This post is the second in a series of 2 about my journey from being overweight and unfit, to becoming lighter and fitter, but without the palaver involved in fad-diets. If you haven’t read that yet, you can do so here.
Water
Something most people misunderstand, when it comes to weight-loss, is water. According to Healthline.com, the adult human body is made up of (on average) approximately 55% water (taking the average of both male [59%] and female [50%] averages).
Water is used by almost every part of your body. It keeps your cells alive. It is secreted when you get too hot (sweat). It is used to lubricate your eyes (tears). It is used to clear toxins from the body (urine). You get the picture. We need to ingest water to keep our body hydrated and that water has a weight.
Go and weigh a pint of water. It weighs about 1lb (or 0.5kg).
Based on our daily activities, how much liquid we ingest (not just by drinking) and how much water we expel (by the various methods above plus more), the amount of water we contain at any one point fluctuates and therefore, so does our weight. This fluctuation can be enough to alter the scales in your favour at one point or against you at another.
BUT, and this is important; water is your FRIEND, not your enemy. It is vital to drink water when you’re exercising and losing weight. Here’s a few reasons why:
- Water can suppress your appetite — When you have a craving for something to eat, drink a glass of water (not a “sip”, drink the full glass). This takes up space in your stomach, which will make you feel less hungry. This will also help you to consume less “liquid” calories from sugary drinks, as your desire to consume liquid is already being satiated.
- Water is used to flush toxins — When you are dehydrated, your kidneys cannot properly remove waste from your body. Water helps your kidneys to filter toxins and waste. If you don’t drink enough water, you can end up feeling bloated, swollen and lethargic. Worse still, if you’re keeping an eye on your waist measurement; bloating can add inches.
- Water is necessary to burn fat — If you don’t drink water, your body cannot properly utilise stored fat (or carbohyrdates).
How fast should you lose weight?
When you set out to lose weight, you want to see results quickly, and that’s what lots of the fad-diet programs promise. They mostly offer rapid and life-changing weight-loss in exchange for changing your eating habits for a short period of time (6 weeks, 12 weeks, etc.).
The problem is that trying to stick with a “diet” which is so out of line with what you normally eat, is unlikely to succeed and will not lead to you achieving a healthy weight in the long term.
Also, none of these diets teach you to make healthier lifestyle choices, which is what you need to be successful in the long term.
Why would you eat food you probably don’t want/like and be killing yourself at the gym every day for 12 weeks, only to lose an amount of weight, which you then pile back on again when you stop? It doesn’t make sense.
My weight loss was slow but reasonably steady. I was losing anything from 0.5 to 3.5lbs some weeks. That’s more or less the way it has been over the course of the last 8 months (and still going) and I’m happy with that.
The best speed of weight-loss is around 1 or 2 pounds of weight per week. It’s not a race, nor is it worth being any faster than that. If you don’t think that 2lbs of weight is a great loss, take a look at this:
This is what ONE pound of fat looks like:
Will this be difficult?
Sometimes, yes. Change can be difficult for anyone. The thing is to bear in mind why you’re making this change. Being overweight and/or unfit does have a physical and psychological impact on your health, especially as you get older. My reason for doing this is to lose weight until I get to my target weight range (see below), get fitter and then just maintain my weight and fitness for the rest of my life. I have specific fitness goals surrounding my love of swimming and running, but otherwise, just maintaining what I achieve, whilst enjoying my life to the full, is as much as I need or want.
Target Weight
This is another thing that puts people off losing weight; not knowing what their “target weight” should be.
A target weight can mean two things:
- Your “ideal” weight according to your age, gender and height — as determined by the medical fraternity
- A weight YOU would like to be — which might not be the same as your medically-ideal weight.
According to my age, gender and height, the Ideal Weight Calculator on Calculator.net suggests that I should be in a weight range of between 129lbs (9st 2lbs/58kg) and 174lbs (12st 6lbs/79kg). However, I have broad shoulders and back, and thick muscley legs. If I weighed 12st, I’d look like I was ill. I haven’t weighed that little since I was 14! My target weight range is 14st to 14st 7lbs; anywhere in there, I’ll be happy to just “maintain”.
If you are seriously overweight, aiming for a medically-ideal target weight could feel like a huge undertaking (especially if the amount of weight you need to lose is a big number). But whilst this **is** perfectly achievable by anyone, it would be better for you to determine what you’d like to weigh and then break that up into achievable milestones.
For example, if your desired weight (whether that is medically-ideal or not) requires you to lose 56lb (4 stone/25.5kg), breaking that up into four goals of losing 14lb (1 stone/6.3kg) and aiming for each goal individually will be a better way to go about it. When you hit that first target, you’ll have tangible results to drive you onto the next one.
That’s what I did. I wanted to lose that 56lbs mentioned above. My target weight range is 14st to 14st 7lbs; anywhere in there, I’ll be happy to just “maintain”.
(the three paragraphs above were edited on 15 Jan 2021 to be more detailed)
Believe me; once you’ve changed your habits and begun losing weight the slow but sure way, you’ll never look back.
Quick steps to get started
Weigh yourself — preferably wearing nothing, first thing in the morning, after you’ve pee’d, but before you consume anything (including liquids). Make a note of the date and that weight. It doesn’t matter which units you use (st/lbs, lbs or kg).
Weight check — Take a minute to find your IDEAL weight (you can use the calculator I talked about earlier — which is here) and make a note of that.
End target — Have a think about what weight YOU would like to be and make a note of that too. That becomes your target weight.
Set your goals — Subtract your target weight from your current weight; this will tell you how much weight you want to lose. Now, divide the amount of weight you want to lose into smaller monthly goals (keeping the losses to between 1–2lbs per week) and that will give you a rough date for when you aim to achieve this.
For example, the way I did it:
Example of how I planned my weight loss
GO! — Now just begin…and KEEP GOING! Keep the end goal in mind and have some fun whilst you’re exercising; listen to music, podcasts or whatever. Sing your heart out, if that’s your thing.
Recap
Reduce your daily caloric intake by a few hundred calories — no need to starve yourself or go hungry, but try to drink water instead of snacking between meals. Eating plans are too big a subject to go into here; I know what works for me — and (beyond restricting your intake by a few hundred calories each day), you need to find out what works for you. There is plenty of information online.
Increase your daily physical “exercise” by 15 minutes each week/change type and tempo of the exercise you’re doing — There will come a point where you might want to step up to a different type of exercise. For me, I started walking, then jogging, then running and that’s where I’m at now. I didn’t keep adding 15 minutes. I actually spend less daily time now, but at a higher tempo. Find what works for you.
Weigh yourself weekly — Don’t be tempted to weigh yourself daily or, worse still, many times per day. This is a recipe for disaster, as a reading you’re not expecting will do nothing for your confidence. As I mentioned, your weight can fluctuate throughout the day, by up to a few pounds, for many reasons. Weighing yourself constantly, will do nothing more than increase anxiety and reduce confidence. Just don’t do it.
Weigh yourself on the same day every week, putting the scales in exactly the same place in the same room, first thing in the morning on that day, naked and before you’ve consumed anything. That way, you’re taking the readings in exactly the same place, at a similar time and with a good enough gap between them, to get a reasonable sense of how you’re doing.
Don’t be dismayed if not every weight measurement is lower than the previous reading. The road to achieving your ideal weight is not “straight” and weight reduction is never linear. See below:
A couple of things to note here.
- Even though the measurements in the graph on the right are up and down, the trend (overall direction, shown as a dotted-line) of the graph is DOWN (i.e. you are losing weight).
- Water weight will fluctuate but (as long as you’re eating the correct number of calories) FAT loss won’t. As you lose fat, your weight will drop.
I hope that these posts have been of some use to you. If so, please share them on. Feel free to comment below.
