With February, advertising for various slimming products is picking up again, because anyone who wants to show off their dream body in the summer should start making the necessary preparations now.
Various teas, exotic fruits, powders, shakes, tablets and pills are supposed to help with weight loss and enable everyone to get their dream figure in no time at all, without any major problems. Unfortunately, however, the claims made in the advertisements prove to be inaccurate, because you can only lose weight if you stick to a certain principle. You can take as many pills and powders as you like that are supposed to melt fat in a targeted manner; if you ignore the following rule, you will not be able to lose a single gram.
The principle of weight loss
Weight loss can be reduced to a single, very simple rule, no matter what the advertising for various weight loss aids wants to make you believe.
This rule states: To be able to lose weight, you must consume less energy (measured in kcal or kj) than your body requires.
If you stick to this, the body has to provide the missing energy itself, and this is stored in the form of fat. If the body falls back on its reserves, it converts fat into energy and, wonder of wonders, you will lose weight as a result. Alternatively, however, it also falls back on muscles, from which energy can be obtained faster than from fat, which is why it is always recommended to exercise during a diet—i.e., when you consume fewer kilocalories through food than the body needs—as this protects your muscles from breaking down.
Conversely, if you consume more calories than the body needs, this energy is stored as fat and you gain weight.
Diet and exercise
To be able to lose weight, you must stay below the so-called total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) of the body. This is the value of energy that the body needs on a normal day, including all activities. Another value is the so-called basal metabolic rate (BMR), which indicates how much energy the body needs without any activities, virtually just to maintain all vital functions. But that is just by the way.
To stay below the total daily energy expenditure, there are two possibilities:
Either you decide to reduce your calorie intake, i.e., you go on a diet, or you simply increase your total daily energy expenditure through exercise so that it is higher than the value of the energy supplied by food. You will be able to lose weight with both variants; it purely depends on which one is easier for the person wanting to lose weight to implement.
It is, of course, optimal to combine these two possibilities. As mentioned, exercise can serve as muscle protection during a diet, and a diet in turn shortens the time you have to invest in exercise, as this is quite considerable. To compensate for a Snickers chocolate bar, for example, you would have to jog 3.56 km.
Recommendation for diet structure
To lose weight healthily, you should stay about 300 to 500 kilocalories below your total daily energy expenditure every day. In this way, you lose about 2 kilograms per month. Depending on the degree of overweight, you can also reduce the calorie deficit. For severely overweight people, it makes sense to calculate the total daily energy expenditure for the target weight and not for the status quo, and then to view this as the mark that should not be exceeded.
A diet usually means sacrifice, even if it is preferably a "change in diet." So that you have to fight hunger less and also keep the dreaded cravings in check, it has become established to prefer 6 small meals instead of 3 large ones. It is best to follow a plan and consume 300 kilocalories (depending on height and weight) every 2 hours. If you start at 8 a.m. and have your last meal at 6 p.m., you will usually make it through the day without any major problems!
