Written by tigs01 on 21/01/2011 09:20
I've noticed that a fair few people are struggling to eat all of their daily points. I'm a little surprised, to be honest, that it's people who are on 29-32 daily PPs who are struggling!
My first thought is that maybe you're eating too restricted a diet? Remember, this is not a starvation diet. You don't have to live on salad and fruit, you are allowed to eat real food as well. You should try to have two helpings of healthy oils a day, be that low fat spread or a couple of teaspoons of olive oil or some other oil such as rapeseed, sunflower or sesame. Don't forget, too, that you should be including two servings of dairy a day, which should account for four or five points. Half a pint of skimmed milk is 2PPs, most low fat or fat free yoghurts come out at 2 to 3PPs. These are things that you really do need to be including for good health.
The aim of the game is to be learning healthy habits that you can rely on long term to get to goal and keep the weight off. You won't get there faster by eating less, and cutting back on important food groups is not a sensible way to reduce weight. You need fat in your diet for digestion, to get the fat soluble vitamins A, D and E in to your body and to help provide energy. Some fat is an absolute essential to be healthy. If you're female, you do need your dairy for calcium. Osteoporosis is extremely unpleasant, and you only build up bone density into your mid-thirties, so don't skimp on dairy produce.
Where fruit and vegetables are concerned, you should think of them as an addition to the rest of your food. Most are zero points, so concentrate on the building blocks of a meal, the foundations if you will. That means a good mix of protein and carbohydrate. Protein will keep you fuller for longer, as will whole grain carbohydrates. You can still eat carbohydrates on ProPoints, but you shouldn't fill up on them too much.
By all means have a salad with your lunch and/or dinner. Just don't eat salad to the exclusion of protein and carbohydrate. You'll be hungry again in half an hour and you won't be taking in much-needed energy to burn fat.
If you are exercising, remember that muscle retains water. Glucose is stored in the muscles in the form of glycogen, to be broken down for energy when you exercise. The bigger the muscle, the bigger the store. You need water to store glycogen. This is one reason that muscle weighs more than fat. So, lots of unaccustomed exercise will often lead to a temporary weight gain. The payoff is that lean muscle mass burns energy more efficiently than fat, and so your metabolism should increase. Give it four to six weeks and the scales will plummet. Keep measuring yourself weekly and you will see your measurements going down rapidly; the scales will likely lag behind but will catch up eventually.
If you are doing a lot of exercise and racking up twenty or thirty activity points a week or more, eat some of them. You should certainly be eating all of your weekly 49 points if you are that active. You don't lose faster by eating less and exercising more; the law of diminishing return applies here. Exercise lots + eat too little = no weight loss or even a gain. Remember, if you do not take on sufficient fuel to keep your body working - Basal Metabolic Rate - your body will break down muscle to survive. Not fat - muscle. Your heart is a muscle.
Check your BMR. I will lose weight at 1,780 calories a day if I do no exercise at all. The formula is a little complex. http://www.shapefit.com/basal-metabolic-rate.html
Check yours. You can add in a multiplier based on your weekly activity level. See how many calories you need just to keep your body functioning. Remember a ProPoint is roughly equal to 40 calories. All my dailies plus seven weeklies gives me 1,680 cals/day. Exercise 3-4 times a week, I need 2,759 cals.day to maintain my current weight! That should give me a big enough deficit to lose two pounds a week.
My first thought is that maybe you're eating too restricted a diet? Remember, this is not a starvation diet. You don't have to live on salad and fruit, you are allowed to eat real food as well. You should try to have two helpings of healthy oils a day, be that low fat spread or a couple of teaspoons of olive oil or some other oil such as rapeseed, sunflower or sesame. Don't forget, too, that you should be including two servings of dairy a day, which should account for four or five points. Half a pint of skimmed milk is 2PPs, most low fat or fat free yoghurts come out at 2 to 3PPs. These are things that you really do need to be including for good health.
The aim of the game is to be learning healthy habits that you can rely on long term to get to goal and keep the weight off. You won't get there faster by eating less, and cutting back on important food groups is not a sensible way to reduce weight. You need fat in your diet for digestion, to get the fat soluble vitamins A, D and E in to your body and to help provide energy. Some fat is an absolute essential to be healthy. If you're female, you do need your dairy for calcium. Osteoporosis is extremely unpleasant, and you only build up bone density into your mid-thirties, so don't skimp on dairy produce.
Where fruit and vegetables are concerned, you should think of them as an addition to the rest of your food. Most are zero points, so concentrate on the building blocks of a meal, the foundations if you will. That means a good mix of protein and carbohydrate. Protein will keep you fuller for longer, as will whole grain carbohydrates. You can still eat carbohydrates on ProPoints, but you shouldn't fill up on them too much.
By all means have a salad with your lunch and/or dinner. Just don't eat salad to the exclusion of protein and carbohydrate. You'll be hungry again in half an hour and you won't be taking in much-needed energy to burn fat.
If you are exercising, remember that muscle retains water. Glucose is stored in the muscles in the form of glycogen, to be broken down for energy when you exercise. The bigger the muscle, the bigger the store. You need water to store glycogen. This is one reason that muscle weighs more than fat. So, lots of unaccustomed exercise will often lead to a temporary weight gain. The payoff is that lean muscle mass burns energy more efficiently than fat, and so your metabolism should increase. Give it four to six weeks and the scales will plummet. Keep measuring yourself weekly and you will see your measurements going down rapidly; the scales will likely lag behind but will catch up eventually.
If you are doing a lot of exercise and racking up twenty or thirty activity points a week or more, eat some of them. You should certainly be eating all of your weekly 49 points if you are that active. You don't lose faster by eating less and exercising more; the law of diminishing return applies here. Exercise lots + eat too little = no weight loss or even a gain. Remember, if you do not take on sufficient fuel to keep your body working - Basal Metabolic Rate - your body will break down muscle to survive. Not fat - muscle. Your heart is a muscle.
Check your BMR. I will lose weight at 1,780 calories a day if I do no exercise at all. The formula is a little complex. http://www.shapefit.com/basal-metabolic-rate.html
Check yours. You can add in a multiplier based on your weekly activity level. See how many calories you need just to keep your body functioning. Remember a ProPoint is roughly equal to 40 calories. All my dailies plus seven weeklies gives me 1,680 cals/day. Exercise 3-4 times a week, I need 2,759 cals.day to maintain my current weight! That should give me a big enough deficit to lose two pounds a week.
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