Lose weight and keep it off for good with this advice
Start any weight-loss regime and the first few pounds seem to slip off effortlessly, boosting your confidence and resolve to stick to your new healthy habits. Fast-forward towards your ‘goal weight’ and the scales stop budging – why are those last pounds so hard to shift?!
Dr. Sally Norton, weight management expert at Spire The Glen Hospital Bristol and founder of Vavista.com, explains the science behind why the last stone is the toughest to shift and how to lose those last pounds… for good.
The first thing to say is don’t panic! It is the same for everyone. The last bit of weight is always the hardest to lose – you are burning far fewer calories when you have lost weight. 60-75% of the calories you burn are from just functioning, not from exercise, and you use a lot less when you weigh less.
Also, it takes less energy to move your body around if you are two stone lighter – just imagine carrying a backpack weighing two stone around with you all day. You would feel exhausted and would expect to have used up a lot of calories. That is what you may have been doing until now and you no longer burn that amount of extra energy every day.
Finally, your body tries to stop you losing weight by changing the hormone levels in your blood to encourage you to eat more and exercise less - unfair or what?! However, it isn’t so much of an issue when you are losing weight slowly than if you succumb to the dreaded crash-diet, but even so, your body needs time to adjust.
So, what can you do to carry on losing weight slowly and healthily?
The good news is that if you have been doing more and more exercise alongside cutting back on unhealthy, processed high-sugar foods, you are probably continuing to lose fat even if you don’t notice the reading on the scales changing, because muscle weighs more than fat (which is why I always recommend that you don’t focus on the weighing scales too much!).
I bet you are more toned and in much better shape – which is more important than just being ‘lighter’. Make sure you check your waist and hip measurements regularly – they are a better reflection of your overall health. And make sure your weight loss goal is realistic – if you have more muscle, you should, perhaps, be aiming for a higher weight. Don’t forget, this is about a sustainable, happy and healthy weight – not magazine-like, air-brushed ‘perfection’!
Make sure you aren’t slipping back into bad habits – are you drinking more calories than you realise? Is your sugar intake creeping up? Are you falling prey to too many processed foods? Perhaps it’s time to ‘up the ante’ with your exercise?
If you are doing all of the above then just sit tight. Weight plateaus are completely normal. Keep exercising and eating healthily and it WILL come off.
The more muscle you build up, the more calories you will burn, and also exercising will increase ‘brown fat’, which will burn more calories, too. So, you are building up your calorie-burning capabilities in preparation for the moment when your body is ready to let a bit more of its precious fat reserves go.
Be patient – once your body is confident that you will keep feeding it proper food, and not subject it to any more low-calorie chemical shakes or unbalanced faddy diets, it will start releasing those fat stores again.
Tagged in Diet fat weight Weight loss