So what’s your plan? A piece of fruit for breakfast, soup for lunch, soup for dinner and an hour walking on the treadmill every day? And, absolutely no chocolate or alcohol for the month of January at least. Is this the same plan as last year, but this time you are going to stick to it…yeah right.

I’ve been there and done it myself, it doesn’t work because its unsustainable and more importantly its not necessarily right. So here are my top tips for losing weight.

TOP 10 TIPS FOR LOSING WEIGHT

1. For sustainable weight loss it is about raising your metabolism. You spend more time at rest than exercising. If you can increase the number of calories your body burns while at rest then in the long run you will have a better chance of losing more weight.
2. Monitor your progress. Keep track of what you eat and how you exercise. It will make you accountable to yourself. To help you, I have put together a spreadsheet to track your progress. See my page “Track your progress” or click here.
3. Don’t starve yourself or just eat soup or have one meal a day. This will only slow your metabolism down. You are also more likely to binge and give up.
4. Eat more frequently throughout the day. Aim for 5 to 6 small meals, but your overall calorie intake should be below your daily calorie need. You’ll be surprised at how full you will feel all day.
5. Do high intensity interval cardio training rather than long low intensity cardio session. This will trigger a response in your body that will boost your metabolism for the rest of the day.
6. Don’t neglect weight training. Women shouldn’t ignore this element either. Additional muscle mass will boost your metabolism and weight training also provides cardio exercise. It is virtually impossible to grow muscles when you are eating less than your daily calorie needs. So don’t worry you won’t turn into the next Arnie!
7. Eat breakfast as soon as possible. This starts your metabolism off earlier.
8. Eat more protein and fewer carbs. Protein is essential for repairing muscles, will keep you fuller for longer and takes more energy to digest. Carbs and water = glycogen. Once your glycogen stores are full, insulin takes the rest and stores it in your fat reserves. This is why you see some people put on weight when all they eat are jacket potatoes and cereal!
9. Obviously avoid saturated fat, but you do need good fats which can be found in fish and nuts.
10. Be realistic in your weight loss goals. Sensible weight loss should be no more than 2lbs a week. Think longer picture. You can make a huge difference in your body shape by the time summer arrives. I did.

Disclaimer: This is what worked for me. You should always seek advice from a qualified person before embarking on any fitness or dietary changes.

As part of the launch, the gym ran a competition to qualify for a make over and photo shoot. To be a winning candidate you had to have been successful in changing your body shape. I was one of three successful candidates.

The timing of the photo shoot could not have been better, as I had been in maintenance mode for a number of weeks. The photo shoot gave me a new goal and I decided to follow a body builder’s diet leading up to the event. The aim was to deplete and cut out carbs for a week, in order to get a little more ripped. Below are some of the photos from the photo shoot, and my schedule running up to the day.

Photo shoot schedule

The theory is to strip muscles of glycogen (carb and water provide glycogen) and also remove as much water from under skin.  This is achievied by depleting carb intake and then stopping it all together for about five days. Having researched it, I think this is less strenuous than what some body builders do before competition!

A day prior to the photo shoot, carbs are reintroduced. The carbs require water to digest and so removes even more water. The muscles will be starving of glycogen so when you eat carbs the muscles will fill up (ie. pump you up). As you have little water under skin this will give you more muscular definition.  Here’s the programme I followed.

• Days 12 to 8
  • if you are taking creatine then stop (as it makes your body hold onto water)
  • reduce carb intake (less during the day and none after 6pm)
  • increase cardio activity
  • weights focusing on higher reps
• Days 7 to 6
  • increase salt intake
  • reduce carb intake to 50g per day
  • more cardio/high rep weights
  • increase water intake
  • take diuretic like tea and coffee
• Days 5 to 3
  • reduce carb to zero
  • reduce salt intake
  • more cardio but at low intensity so not to lose muscle
  • high rep weights
  • reduce water intake 5 litres, 3 litres to 2 litres
• Day 2
  • reduce water intake to 1 litre
  • low intensity cardio
  • carb load 50g of complex carb every 3 hrs
• Day 1 – photoshoot
  • drink only sips when thirsty
  • carbs as day 2
  • lift light weights till fatigue just prior to photos being taken

The lack of carbs was difficult at first, it did affect my mental processes a little and my energy levels were lower. I found that despite eating a lot of protein I was often not fully satisfied. The hardest part though was the lack of foods that I could eat. Even milk and nuts have some carbs, so you are left with mainly meat as your food source.

Did I get bad breath? Probably but I didn’t notice it, although people could have just been polite. I lost 5lbs in the last five days, but the day after I put back the majority of that weight. Probably because I had a burger and fries straight after! I’m not 100% convinced that it made a dramatic change to my body definition, but just going through the programme was an experience. Would I do it again? No, not unless it was for the cover of Men’s Health!

Disclaimer: This is what worked for me. You should always seek advice from a qualified person before embarking on any fitness or dietary changes.

Sure you can strengthen your core, and abdominal crunches, leg raises and the plank will do this. Its important that you have a strong core for stability when weight training and about everything else that requires physical movement.

However, if you still have a fat deposited on top of your six pack then it won’t show. You need to lose the fat and I hope that this blog helps you towards that goal.

Health

My complexion is better and I have far more energy. I had my cholesterol and blood sugar levels checked out and they are all pretty low. I was never someone who suffered much from stress, but its now even lower, if that’s possible! It’s hard to measure but I’m sure I have lowered the risks associated of being overweight.

Fitness and sports

My speed, strength and endurance are transforming my tennis, badminton and golf games. I’m in the right position to hit the badminton and tennis shots now, and I hit the golf ball much longer – approaching or exceeding 300 yard drives more frequently (of course only if it is down hill and down wind). Generally, I’m less out of breath and recover far more quickly. Despite doing lots of H.I.I.T work, I find that on the odd occasion when I go for a long run, my body can handle it. Although I still get a bit bored.

Appearance

I have started to enjoy clothes shopping again, because I now have the body shape that looks good in ‘off the peg’ clothes. It is cheaper in the long run as I don’t need to get clothes tailored any more. I’m constantly looking out for slim fit sizes. When I look at photos of myself, I appear far more in proportion, which I think is far more appealing. Many people have commented that I now look ten years younger!

My relationship with food

I eat less processed foods and enjoy well prepared and nutritious meals. If I do have a treat, it is a once in a while treat. On the whole I do still see food as fuel, but enjoy the occasional splurge.

To quote Kate Moss, “nothing tastes as good as being slim does”.

Confidence

It’s a cliché, but being fit, feeling better about your body does give you great confidence, and the compliments don’t hurt! However, there is now an inner strength and belief that if I can achieve this, I can achieve anything I put my mind to.

Following my game plan, I started losing about 2 pounds a week which was a healthy weight loss. In the first 10 weeks I lost about 20lbs. I fell from 190lbs to 170lbs. Not only was the weight shifting but I dropped two inches off my waist, from 36 inches to 34 inches, and similarly on other areas of my body. It felt great and spurred me along, I upped my effort at the gym and people noticed the slight change.

I soon reached a plateau and couldn’t seem to break the 170lb limit. That’s when I decided to hit the gym twice a day for at least 3 times a week. Cardio in the morning and weights at lunchtime. At first it was hard getting up early and running on empty. But, as the weight started dropping again, the loss of sleep was worth it.

It was after 5 months when my weight reached 160lbs and my waist 32 inches and chest 38 inches. It was at this point I felt that I had reached a point where my body would not significantly reduce. I decided I could invest in some new fitted clothing. I gave my old suits and casual clothing to charity shops and added a few new pieces to begin with. I still recall the first day in the office with a new fitted suit. It was the first time my colleagues could actually see the how much weight I had lost. The old baggy clothes no longer hid my progress. For weeks after, and still today, people comment on how much I have lost. Some say I’m disappearing altogether. I even had a member of senior management ask me if I was alright. I found each comment more motivating and kept thinking to myself “wait till I’ve finished”.

Below is a table of the progress I made. I would definitely recommend keeping your measurements as you can really see how you progress. You will notice that most of my progress was achieved by July.

Research points to eating small meals regularly in order to boost your metabolism. And, eating protein is important to help recover and build muscle mass. You may have read in another of my posts, I believe having more muscle fibres raises your metabolism.

Therefore, I decided I would eat five to six times a day, every three hours, and each meal would contain more protein and less carbs. It wasn’t the Aitkin’s diet, but the protein based foods did tend to keep me fuller for longer.

A typical day’s meal would be:

Morning – scrambled eggs and baked beans for breakfast.

Mid morning snack – half a tuna sandwich about an hour before the gym.

Lunch – something like a tuna steak, high in protein if I completed a gym session.

Mid afternoon snack – the other half of the tuna sandwich.

Dinner – steak or chicken with some carbs.

Just before bed – a yoghurt.

I did take protein shakes post workout or if I missed a meal.

Portion control was also important; I started eating of side plates rather than dinner plates – making the meal look bigger. I evoked the twenty minute rule, if you stop eating and are still really hungry after twenty minutes then have a bit more. However, there is no substitute for self-discipline or the thought I would have to work out extra hard in the gym to compensate.

My mentality shifted from living to eat, to eat to live. I began seeing food as fuel.

Disclaimer: This is what worked for me. You should always seek advice from a qualified person before embarking on any fitness or dietary changes.

This time it wasn’t a New Year resolution that prompted me into action. It had taken several weeks of reflection on why I wanted to get into shape and lose the fat. For you to fully understand this, I need to explain the circumstances going on at this time.

The world was in the grip of a economic recession, major banking institution were failing, good people were losing their jobs. This was a time of great uncertainty. I decided that there was no point trying to control what in reality I couldn’t control. What I could control was what I ate and how much exercise I did. I thought if the worse came to the worse at least I would have my health, fitness and body shape. No company could take that away from you.

Having the right reason to lose weight is important, a ‘want’ is not really enough. Fortunately my need to lose weight wasn’t forced upon me for health reasons. By making my focus my body and health meant that I didn’t worry about what was going on around work. I would go to work and count the hours until my next gym session. The exercise at lunchtimes and eating often (which kept my blood sugar levels even), also had the added benefit of lowering stress, making me more alert and increasing my productivity. The latter not going unnoticed, which is not a bad thing in a recession.

Training SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely)

This is how I applied the SMART methodology to my fat loss goals.

Specific – I broke my goal into smaller steps, being specific of what I was trying to achieve at each stage. I would aim to lose weight or drop a belt hole by a certain date. I also knew what weight and waist size I was aiming for from the beginning.

Measurable – just having one measure isn’t enough. You could lose muscle and therefore weight but still have lots of fat. I had a number of body measurements which I took from the beginning, as well as my weight. I monitored my progress against these. I even recorded the time it took me to run over a certain distance to measure my fitness progress. See my post “Measuring progress” for those measurements.

Achievable – I knew that it was achievable to change your body shape, plenty of people have done it in the past. I needed to make sure that I gave myself enough time and to believe in the process, even if or when results were slow. Reaching my mini-goals reinforced the belief that my end goal was attainable.

Realistic – I had to adjust my training and eating schedules around typical office hours and demands. This meant that I had to train effectively with the time I had. High intensity interval training meant I could get a demanding cardio session in just 30 minutes. I also had the odd ‘cheat’ meal, as I knew that I couldn’t be virtuous 100% of the time. I didn’t feel guilty as I knew it wasn’t something I would do consistently.

Timely – I was realistic on how long changes would take. I aimed for 2lbs weight loss a week and no more. As I did lose the weight, I adjusted my expectation to 1lb a week as a moved towards my ideal weight. At the beginning, it was about every four weeks that I dropped an inch of my waist. Sustainable weight loss and change of body shape takes time. If not every one could do it in weeks, just like in the adverts.

A final thought. When I first started going to the gym, I didn’t really enjoy it that much. However, my cousin had a great philosophy. She felt that the gym was the only time she could be selfish and that everything she did in her gym was solely for her benefit. It was her time for herself; her sanctuary. Over a few weeks I started to understand what she meant, and now I see any exercise as one of those rare times when you can be selfish and do things that benefit just you.

H.I.I.T suits me perfectly, it allows me to do a good cardio session within 30 mins. Which is great when you have a limited time during lunch breaks.

My cardio workout normally consist of:

• 10 mins on the treadmill, where I will either run at fairly quick pace or 5 mins at a quick pace followed by five sprints for 30 secs at the treadmill’s top speed;
• 10 mins on the bike, with 30 sec going flat out and raising the resistance, and 30 secs at a more moderate pace to recover; and
• 10 mins on the cross trainer again going 30 sec flat out and raising the resistance, and 30 secs at a more moderate pace to recover.

I generally find that I finish with a pretty good sweat on, and out of breath. It bemuses me when I see people go for long jogs or bike rides and come off not having even broken into a sweat.

Initially, when I was focusing on fat loss, I would go to the gym for a cardio session three times a week. If I hit a plateau, I would perform five cardio sessions in the week until I had broken though the plateau.

Disclaimer: This is what worked for me. You should always seek advice from a qualified person before embarking on any fitness or dietary changes.

Why weight train?

In my post “My Game Plan”, I discuss that my overriding objective is to raise my metabolic resting rate (MBR). Raising my MBR means that my body will require more calories for maintenance and with a reduced calorie intake, the body needs to either find the calories from fat reserves or muscle.

Weight training contributes to raising MBR, as additional muscle mass requires calories to sustain it. Some people I have spoken to, particularly women, are scared to incorporate weights training for fear of getting big muscles. I find this particularly amusing as it is very difficult to get increase your muscle size. However, this notion is worth exploring.

As I understand it, sustaining muscle requires calories, additional muscle is relatively expensive for the body to keep if it’s not being used. To increase your muscle size, you actually need a surplus of calories, but if your objective is fat/weight loss, then you should be in a calorie deficit. So if you are not increasing your muscle size, then what is the point of weight training?

By weight training, you are looking to increase your muscle mass or density. I like to think of this analogy, imagine your muscles are like spaghetti packets with a few sticks of spaghetti in it. The spaghetti represents muscle fibres. As you perform weight training you make micro tears in the muscle fibres. The body repairs these muscle fibres and adds more fibres, like adding more spaghetti sticks to the spaghetti packet. After a while, when the packet fills with more strands, the packet becomes heavier and solid. The packet size itself remains the same. That’s why I suppose they say muscle weighs heavier than fat. The additional muscle fibres means that just sitting still your body needs more calories, ideally making up any calorie deficit from fat reserves.

Weight training routine

I weight train at least three times a week, with one of those sessions being a “300″ type routine ie. mixture of cardio and high reps and low weights. I also train the large muscle groups on different days, like my chest, legs, shoulders and back. Mixing in the smaller muscles groups like the biceps and calves.

Its worthwhile having a fitness trainer look at your form and give you guidance. Otherwise, you may not be training the muscles you are looking to isolate. Also compound movements like squats are great for working your core.

Disclaimer: This is what worked for me. You should always seek advice from a qualified person before embarking on any fitness or dietary changes.

My overriding objective was to raise my basal metabolic resting rate. The basal metabolic resting rate is the amount of energy expended while at rest. I thought of it this way, if my body needs more energy (calories) just at rest, and I rest more than I am working out, then I need a greater calorie consumption. And if I reduced my calorie consumption as well, then the overall loss is greater.

You will notice that each triangle segment is the same size, I paid equal attention to these, which I believe is fundamental for success.  Here are a couple of examples why I believe this to be true.

Some friends and I, started our training at the same time. I noticed that despite working as hard as each other in the gym, their weight loss was not as notable as mine. In many cases, it was that they continued to have two to three large meals a day, or regularly ate “bad” food. I also observed that some regular gym goers would rarely work with weights, or spend a lengthy time on cardio machines at a relatively low intensity. Their progress was slow.

I saw my programme as four equal parts – each triangle – and at each point of the triangle a specific aim. Some of these aims overlapped each segment, as the aim was relative to each other. Let me clarify.

H.I.I.T (High Intensity Interval Training) – rather than long low intensity cardio exercises, I would do short but intense bursts of activity on each cardio machine (see my What Cardio post). The science behind this approach is that H.I.I.T will increase your metabolic resting rate for the following 24 hours as opposed to a long low intensity cardio. A good explanation of the process can be found here. It also meant I didn’t have to spend hours in a gym.

Frequency overlaps the weight training, cardio and nutrition triangles. The number of times a week I would perform a cardio or weight training session would vary. Initially I did a cardio and weight session at least three times a week. If I hit a plateau, I would up the frequency of my cardio for a few weeks till I broke through. I never neglected the weight training aspect, as having more more muscle mass would mean an increase in my metabolic resting rate (see my Weight Training Programme post).

Perhaps the most important frequency aspect is within nutrition. I would eat at least five to six small meals a day, but my overall calorie intake was less than my body needed. I would aim to eat every three hours, it kept my blood sugar level, no dips causing sugar cravings; and you will be surprised how full you will feel. I think other people found this the hardest to maintain, as it requires some planning to ensure you eat good quality food every three hours.

Duration within the cardio triangle means that I kept my workouts to 30 to 40 minutes max using mainly H.I.I.T. This worked well for me, as I dislike running. It also meant I could move between cardio machines every 10 minutes so I didn’t get bored or fatigued. It made cardio bearable and achievable, especially when some weeks I did cardio five times a week. It also fitted in with the time I had available to train, especially during my lunch breaks.

Within mentality, duration refers to a number of things, so I have a written another post on it (see my Mental Edge post). In brief though, duration considers how often I would train and ensure that I got my rest periods, which is important for muscle growth and recovery.

Duration also addresses having a realistic approach to how long this process would take. I was mentality prepared that my long term fat loss goal would not happen in weeks but over a number of months. I would aim to lose 2lbs a week at most; and some weeks only 1lb, as I had less to lose.

Duration in nutrition means giving your stomach time to realise that it is full. I had a rule, after eating a meal – if I was still really hungry – I could have more but only after 20 minutes. I found it takes about this long before the stomach signals to the brain that its has enough.

Focus under the weight training triangle meant that I would focus on individual muscle groups each session. Concentrating on the larger muscle groups first, like the legs, chest and back. Funnily enough I never did many ab crunches and have a six pack. You can read more in my post – Secrets of a six pack.

Quality within weight training means that it is more beneficial to have better form and range of motion when lifting weights. It is the difference between working the muscles you want to, rather than the ones you don’t. It took me a while to grasp this. Having a fitness instructor show you is a good idea. I found that I had to reduce the weight to perform an exercise with good form. Going back one step to go forward two is never a bad thing.

Quality under nutrition is about making sure that what you put in your mouth is appropriate to what you are trying to achieve. For instance, protein shakes work when you need to take in protein but it doesn’t have the same metabolic impact as say digesting a steak. For more read my post on Food for Fuel.

Support under nutrition and mentality means the same thing, and can be applied to weight training and cardio. It is a lot easier to achieve your goals if you have friends and family supporting you along the way. If they understand why you are doing it then they are less likely to tempt you with chocolate or alcohol. Having friends to train with you keeps it fun and you can push each other even when you don’t feel up to it. So build your support and a big thank you to mine, you know who you are.

Goals, the reason why you’re doing it. The reason for me was not typically an event in the calender to lose weight for, or thankfully a result of a diagnosis or illness. I cover my reasons and goal setting process in more detail under my post Mental Edge. However, like all good advice when setting goals, it needs to be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely). Or as I often hear, how do you eat an elephant? In small portions.

Disclaimer: This is what worked for me. You should always seek advice from a qualified person before embarking on any fitness or dietary changes.