Losing Weight – Part 1
People start running for all sorts of reasons but the reason I hear most is to lose weight.
I must admit when I started running this was the reason. To start with I hated it, but as the weeks went by and the weight came off I gradually fell in love with running 🙂 as well as starting to run I also started changing what I ate and over the years with my training as a coach I have learnt quite a bit about nutrition and weight loss !
So, over the next few weeks I will be posting a series of blog posts about weight loss. This isn’t just the short term loss but keeping your weight where it should be for the years to come. I think it is fair to say that over the last 20 odd years I have tried every diet going. Yes, I have always lost the weight…. But it has always returned and then some ! But, since I have been running and changed what I eat I have successfully lost over 3 stone and not put any of it back on 🙂
The first thing to do is to understand what you need to do and a few basic facts.
We all need a certain number of calories each day and this varies per person. It will depend on how much you exercise, your metabolism, your body makeup ( fat/muscle ratio) and your existing weight. For some people this can also be influenced by medication but this is only a small minority of people. If you consume more calories than your body needs then they are stored as fat. This is how we all put on weight, it really is that simple. The difficult thing is working out how many calories we need, how many we are actually consuming and how to change our eating habits.
The other thing you will need to do is to change your eating habits permanently….. It really is no good going on a “diet” and then reverting to your old eating patterns, the weight will go back on again.
You have to take responsibility for your own weight. At the end of the day we are not children, we are all responsible for what we eat and drink, until you can accept this responsibility then it is very difficult to make any lasting changes.
To lose 1lb in weight you need to consume 3,500 calories less than you need. Running takes approx 100 calories per mile, so to lose 1lb purely by running you would need to run 35 miles and NOT EAT ANY EXTRA. Now this is one important point… It is very easy to go for a run, come home and then have that extra something because you have been for a run ! It is easy to end up eating more calories than you have just burned through exercise !
In the next post I will be looking at working out how many calories you actually need each day…
