight loss and it changes every week, so your body doesn’t get used to it. That’s my theory anyway. I ran for about two years and while it certainly helped lose my baby weight I didn’t see a dramatic change until I started Crossfit. I think part of that is metabolism, part of it is muscle development, part is high intensity intervals and I think a big part of it is that my body can never get comfortable with the exercise – because they are changing all the time. My body is used to running. It’s very efficient at running – so I really doubt it does much at this point in terms of weight loss.

I was reading an article the other day on different types of strength training as they impacted on running and circuit type strength training was the only one that improved your strength as much as any other form of training but also improved your running.

One thing I’ve learned in my running and strength training is that if you are doing something like weights or doing something like hard intervals in a run it doesn’t matter how heavy the weights are or how fast you are running, what matters is that you do it to fail. So if I get to the end of a weights workout and I’m struggling to get the weights up, I know I’m going to see good benefit from that. It’s the same with running if I get to the end of an interval session and I’m struggling to keep pace on the final interval I know I’ve given that run everything.

How weight loss might be sabotaging your training

OperationMove · November 12, 2014 · 1 Comment

You would think that running (or any form of training) and weight loss would be happy partners, but actually they are not. It seems like they would be great friends at first. If you are lighter, you can run faster, right? And often you feel a bit healthier being a bit lighter too and that’s bound to be a good thing, surely?

The problem is that for performance you need to eat quite a lot. That’s true for running and that’s true of weight training. If your body isn’t getting the nutrients it needs then you are going to feel tired and sluggish and you aren’t going to get the results out of your workouts that you want. I find particularly for me as a vegetarian getting all the nutrients I need can be quite challenging. Some days it feels like I eat all the time! Getting all the carbohydrates, protein and fats to get me to peak performance means that I can’t really afford to cut any calories out.

So what do I do when I want to get down to racing weight?

1) I aim for a calorie deficit, but it’s a really small calorie deficit. So on days when I do no exercise I try to keep myself at about 1900 calories – which is about 100-200 below my maintenance. On days when I do exercise I add those calories on, so I still only have a very small deficit. On a day where I do crossfit and go for a run eating 2,500-3,000 calories would not be unusual.

2) I put a higher priority on nutrient dense foods than on staying under a calorie limit. I keep track of the calories more to make sure that I’m getting enough protein and carbohydrates and so I’m being mindful in my food choices. Ultimately, I know I am in a better position for performance in training and for weight loss if I eat 3,000 calories of nutrient dense food as opposed to 1,500 calories of processed food.

3) I eat six meals a day and I focus on eating soon after I’ve gone for a run or been to crossfit. Food for me during the day might be a green smoothie, a fruit salad with greek yoghurt and LSA, a chickpea salad, vege sticks with hummus, a tofu and vegetable stir fry and a protein shake. Like I said, it’s a lot of food.

4) To keep track of my progress I pay more attention to measurements than to the scale. Because I’m lifting weights I’ll often lose centimetres but gain weight.

5) I stay focused on what my goal is. The goal is what my body can do. Performance is more important than what I look like. The changes in my body are just icing on the cake.

6) I don’t stay overly rigid. Last weekend I had a date night that involved dinner and a movie. I had entree. I had main. I had dessert. And I had a huge amount of popcorn and ice cream. And I enjoyed every minute of it.

I’m happy for my progress to be slow. Because the number I really care about is the one on my running watch and the weight on my bar.