Every January I offer a fitness challenge, and as we enter a new decade I am finding more and more of my clients are eager to jump-start their fitness commitments. It can be a tough road to lose a fews pounds and keep them off, so my heart goes out to any and all of you who are trying hard to make major life changes at this point. After a week of food-watching, sacrifice, and exercise, it’s not unusual to mount the scale and find you either did not lose any weight, perhaps only dropped a half pound or even gained one. What is difficult for me to explain on the spot, however, is how weight loss works and how not to be discouraged. It’s ALL good.
I could use technical jargon for weight loss. But the bottom line is weight loss is simple science. Fat itself is stored energy (calories), and if we eat more energy than we get rid of everyday, it gets stored as fat. The first thing to determine is your personal BMR (basal metabolic rate), which is easily done online. A BMR calculator will ask your age, your height, your weight, and will give you a number. That is the number that — if you didn’t move a muscle at all — it takes for you to maintain your current weight.
Of course, we all move — especially my committed clients. I think they understand that calories don’t magically appear. They must be ingested or remain unused. So the simple math is to lose weight, you have to eat less and use more calories. We’re not even talking food quality here, but of course, that is important too. It’s a matter of calories in and calories out. But here is the clincher: you need to burn up 3500 EXTRA calories to lose one pound of weight. If you set up a 1700 calorie diet for yourself to include the amount of activity you expend each day, and your BMR is set at 1400, you’ll have a 300 calorie deficit — which is good at times like this. But figure if you do that every day, it will take you about 12 days to lose one pound.
Consider that a good, light-bulb-illuminating moment. Because other factors enter into why that pound took so long to disappear. Water weight. Your time of month. That single glass of wine or little munchie you let yourself indulge in only one time last week. The simple math is that you’ve got to get the calories burned at a higher rate to accelerate the weight loss. That means exercise, not starving yourself. You’ve got to move every day in order to keep the calorie burn going and to get your body into the mode where you burn more than you take in.
One of my clients told me a story of when she was home with a newborn. While she was pregnant, she befriended a neighbor who was a runner and in great shape. She envied how disciplined her neighbor was when she saw her running down the street in her shorts and tank top each day. Then her neighbor adopted a baby and stopped running. A month or so after my client’s baby was born the two of them got together, comparing mommy-stories. My client, who was not into exercise at the time, lost most of her baby weight naturally and had not gained a lot during pregnancy. The neighbor, however, had stopped running. What do you think happened? Yup. The runner ballooned in size. Calories in versus calories out. Her body simply did not know what to do with all that stored energy that was no longer being used and turned it into fat.
So my sincere advice is to fight the good fight. Keep moving here at the studio, at home, or even on vacation. Exercise is not just about weight loss; it’s about health. It’s about preserving the machine that churns the calories and either keeps you from gaining weight or helps you see the number you had always wanted to see on the scale. Don’t be hard on yourself. And when you see that magic pound come off, know it took 3500 calories of hard work. Smile. You earned it.