Having trouble losing weight and don’t know why?

Whether you consider your self to have a healthy or unhealthy diet
or follow a specific diet, you need to use more calories than you
consume in order to lose weight.

I don’t eat much and I still gain weight

I eat less than 1200 calories a day and I put on weight, my
metabolism is slow!

These are typical replies from people who try to lose weight and
can’t. They assume it’s because their bodies are not working
properly or their metabolism is slow.
But the hard truth is, they are underreporting their caloric intake.

A study proved this by testing their metabolisms and their
metabolism were normal, they predicted them pretty much spot on
from scientific calculations.
The majority of the subjects of this study reported to have dieted
for years and it didn’t work no matter how little they eat.
So, what did the study find?
The study showed that on average the subjects underestimated
their caloric intake by 1048 calories!
So you think you’re eating 1200 but you’ve been eating 2200. No
wonder people struggle to lose weight.

This is the same for a lot of people, including myself.
We drastically under-estimate the amount of calories we
consume.
We think some nuts, a piece of fruit, and one biscuit isn’t much but
it adds up to a lot.
I decided to track my calories and macronutrients and found that I
wasn’t eating enough protein or carbs but a lot of fats, which came
mainly from nutritious foods such as nuts, seeds, avocados and
meat. The problem is that I did not know exactly how many
calories these foods contained.
If you want to take control of your weight I would suggest tracking
what you are eating so you can make changes accordingly to what
you want to achieve with your body.

So my tips for you to follow in order to know exactly what you are
consuming are as follows:

1 Download an app called MyFitnessPal.
This is a great app, you can scan barcodes of foods and add
them to your daily list of foods you’ve eaten. It has every
food you can think of from the supermarkets to McDs to
home-cooked foods.
2 You can also follow how much protein, carbs and fats you are
eating. Once you know this you can tell the app how much of
each you should be eating to track then getting it right for
you body.
3 Write down how many calories you think you eat usually per day
4 Eat as you normally would but put it all in the app and track it
5 Do this for 3 days.

I promise you, you will be shocked at how much you actually
consume.
Important point: This is not say that some people don’t have
metabolic issues and other health issues that do impact their
weight-loss, this does happen. But, it’s a small % of the population
and the majority of us need to understand we are in the middle and
not at the extremes.

Cheers for now

Bianca Downey