You are either doing 1 of 3 things. Losing body fat, maintaining it, or increasing it.

When trying to lose fat most people will spend too much time focusing on calorie restriction. It is true that you must be in a calorie deficit to lose body fat, but too often it becomes the central focus because that tends to be the extent of the knowledge.

Calories and how much a person should have are different for everyone. It needs to be worked out based on how much of your weight is fat and how much is lean muscle mass.

If you follow what someone else is doing, even if you are roughly the same weight, your make up of fat to muscle ratio will be different to theirs.

This can be a common mistake and can result in one saying, “Losing weight is easy,” and others saying, “I’m hungry all the time, I’m finished with this.”

When taking you through our personalised coaching program, calories are one of the variables we work with.

Carbohydrates are another, as it is the bodies preferred source of fuel. It’s so preferred that there is even a reserve tank of it in case you run out!

It’s quite common knowledge that there is a connection between carbohydrates and gaining weight or vice versa especially after the Atkins era. However this is much too generic and gives people the view that carbs are good or bad. This is not the case, as every ‘food’ has its own benefits if used in the right way. Take for example white potato. It’s benefit for someone maintaining their weight or increasing muscle mass is that it restores glycogen in the muscle cell and when partnered with protein will deliver that protein directly to the muscle as quickly as possible for optimal recovery. This benefit as you can see has been given in context.

I believe it’s important to take away past associations of food being “good” or “bad” that we may have taken on and turned into a belief based on a past experience.

Learn more about how your body utilises different foods for fuel.

Decide to become empowered in that area.

Hormone optimisation is another very important area we look at. Every ‘body’ is different and there is no one size fits all. Very often, especially with females (and I can relate, I am one!) we have this default setting we turn to when things don’t work and we call it emotional eating.

In my experience, 8 times out of 10 this is not the case. And even if it were, the other 2 times out of 10 are not enough for a person to get fat, so let’s be reasonable and look at facts.

1 tiny example – most people will eat breakfast in the morning and start their day with some kind of cereal, a healthy one of course like muesli, or the flake that starts with special and ends with k, or oats. Before we even start evaluating how long your body can potentially use this food for fuel before you are hungry again (which is also an important factor) these foods fall almost solely into the carbohydrate category. This will result in your body producing the hormone insulin which is great in small amounts, but definitely not in excess. Typically in the average kiwi diet it is produced in excess and so is referred to as the fat storage hormone. For the rest of the day, what you eat will determine how much more of this hormone is created regardless of ‘calories’.

You may have experienced this phenomenon as a plateau. It’s important to learn how to combine your meals reducing this fat storage hormone production line.

Secondly, Leptin is a hormone essential for fat burning, and as soon as you start reducing calories your body starts producing less of it. For those that have dropped their calories extremely low, you can actually become Leptin resistant.

And exercise – easy. Learn how the body uses different types of fuel for different types of exercise. And in fact it’s less about the exercise itself than it is about your intensity. And contrary to how you may feel about this subject, harder is not always smarter.

Understanding this will help you be more intentional when exercising. Also it’s good for you to know that 80% of calories are actually burnt at rest.

Lastly, accountability. Our health seems to be the area of life that we are held the least accountable. In our relationships it’s our friends and partners that let us know about it when we step out of line. With work it’s our employer. The thing is, when it comes to your health you either ‘make’ it a priority or it will be ‘made’ a priority at some point.

I hope you can see we’re a passionate team. We love it, live it, breathe it and eat it daily.

Any start is a good one and I encourage you to let us give you the tools and understanding hand in hand.

The past is where it stays; we’d love to help you create your future.

To find out if personalised coaching if right for you, request a Free Consultation