Dieters who write down everything they eat each day lose twice as much weight as those who don’t, according to one of the largest weight-loss studies ever conducted.
Scientists at four clinical research centers recruited 1,685 overweight or obese adults who weighed an average 212 pounds.
The participants were offered 20 weekly group sessions led by nutritionists and behavior counselors and encouraged to try to lose
at least 9 pounds in six months. They were told to consume about 500 fewer calories a day, eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, do
about 180 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity a week, and keep daily food and exercise records.
Dieters who kept their food diary six or more days a week lost an average of about 18 pounds in six months, compared with about 9 pounds for those who didn’t keep food diaries.
I encourage you to keep a log of exactly what you are eating on a daily basis for the first couple of weeks after starting a fat loss
program. It truly is eye opening for many people! However, it can become distracting after a while, especially when you are
on-the-go. Once you have a consistent menu mapped out, it is not as critical to continue to log everything. But if you find that it
makes you more accountable, then by all means, keep writing it down!
For a fat loss diet that includes an easy-to-use diary to track your food intake, check out my plan The Burrito Diet!
Last time we talked about the Thermic Effect of Feeding (TEF) and its role in burning fat. TEF can represent as much as 10% of the calories burned in a day. So how do you burn the other 90%?
Physical activity can represent 20-30% of your daily energy expenditure – this is comprised of your normal physical activity (for example, lifting the kids or groceries, washing the car, walking, etc.).
So that leaves 60-70% of your daily energy expenditure coming from – get this – DOING NOTHING! That’s right, sitting around watching TV, sleeping, etc. Your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) is where most of your calorie burn comes from! When you hear people blame a “slow metabolism” for being fat, they are partially right – their RMR is not what it should be to burn the amount of calories they consume!
So, last time we learned that eating more frequently increases your TEF, but how do you increase your RMR, which is REALLY going to get the fat burning?
It’s really simple – the more muscle you have, the higher your RMR will be. When you workout, you are breaking down muscle fibers. The process of rebuilding that muscle is intense – it requires rest and protein, and subsequently raises your metabolic rate. Once you have built the muscle, it will keep your RMR elevated as it takes a lot of the body’s effort to maintain it.
Also, the high intensity intervals, the cardio where you do all-out bursts for a short period of time followed by recovery, creates the
same demand on your metabolism as resistance training. If you choose to do cardio, this is the kind of cardio you should be doing.
So to wrap this up, science tells us these things are the most effective things you can do to lose fat:
1. Eating more often (shooting for 6 small meals per day)
2. Resistance training
3. Interval cardio
There are two more things to add to this list that I’ll cover next time.
