In this fourth instalment, personal trainer Brett Sanders gives his advice on how you can lose weight in a healthy and sustained way.
You asked: My BMI is 48+ can you help?
Brett answered: The first thing to acknowledge with regards to Body Mass Indexing is that it is not always wholly accurate. You may be a lean and muscular person and considering that muscle is much heavier than fat you may be presenting with a high BMI that gives a false indication of your health. However, you may be overweight because of a high body fat percentage and therefore need to lower your BMI because of this. So, my first suggestion to you would be to not focus solely on your BMI but to use it in conjunction with body fat percentage testing and generally how your body looks and feels, particularly in your current clothes.
In an effort to reduce your body fat percentage there are three simple rules that I suggest every person follows:
1. Get at least 30 minutes of movement in every single day. If I were to fully assess a client I would know exactly what types and how much exercise is right, but you are going to have to listen to your body. Stretching exercises, gentle walking, and light resistance exercises are a good start. If you are particularly tired on any given day then doing some tai-chi or yoga would be beneficial in getting you moving but still staying relaxed.
2. Eat only real, natural food. If it comes in a packet or has unpronounceable ingredients then you don't want to put it in your body. When it comes to burning fat you need to cleverly boost your metabolism, and all of these non-foods will take more energy to digest than they actually give you for the processes of metabolism. Stick to vegetables, fruits, meats, fish, eggs, nuts and seeds - real food!
3. Take time out for yourself every day. Most people are far too busy nowadays - rushing from home, to meetings, to their spouse, to children, doing chores and errands - and they sacrifice themselves in the process. In your time to yourself try to find balance between activities that you enjoy that are active - like sports - and activities that are relaxing, and possibly creative - like reading, or drawing or playing an instrument. These things will minimise your stress and therefore your body will burn body fat naturally, as opposed to storing fat as a survival mechanism because your body is perceiving stress as famine.
You asked: I am trying to cut down my weight, am 5-7 and weigh 65 kgs, can you help me find the fastest way to do so?
Brett answered: In my experience the fastest way to cut your weight down is to eliminate all of the foods in your diet that aggravate you. There are tests you can take to find out what foods they are but they are often expensive and not wholly accurate for the costs you incur. I therefore suggest to all my clients that they initially go on an elimination diet for a period of 3 weeks, eliminating all caution foods, and then if they desire to they can add them back in one at a time and notice the effects. After this they can choose to keep the food in their diet if it works well for them, or not. It is not uncommon for some clients to lose huge amounts of weight in the first 3 weeks and then they stick on the diet 90% of the time thereafter.
I suggest to start off with a cave-man/woman diet of meats, fish, eggs, vegetables, occasional fruits, occasional nuts and seeds, and high-quality oils such as olive, coconut, or butter oil.
And in conjunction with this, begin to consider that fast weight loss - while it might be appealing - shouldn't be the end goal. Try to find a way of eating and a healthy lifestyle that is in balance that you can maintain forever more.
You asked: How can I boost my metabolism shocked by bereavement?
Brett answered: Boosting your metabolism can be done in many ways:
1. Always eat breakfast. Try to eat something within an hour of waking up.
2. Eat every 3 hours. You shouldn't be getting hungry within 3 hours, and ideally within 4 hours, however I still suggest to eat after 3 as this will keep your metabolism firing and you won't suffer from low blood sugar incidents.
3. Eat according to your Metabolic Type. One way to know whether you are getting your ratio of proteins-fats-carbs correct is how quickly you do get hungry. If you are getting hungry too soon then you have made a mistake with your ratios. One of the biggest mistakes I see with my clients before Metabolic Typing is that they do not eat enough fat. Each meal ensure that you use either coconut oil, butter or olive oil (high quality / organic oils) and this will satiate you more.
4. Stay hydrated. Drink your bodyweight in kilograms multiplied by 0.033 in litres of water each day.
5. Do resistance exercise to build your lean muscle. No, I'm not talking about body-building, I am just talking about gentle resistance to give you more muscle tone! The more muscle you have on your body, the higher your metabolism will be, and the more fat you will burn on a regular basis, even when you're not exercising, and even when you're sleeping.
These are just a few to get you started. In addition to this, I would also suggest getting to the root cause of the metabolism lowering. If it is an emotional cause, such as bereavement, then it would be wise to work through this with a professional and to come to a more congruent understanding of life and death - an understanding that does not cause you grief.
