You have to get healthy in order to lose weight not lose weight to get healthy

By Ollie Martin
April 07

Contrary to popular belief eating less and exercising more is not the best way to lose weight.  In fact this approach leads to limited and short-term results. 

As identified in a previous article on this website, calorie-cutting diets have the reverse effect for dieters, actually increasing their fat storing cells and reducing their fat burning cells (read Calorie Cutting Diets article).

Increasing calorie expenditure through exercise certainly helps, but how much do you need to do to lose weight?  Current guidelines vary between 30mins five days a week and 2 hours every day!  Furthermore, consistent aerobic exercise such as classes, running, hours on the cross-trainer again only work in the short-term.  This is because your body quickly adapts to find the most efficient way of completing a task.  This means that your body will balance out the energy expenditure with energy intake maintaining the status quo in your body.

So what is the best way lose weight?  Well, you need to get healthy first and then your weight will optimise in the long-term.  This is not a quick fix option and often requires changes in your lifestyle, however, sometimes small changes in a few key areas can make a massive difference.  Below are some areas that we address at Take Shape:

Exercise – build some extra exercise into everyday such as walking further, climbing stairs etc.  Weight train 1 to 3 times a week.  Weight training enables you to vary the stimulus to the body each and every time you train challenging it to ensure the positive adaptation that you desire. 

Recovery time – many people forget the whole concept of exercise is to break down muscle tissue in order for it to replenish itself for next time.  So make sure you have enough time to recover and that you are getting enough high quality sleep. 

Stress - high levels of stress will inhibit recovery and not enable weight loss.  You need to identify and address potential stressors.

Pollution – increasing research is showing that pollution is having a major effect on our weight.  Simply put, your body needs to store toxins as far away from your vital organs as possible.  The furthest and safest place is to store toxins is in your body fat.  This means that your body is loath to breakdown fat when you reduce calories and exercise as it will have to release all the toxins back into your body.  This explains the unpleasant feeling when weight loss is too rapid.

The Mind – the power of positive thought is very powerful and crucial to weight loss success.  This is a huge topic but simply put if you think you have fat thighs the whole time, guess what, you will have fat thighs.  Try this exercise, for 30 consecutive days, every time you have a negative thought you must turn it into a positive one.  See how this affects your wellbeing.

Nutrition – ‘one mans medicine is another mans poison’ – again contrary to popular belief there is no such thing as a healthy food, as the same food works differently for different people. Your body has unique nutritional requirements that can be identified through Metabolic Typing. This means eating whole, healthy food that you have identified (with the help of metabolic typing) that is right for your unique needs. And not eating food that your are told is healthy for you by someone who is trying to sell it to you! (For example low-fat spreads that are far worse for you then butter).

When all the areas are addressed successfully it enables you to optimise weight in the long-term and feel fantastic.

Ollie Martin is a Personal Trainer & Holistic Lifestyle Coach at Take Shape Personal Health & Fitness (BSc. (Hons) Sports Science, American College of Sports Medicine HFI, CHEK Holistic Lifestyle Coach 1, Certified Metabolic Typing Advisor 1)