I would like to talk about tools you can use on a regular basis to stay the weight that feels comfortable to you. We all know weight loss is a personal journey.
But weight loss isn’t just about the number on the scale, our metabolic health is vital too. And should be considered as one of your health goals.
The goal of our weight should not all fit into size 10. Our goal for our weight should be that we enjoy living in our body and metabolically, we are healthy. That’s it!
In this article I want to talk about how you can lose 20 kilograms, and how, over time, what tools you can utilise to realise weight loss.
What’s interesting is the old theory of weight loss, Eat less, move more. It is important that you understand this is the old theory of weight loss. As a society, how did it work for us? Let’s think about that for a moment. We are more obese than ever before.
The standard Australian diet and this old theory is not working for us. We have to re-evaluate those two things – eat less – move more.
When you exercise more and eat less you create a new set point in your body. Your body says, I need to stay at this set point in order to be this weight so it’s like there’s a calorie baseline from the output (burning calories) to the input (consuming calories) and that baseline has to be the same every single day.
What happens during holidays like Easter and Christmas when we overindulge?
So now all of a sudden your calories go up. We have all experienced that we start to gain weight. Also what happens
when you injure yourself or you got really busy and you stopped exercising? Many of us have experienced that we start to gain weight.
If I was to take exercise and food and if you asked me which one was more important for weight loss hands down I would tell you food.
It’s not just the food we eat and the macronutrient ratio it’s also the timing of the food. That doesn’t mean exercise should be pushed aside, no. I believe we all should exercise and gain muscle. And we should walk. Exercise helps with our cognitive capabilities but for this article if we’re trying to lose weight lean more into food.
Timing of Food
Even if you don’t change the food you eat, creating a fasting and eating window will help with weight loss. If you have an addiction to fast foods and highly processed foods you can lose weight this way. These foods are inflammatory. But creating a fasting window allows your body to have a break during that time
Here I recommend a 16:8 fasting protocol. 16 hours fasting and an 8 hour eating window. And what should happen is your weight should shift. Just by changing when you eat, not what you eat.
This is how powerful fasting is.
There is a 2023 study. A meta analysis that looked at 27 fasting studies and in every single one there were lots of ways it looked at fasting and every single one of these studies evaluated people who lost significant amounts of weight just by taking their food and compressing it into one eating window leaving a longer period for fasting. The weight loss varied. There’s no question if you don’t want to exercise, just start fasting and do time-restricted eating.
Fasting is free and simple and all you have to do is train your body to do this.
Keto Diet
A Ketogenic diet is one of the best ways forward for weight loss and metabolic health.
The reason that the keto diet helps you lose weight without exercising is because you are bringing your blood sugar down. Whenever we eat a carbohydrate that’s lacking fibre (bread, pasta, rice, etc) our blood sugar spikes really high. This stops fat burning until your blood sugar comes down far enough to switch over into fat burning mode.
When we’re on a keto diet and we eat foods that don’t spike your blood sugar, guess what happens?
YOU BURN FAT – This happens quickly when combining fasting and keto – it’s truly amazing the result you can achieve. Because you reach that fat burning place more easily. In a recents study, 2021 found that people on the keto diet had less Ghrelin. Ghrelin is your hunger hormone so taking refined carbohydrates out of your diet, your blood sugar doesn’t spike as much and your hunger reduces, which is very helpful for weight loss. But it also helps with feeling fuller longer. So it didn’t just reduce hunger it also stimulated a feeling of fullness.
Protein
We have three macronutrients: fats, carbohydrates, and protein. Of the three macronutrients which one do you think kills hunger the most?
You might have said fat but that’s not the answer. The answer is protein. Protein is the most filling of all the macronutrients. The other thing we know about protein is it increases thermogenesis. Thermogenesis is your body heat. Consuming protein increases your metabolism.
If you think your metabolism is too slow really what you’re saying is,I’m not creating enough thermogenesis in your body.
The most common thing is you’re not eating the right ratio of macronutrients so you’re not elevating that thermogenesis which means you’re not raising your metabolism.
I support the science notion that 1.5g per kg of ideal body weight per day of protein. So if your ideal body weight is 60 kg you should be consuming a minimum of 90 grams of protein per day to support muscle strength and resistance training. That’s how much you should have every single day now the research shows that not only is it the most filling macro macronutrient, that a high protein diet is one of the best diets for weight loss.
Let’s take a look at the big picture. What have we all been doing to lose weight for the last several decades? We’ve been counting calories. We’ve been exercising all the time. We have been going on low fat diets which only increase hunger.
Protein is the weight loss game changer and your most powerful macronutrient to help you lose weight. So make sure you’re eating enough protein.
Fibre
Firstly fibre stabilises blood sugar. Fibre helps prevent high blood sugar spikes. So, when we are eating a potato, it is going to have a little more fibre than a potato chip. We want fibre in our food so that it acts a little bit like fat. It puts a break on this really high blood sugar. Plus fibre feeds your microbiome which stabilises blood sugar and there’s certain microbes in your gut that send a signal to the liver that say, we just brought the blood sugar down, go ahead and switch over to ketosis – fat burning mode. So let’s make sure we’re eating enough fibre.
An interesting study on fibre a 2001 study found that overweight people ate 18% less food and lost significantly more weight when they had a high fibre diet. Just don’t eat the basic Western Diet. Google high fibre vegetables and start there. Note: if your diet has been lacking in fibre add it slowly to avoid bloating and gas.
Whole Foods
If we just remove processed foods from the diet that’s takeaway and highly processed foods living in the middle aisle of the supermarket we would reverse metabolic disease. Shop around the perimeter of your supermarket for fresh whole foods. Processed foods are killing us as they have too much sugar, trans fats, salt and harmful chemicals. What you ate matters. Whole Foods don’t have an ingredients list. Whole foods come from a tree, and the ground.
Movement
I know this article is about weight loss without exercise but we can’t ignore this component. If you haven’t exercised for a while, start with walking – it’s FREE. Forward movement is beneficial in many ways. I walk because it’s so good for my joints and my mental health, and a 2017 study found that moderate daily walking caused people to lose about a quarter of a kilo weekly. Walking even improves cognition and also calms the brain.
Start with 3,000 steps of moderate walking each day and overtime (about 3-4 weeks) build it to 10,000 for better health – cardiovascular fitness, and weight loss. If you haven’t got a way to measure your steps, a moderate walk of 30 minutes is equal to 3,000 steps and 10,000 steps is about 1 hour 40 minutes.
We don’t have to over-complicated weight loss.