I’m so very proud of all our participants this week. I lost count of how many pushed hard to earn perfect points this week! You are all such dedicated ROCK STARS and I love it!!
Before we move onto results, I would like to address a concern of mine. I saw a lot of food logs this week and among them were quite a few very low calorie logs. Now, I’m not talking about the ones where you may have fasted for religious reasons or had an “off” day, but the logs where the calories were consistently under 1200 calories and the exercise nearly equalled the amount of calories consumed. Now, there could be a few reasons for the low calorie consumption; maybe you were really striving for a big loss this week, maybe you saw someone else post a really low calorie day and thought that maybe you would look like you were eating way too much if you posted a 1400 or 1600 calorie day or GASP! an 1800 calorie day, maybe you just aren’t sure how much you should be eating so ate as little as possible. Whatever the reason, the reality is, that we all have different nutritional needs. If you are 6’ 0” and actively training for an event or working out hard you cannot eat like a 5’ 1” person doing pilates a few times a week. You have got to fuel your workouts, whatever they may be. Even if you’re not in training, not eating enough is still not eating enough and it will affect you and is most likely killing your fat loss. Check out this article.
I know on the surface it seems backwards to say that eating a little more might help you lose weight but it can be true! I remember a few years ago when my sister called me frustrated that her weight loss had stalled. She said, “I don’t understand! I’m exercising like crazy and I hardly eat anything and the darn scale won’t budge! What am I doing wrong?!?” I asked what her intake was and she was trying to fuel 2 hour workouts on around 1200 calories a day! I told her, “You have to EAT!!” She reluctanly bumped her calories back up to 1400-1500 and she found she was losing weight again within a couple of weeks. This is not a lone example. We’ve worked with more participants who have put themselves in similar situations and were amazed at how eating a little more actually helped their metabolism kick back into gear.
Eating too little (under 1200 calories/day) will eventually wreak havoc on your metabolism, leave you sluggish in your workouts and nutrient deficient. These are NOT things we advocate at Lifetime Wellness Challenge. We want you to be HEALTHY not just weigh less. Our bodies are not perfect calculators and though the idea of calories in vs calories out is fairly accurate, it can set us up for failure when we start thinking that even less is more. Instead of drastically slashing your calories, consider swapping out high calorie, low nutrient foods for high nutrient dense foods. Am I advocating that you go out and fill up on junk just to get those calories up? Absolutely not! What I am saying is, your body needs a variety of whole grains, proteins, complex carbohydrates along with all those wonderful fruits and vegetables. In addition, we always encourage you to eat from the source (apples, oranges, kale, etc) rather than using processed juice versions to meet your nutritional needs. The juices are great in a pinch but shouldn't be considered a staple.
If you think this is sounding familiar and you’re feeling “stuck”, then give eating enough a try and let us know how it goes! We’re happy to help anyway we can.
Now, onto this week’s amazing results!
Again, great work this week everyone! Though there will be ups and down through the next few weeks I KNOW you can do this. You CAN make the changes necessary to take back your life and move forward!
