Let’s dive a little deeper into energy balance.
There’s a lot more to energy balance than a change in body weight but seeing as though that’s the main focus atm, that’s what we’ll be looking at.
While a negative energy balance is vital for weight loss, it can suck in some ways. It can make you feel hungry, agitated (basically ‘hangry’) and even cause slight sleep problems.
Being on both sides can cause the body to get out of, well, balance.
Accomplishing a negative energy balance can be done in different ways.
Increasing the amount of weekly physical activity you do is one of the best options.
Can calorie counting be the solution though? Probably not!
Many feel that if they just can add up calorie totals for the day, their energy imbalance problems will be solved.
So, what should we focus on?
How about considering ingredients rather than nutrition fact labels?
The nutrition facts label is pretty worthless until we know what we’re eating. 100 calories isn’t cool when it’s Oreos. But if monitoring is your thing, then monitor food quality more that quantity.
Here are some tips on creating a negative energy balance to lose weight in a healthy way
- Exercise at least 5 hours a week with proper nutrition (don’t starve yourself!)
- Try to maximize this by doing high intensity workouts
- Mix up your exercise program so the body doesn’t plateau
- Boost non-exercise physical activity (i.e. Take the stairs)
- Increase unprocessed foods (a whole food diet is always best)
- Eat lean protein regularly throughout the day
- Eat vegetables and/or fruit at regular intervals (watch your sugar intake if you’re wanting to lose weight though, a couple bit of fruit per day won’t hurt)
- Eat or supplement omega-3 fats
- Incorporate multiple exercise modes
- Sleep 7-9 hours each night
- Pleeease don’t go on extreme diets and risk long-term effects it might have on your body
- Stay consistent with habits
- Ignore food advertising
- And also enjoy “life” outside of exercise and nutrition! (even though that can be fun too 😉
As this is our 10th week together (woop woop! Reached double digits #relationshipgoals), I’d love to know how you’re going with all this! Hit reply and tell me about your journey so far! If any of this has helped, if you’ve seen results already or ran into some obstacles. Are there other topics you want me to cover in future newsletters? I’m here FOR YOU! So let’s chat so I can help you achieve your goals 🙂