Lots of folks have been asking me about how I have lost so much weight. I tell them the same thing that everyone else says: calories burned-calories consumed=weight lost/gained.
However, I used to work out and eat less all the time and loss little or no weight, and I finally figured out why!
It's not hormones or enzymes or whatever...it's MATH! That's right, we've been doing the WRONG MATH!
Okay...so here's what you have to do...
A) calculate your RMR (http://www.caloriesperhour.com/index_burn.php)...for newbies that's your RESTING METABOLISM RATE.
B) Then...you have to figure out how many calories you expend doing normal tasks (i.e watching tv, cooking, whatever...).
C) Figure out how many calories you burn jogging, doing aerobics, walking the dog...whatever you do for exercise when you are trying to lose weight.
D) Now here comes the hard part! Normally, to lose weight we increase exercise. We get excited, because the treadmill has been telling us we burned 150 calories or something! You feel chuffed. "I have burned an extra 150 calories today!" WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! You have only burned 150 minus the number of calories you would have burned sitting on your butt watching tv or something.
EXAMPLE: Trav burns 185 calories on the treadmill in a 1/2 hour. She burns 25 calories watching TV for a half an hour. So my work on the treadmill only counts for 160 extra calories burned than if I had done nothing--NOT 185. I know this sounds weird, but this kind of thing adds up over the course of a day. If you think you are burning 500 calories a day more, but it is really 350 or something, you are going to lose weight slower than you expect.
That's why my weight was dropping at such a slow pace or not at all! I was consuming too many calories, so I was maintaining my weight--not dropping it!
The cool thing about knowing your RMR, is that if you adjust your calorie intake to be lower than your RMR, you don't have to worry about all this stuff--you can just do the simple math every day. So, if your RMR is 1500 calories a day, you can drop it to 1300. 200 times 7 equals a deficit of 1400 calories a week, which means an almost guaranteed weight loss of 1/2 pound in a week. That's why skinny people and older people lose weight slower--their RMR is lower than younger, heavier people. If you want to lose a pound a week--guess what--you will have to burn 1750 calories extra that week. What's nice is that even the biggest couch potato burns calories on top of their RMR--you just need to figure out how many (I'll give you a hint: a couch potato --and the a majority of the US population-- burns 1.2 times their RMR.)
Doctors say you should NEVER go below 1200 calories a day without medical supervision. So people with low RMR's need to exercise a lot more. That's why everyone (like Bob, Jillian, and your Aunt Sally) tell you if you want to lose weight, exercise! (http://exercise.about.com/cs/exbeginners/a/exforbeginners.htm)
That's also why every weight loss plan in the world bottoms out at 1200 calories a day.
Anyway, if your weight loss is stalled: first things first. Figure out how much you eat, figure out how much you burn. Do the math, then get off the couch. You may just need a brisk walk to kick start the ole metabolism!
Remember: as you lose weight, your RMR drops--so check it again every 3-5 pounds you lose!
See you Thursday!
Monday, April 26, 2010
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You Go Go Go Girl!!!! I don't care how many people you think you bore, you are still entertaining! You are such an inspiration
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