The obvious and most important factor when looking to lose weight is taking control of your calorie intake. If your calorie intake exceeds your calorie expenditure then you won’t lose weight. While your calorie expenditure has to exceed your calorie intake in order to lose weight. I have another poster on my page to help you calculate your daily energy expenditure and work out how much you should be eating daily to lose weight.
Although maintaining a calorie deficit is necessary to lose weight there are other nutritional strategies that can be used to help accelerate this fat loss process. Below are just some methods that I would recommend to help lose weight/fat.
Stick to minimally processed foods
There are two ways these less-processed foods are beneficial when losing weight:
1. They generally provide more nutrients and keep us fuller for longer
2. AND Our body burns significantly more calories when digesting unprocessed foods than it does when compared to their processed counterparts.
The second point has to do with something called the thermic effect of food (TEF). This refers to the number of calories that our body burns to metabolize and actually use the foods that we ingest. And as it turns out, our body just burns more calories when digesting unprocessed foods. Examples of unprocessed foods include things like oats, and multigrain bread.
Eat more calories at the beginning of your day
Eating more calories early on in the day and eating fewer later in the day has many reported benefits including:
Subjects being fuller throughout the day
Fewer cravings for sweet foods
Greater energy levels
Greater weight loss
Decreased waist circumference
The graph below shows the results of a longitudinal weight loss study that found subjects either eating the majority of their calories early in the day or the majority late in the day.
As you can see from the results it demonstrates that when the majority of calories are consumed in the early period of the day then more weight is lost compared to when eating the calories later in the day.
Choose satiating foods
These are foods that provide you with the best feeling of fullness throughout the day. Eating satiating foods means a reduction in overall calories consumed throughout the day. Let’s take a look at the findings from the satiety index, which examined the effects of 38 different common foods on hunger levels. Now, we can clearly see that on a calorie for calorie comparison, some options are much better than others when it comes to controlling your appetite.
Drink plenty of water
Drinking 1-2 litres of water per day helps keep that feeling of fullness preventing excessive snacking and also helps boost the bodies metabolism. One study showed that drinking water a half hour before meals increased weight loss by 44% over 3 months. Two further studies found that the body's metabolic rate was boosted by 25-30% for 1.5 hours after drinking 0.5 litre of water.
These are just some of the methods you can use to help with weight loss. I have chosen these ones as they are relatively simple methods that aren’t extreme and can be sustainable in the long-term.
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