Category: Weight Loss

Have you ever thought, “I’m too fat/injured/old/lazy to do that thing”? “I’m too fat” is still a pretty common thought that I have even after losing nearly 50kg with the help of weight loss surgery. My partner suggested rock climbing as an activity we could do together. We were both obese when he put forward this suggestion and my initial thought was, “I’m too fat for that, I’m just going to fall but I guess I’ll give it a go”. I wasn’t very good on my first session but atleast I didn’t fall off the wall. I enjoyed it so much that I signed up for membership and I’ve been climbing now for 3 months. The progress is slow, I’m still on mostly level 0, I’m often the fattest person in the gym and I’ve even seen many first time climbers make more progress in their first session than I have seen in 3 months. But I try not to care and I’m still enjoying it.

Another activity that I’ve been exploring is running. I don’t like it much yet but I’ve heard people grow to enjoy it. I’m exploring the Nike Run app. I’ve had many failures trying to start this program but that’s ok. The first set back was a foot injury that’s pretty common with being flat footed. Went to my podiatrist, got some new inner souls and stretches for the injury. The second time I started the program I had too many other things happening that it just wasn’t sticking. This third time I started I got through 2 weeks of the program, dropped off a little in week 3 but atleast picked it back up for week 4. Talking about being too fat to run, I was researching tips for getting started. I came across a support group for fat people wanting to get into running. Once I get through this Nike Run getting started program I’ll look into joining too fat to run. Today my run involved running to grumpy doughnuts for a passionfruit filled doughnuts. OMG, was so yummy. Check out their Instagram here.

There are no secrets to living a healthy lifestyle. Try a bunch of activities to see what you enjoy. Get friends and family involved. The list of things that I’d like to try include; pole dancing, rowing, roller derby and swing dancing.

So if you find yourself saying I’m too fat, just give it a go and listen to your body. Don’t push yourself too hard and you might surprise yourself with what you can do.

TL;DR:
Try to eat a mixture of less processed fruit/vegies with less processed meats, try not to over do it with fats/carbs/sugar and you should have a pretty balanced diet. Also check out CSIRO’S total well being diet.

Now I don’t diet, it’s such a horrible word. I do try to live a healthy lifestyle and try to make healthy food choices, there are times where I go “F it, I want chocolate” and it’s ok to have those moments and not feel guilty about it. As long as I don’t do too much damage which having a smaller stomach helps control.

Lots of things are marketed as “healthy” when they aren’t. Learning how to read food nutrition labels is a good start. I look at ratios of fat to carbs to protein. I also look at ratio of carbs to fibre to assess if something really is “high fibre” if it’s trying to market itself as that.

Knowing that 1 tablespoon of sugar is 20 grams is a good guide for measuring how much sugar is in things e.g. fruit juice is horrible for sugar.

Understand that we are horrible at guessing how much we eat, even when calory counting we will still grossly underestimate serving sizes. You can combat this by using smaller plates and weighing out recomended serving sizes. We also have a tendency to eat more when we think something is healthy.

Fats and sugar aren’t really the enemy and protein is not this amazing thing just because everyone keeps raving on about it. Over consumption is the enemy, your body is an amazing self regulating machine.

Every cell in body needs sugar to survive, your body will convert carbs/fats/proteins into sugar (in that order) to support your body. Eat too many fats/carbs and your body will store it as fat, eat too much protein and you’ll have smelly expensive poo.

It doesn’t really matter if/how you skip meals. Intermittent fasting is a tactic that lots of people use to keep their overall food consumption low and stomach capacity down. E.g. I’ll often skip breakfast if I haven’t been to the gym in the morning. It doesn’t matter when you eat your large meals. There is a lot of misinformation out there around this though so tread carefully.

There are some things you can only get from your diet and they usually start with the name essential, e.g. essential amino acids (the building blocks for protein) can not be created in the body and need to come from your diet. This doesn’t mean essential oils are essential in any way though, that’s just misleading marketing.

Try to eat a mixture of fresh-ish fruit/vegies (nothing wrong with frozen) with less processed meats, try not to over do it with fats/carbs/sugar and you’ll have a pretty balanced diet. Processed foods tend to have higher amounts of fat/carbs because these are really tasty and these tasty enhancements help companies sell more food. If you need recipe ideas check out CSIRO’s total well being diet, it’s backed by science and isn’t the latest fad.

You can even try cutting out meat/dairy for a little bit if you are up for it. I’ve seen many people have success on the vegetarian/vegan diet. You don’t need to worry about protein if you are eating a mixture of things (e.g. peas, beans, legumes and nuts have some protein). Be careful with nuts though, it’s easy to over do because of the high fat content. I’ve challenged myself with periods of vegetarianism.

It’s easier to overconsume when alcohol is involved. I’ve challenged myself with dry periods when I’ve wanted to focus on my health.

Have you ever wondered when we lose weight, where does it go? Turning it into energy is the common preconception but chemistry doesn’t work that way, you can’t create energy from mass (easily). Have a read through this article by science alert.

Turns out we breathe out most of our weight as Carbon Dioxide(CO2). This is probably why high intensity cardio vascular exercise is encouraged for weight loss, you breathe more and therefore expel more carbon. If you are weighing yourself as an indicator of weight loss, it’s generally recommended to weigh yourself at the same time of day under roughly the same conditions. For example, I weight myself in the morning, after I’ve gone to the toilet and just before I jump into the shower (so I’m naked). Have you ever weighed yourself during the day and observed the fluctuations? Or if you are female, have noticed a few kilo’s creep on just before that time of month? Our weight varies, alot.

We breathe in oxygen and out comes CO2, where does that carbon come from? Nearly everything we eat is based on carbon. CARBoyhydrates get their name from CARBon. Sugars are simple, short chained and are easy for us to turn into fuel for our bodies to do things with, that’s why we think they are tasty. Alcohol is like a sugar but with an alcohol molecule added to the end of it. Fat’s are more complicated but still based on carbon chains just linked together a little differently. Proteins are even more complicated (your DNA helps create proteins and that’s pretty complicated stuff). The field of science that is based on the study of carbon based chemistry is called organic chemistry and we aren’t just talking about organic fruit and veg here either. Plastics and fuel for your car also fall under organic chemistry.

Trees consume CO2, so by losing weight you are encouraging trees to grow. Fancy that.

Salts are an example of chemicals we consume that aren’t based on carbon and they are useful for many other things in your body; from you heart pumping to your nerve’s transmitting pain signals. Think; anything electrical needs salt. While I’m on the subject of salt, there is actually no conclusive scientific information that too much salt is bad for you, don’t believe me? watch this.

People tend to weigh less in the morning then at night time. This means most of your weight loss happens when you are sleeping. What’s happening when you sleep? Your body is repairing itself. In the brain there is a build of chemicals during they day that can be toxic if they aren’t cleared out of the system on a regular basis. Listen to Tell me something I don’t know from 22:41 to listen from a sleep doctor about this.

When you are sleeping, it’s like your body does a stocktake of it self. It goes, “hmm, how much fuel do I need to do stuff with?”. If you have consumed excess fuel, your body is going to store it for later. If you haven’t consumed enough fuel, you body will breakdown fuel from storage, use it and breathe it out. It feels like there is a preference to store fuel, evolutionarily speaking this is easy for us to do and it has helped us survive as a species. Our bodies have many different tactics it can deploy to ensure survival. For example, starvation mode is a state your body can go into to preserve energy. E.g. with my recent rapid weight loss from surgery my menstrual cycle was out of whack. It’s like my body went, “CRISIS, CRISIS, we are in starvation mode, we do not have enough resources to sustain another human being, put the breaks on the baby making machine NOW”. My menstrual cycle seems to be back to a regular rhythm now.

So “burning energy” is not really an accurate scientific term but it’s all chemistry.