We talked a lot in class about foods that are good for you and that could help you lose weight, but one could still eat burgers, pizza, french fries etc. and still lose weight. Sound to good to be true? Well, in the grand scheme of things, your body doesn't say, "oh, that's pizza....it must be bad for me." What your body really says is, this meal has this many grams of fats, this many grams of carbs and this many grams of protein. These three things collectively are called macronutrients, or macros for short.
Everyone has a base caloric intake, the amount of food you take to maintain your current body weight. Now, if your goal is to gain weight all one simply has to do is to be in a caloric surplus. Same thing applies to someone who wants to lose weight but instead of being in a surplus they need to be in a caloric deficit. So, say someone's caloric baseline was 2000 calories, that means as long as this person eats 2000 calories, no matter where these calories come from, this individual will remain at the same body weight. Of course, if you filled these 2000 calories up with McNuggets you would be hungrier through out the day and would not be getting in your micronutrients, but you would stay at the same body weight none the less.
The message behind this post is don't be fooled into thinking you can't eat certain foods to look a certain way. As long as you don't over indulge, exercise regularly and eat a somewhat healthy diet, any fitness goal is possible.
This is a link to this dieting principle, it's called If it Fits Your Macros (IIFYM):
http://iifym.com/introduction-to-iifym/
This is a free calorie counter, which also has a mobile app:
http://www.myfitnesspal.com
This is really interesting and I wish that more people knew this. The hardest part about trying to lose weight is not wanting to give up foods that you normally eat, like pizza. But this shows that you really don't have to stop eating pizza or other "unhealthy" foods. Good to know.
ReplyDeleteInteresting! My roommate is trying to lose weight, she eats bland meals all the time like dry lettuce and chicken with some pepper for flavor >_< I should tell her this.
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