some flab.
Every kilo of weight is equivalent to about 7,700 kcal, and a pound is roughly 3,500 kcal. So for every kilo you want to lose, you must: eat 7,700 kcal fewer or burn 7,700 kcal by taking extra exercise, or try a combination of both.
DON’T RUSH IT
If you’ve got a lot of weight to lose, don’t be in a hurry. Lose it fast and it will pile straight back on again with a vengeance. Try looking up people who have won ‘Slimmer of the Year’ awards just six months after they picked up their trophies – you’ll find they’re almost all well on the way back to their original weights. A steady weight loss of 5 to 10 per cent of your starting weight over six months is about right. So if you currently weigh in at 100 kilos, you should aim to lose between 5 and 10 kilos in the first six months, and between 10 and 20 in a year.
Note: experts recommend that you don’t try to lose more than half a kilo – or a pound – a week. To do this you’d have to cut back roughly 500 kcal a day by eating less and burning more. Cycling to and from work and cutting the chocolate digestives with your morning coffee might do it. Or jogging for half an hour a day and foregoing that pint of lager with your mates. If you don’t want to cut any foods, just up your activity levels to burn an extra 500 kcal a day. Set yourself realistic targets. As we’ve seen, if you try to diet to a weight that’s below your natural weight range you’ll struggle all the way. Besides, super-skinny is not always super-attractive or sexy – nobody wants to hang out with a coat hanger.
A QUICK WORD ABOUT FOOD
The theory behind The Little Book of Calorie Burning is that you can eat what you like so long as you burn off the calories afterwards. However, if you exclude whole food groups (such as carbs, proteins or fats), you will soon start to show signs of deficiencies. These may be in the form of little white spots on your nails, clumps of hair on your pillow in the morning, frequent stinking colds, or just feeling tired all the time. Healthy people are way more attractive than sickly ones, so make sure you eat a wide range of fruit and veg, proteins and fibre, plus healthy fats (found in oily fish, nuts and seeds, avocados, olive oil) if you want to look and feel sensational.
You can calculate your ideal weight using the BMI formula worked backwards.
In other words, if you are now 80 kilos and your height is 1.66 metres, your BMI will be 29 (see formula on page 13). Now multiply 24 – a healthy BMI – by your height multiplied by itself, i.e. 24 × (1.66 × 1.66) = 66.13. The resulting figure of 66 kilos is your ideal weight, meaning you have 14 kilos to lose. Allow yourself up to a year to achieve this – based on the rate of no more than 10 per cent weight loss in six months – and you should be able to keep the weight off for good.
WHAT KIND OF EXERCISE IS BEST?
The best kind of exercise is the kind that you enjoy the most, because then you are most likely to stick to it in the long term. If, however, your favourite exercise is flicking the TV remote control you should refer to page 127 for the number of calories burned by this activity and consider how little you would be able to eat in a day if these were the only movements you made! If you like your food and want to be able to indulge without looking like a Teletubby, you should aim to get a mixture of three different kinds of exercise every week: aerobic, anaerobic and lifestyle.
Aerobic exercise
This is the kind of work-out that makes your heart beat faster and makes you hot, sweaty and out of breath. Admittedly, none of this sounds particularly pleasant, but aerobic exercise repeated steadily for at least 15 minutes a day is the best way of burning fat. In fact, scientists have figured out that if you exercise at a level that brings your heart rate up to between 60 and 80 per cent of its maximum, this is the optimum ‘fat-burning zone’.
To work out your own fat-burning zone, subtract your age from 220 to get your maximum heart rate. So, if you are 30 your maximum will be 220 – 30 = 190. Multiply that figure by 60 per cent and you get 114; multiply by 80 per cent and you get 152. Your optimum fat-burning zone is between 114 and 152 beats per minute.
To measure your heart rate, you just need a watch or stopwatch with a second hand. Take the pulse in your wrist (in the groove just below your thumb joint) using the fingers of the opposite hand and count the number of beats in 15 seconds, then multiply by 4 to get the number of beats in a minute.
If you are aged 30, as in the example above, your target heart rate would be between 114 and 152 beats per minute – equivalent to 28.5 to 38 beats in 15 seconds. Any fewer and you are not exercising hard enough; any more and you might be overdoing it.
Note: if you can’t feel any pulse at all, you might be dead but it’s more likely that you are feeling in the wrong place. Try again.
Aerobic exercise isn’t just good for weight loss; it also helps your heart and lungs to function more efficiently and keeps you healthier all round. It burns more calories than other forms of exercise and helps to boost your RMR, so it is definitely the weight-watcher’s friend.
Anaerobic exercise
Anaerobic exercise is the type you use for targeting and toning your flabby, wobbly bits. It can help to build, stretch and lengthen muscle and trim the trouble spots, and regular sessions of just 20 minutes three times a week will boost your RMR by up to 15 percent over the long term. Which means you can eat more.
It usually involves working against some kind of resistance, such as dumbbells or the weight-loaded machines you find in a gym or Pilates studio. To build muscle, do just 10 repetitions at the maximum weight you can manage rather than 20 at only 50 per cent of your capacity.
A GOOD STRETCH
Always stretch your muscles before doing a session of aerobic or anaerobic exercise or you risk straining or even tearing muscle fibre and this can take a while to heal. You’ll find some good books on stretching in bookshops, or ask a trainer to advise. You could also try hinting to your partner about the benefits of after-sport massage, but you might feel morally obliged to return the favour. (Feigning sleep generally only works the first time.)
Push-ups, sit-ups and squats are all examples of anaerobic exercises that you can do at home, in which your own body weight provides the resistance. The more you weigh, the harder they are because the more you have to lift. Try some yourself tonight while watching ‘The Simpsons’ on TV. Can Homer do 10 push-ups? We doubt it.
Lifestyle exercise
Last but by no means least, this form of exercise is, in fact, the most important. Put simply, it’s about trying to introduce a little bit more calorie-burning movement into every single thing you do throughout the day, from brushing your teeth or getting dressed, to talking on the phone, doing housework or even kissing. There are lots of examples and tips in this book, or alternatively you can make up your own. Here are just a few for starters:
Try hopping, skipping or rollerblading to the shops instead of driving.
Run up the stairs at work, rather than taking the lift.
Wash the car with a bucket and sponge instead of cruising through a car wash.
Do a quick cartwheel whenever you take the rubbish out.
Play football with the kids instead of just watching them out the window – and make sure you win!
Get up to change the channel on the TV set instead of using the remote control. Ask someone to hide the remote if you lack the discipline.
By turning up the effort intensity in your day-to-day activities you will end up burning way more calorie fuel than you do at the half-hour exercise class you fit in after work (although they are great as well). And it is regular, day-to-day activity that affects your RMR most in the long term.