The Slim Blog

Think of a birthday balloon.  When you blow it up it has to stretch to accommodate all the air, but when you deflate it, it never quite returns to it’s original firmness.  Frustratingly, the human skin is much the same.

When you eat more calories than your body burns, the excess is stored as fat.  The majority of those excess calories are stored in the body’s adipose tissue which is found just underneath the skin.  The more you overeat, the more your skin has to stretch to hold this stored fat.   After a large weight loss people are often left with loose skin on the arms, chest, waist and thighs.  Although the skin will firm up with time, for many the damage is permanent.

Here are the main factors that contribute to loose skin after weight loss:

• your age - the older you are, the more your skin loses it’s elasticity, so someone over 40 is more likely to be left with loose skin than someone in their 20s.
• your size - the bigger you are before you lose the weight, the more your skin is stretched, so the more likely you’ll be left with loose skin after weight loss.
• the timescale you held the weight - the longer you held the excess weight, the more you skin will have stretched to hold the excess weight.
• the speed of your weight loss - if you crash diet and lose the weight very quickly, the skin has less time adapt to your shrinking body.
• the number of times you’ve lost weight - if you have yo-yo dieted then your skin will have gone through many cycles of being stretched.

Sadly there are no simple treatments for loose skin.  If you are over 40, have yo-yo dieted for years and now lost a considerable amount of weight, then surgery is going to be your only option.  It’s probably hard to hear that if this applies to you, but at least you won’t waste time and money on creams and other treatments that claim to tighten loose skin.

For those reading this who are thinking about starting their yo-yo dieting career, there are a few things you can do to prevent loose skin:

1) Don’t gain weight in the first place

It sounds obvious, but so many people fall into the trap of thinking “it doesn’t matter if I gain a bit of weight now, I’ll just lose it when I’m ready”.  This way of thinking usually starts when people are gaining a bit of weight in their 20s and early 30s, but often leads to obesity and a lot of loose skin in their 40s and 50s.

2) Don’t crash diet

If you are overweight then you’ll no doubt be tempted by the range of milkshake diets promising rapid weight loss.  Although the weight loss is fast on these 500 calorie diets, they don’t give the skin a chance to tighten up.  If you want to prevent loose skin then aim for a weight loss of 1 - 2lbs per week.

2) Don’t yo-yo diet

Some people fluctuate between their ‘relaxed weight’ and their ‘ideal weight’.  This is fine if you are fluctuating 6 or 7 lbs in the healthy weight range, but for some people the difference can be 2 to 5 stone.  For example, a woman might relax to 14 stone in the winter and diet to be 11 stone in the summer.  This is guaranteed to cause loose skin. 

Excess weight will cause excess loose skin.  The bottom line is that if you want to prevent loose skin you need to find a lifestyle that keeps you in the healthy weight range.  The safest solution is track your weight and manage your nutrition and exercise habits to keep you within 6 or 7lbs of your ideal weight.

Liam

Personal trainer at The Slim Company - personal trainers in hertfordshire

The number you see when you step on your scales is the result of one thing and one thing only - your unique energy balance.  Whenever we talk about diet, nutrition, calories, exercise, fat burning, metabolism and so on, these are all factors that make up our energy balance equation.  If you can understand your energy balance, and how you can influence it, you will become an expert at weight management!

Your body is like a bank account

Think of your bank account.  No I’m not trying to depress you! It’s just that your ”bank balance” makes for a very useful comparison with your “energy balance”.  Your bank account works on a simple equation - money in vs money out, what you earn vs what you spend.  Most people assess their finances on a monthly basis:

• If you earn £2000 and spend £2000, your bank balance remains equal.
• If you earn £2500 and spend £2000, your bank balance increases by £500.
• If you earn £2000 and spend £2500, your bank balance decreases by £500. 

Some days money might come into your account, other days money might be spent from your account, but if you look at your bank balance at the end of the month you get an idea of what’s going on… hopefully without having a nervous breakdown!

Understanding calories

Your body works in the exact same way as a bank account, except the units aren’t money, but calories.  One calorie (kcal) is a unit of energy, in the same way one pound (£) is a unit of currency or one litre (l) is a unit of fluid.  You don’t find calories swimming around in your food!  They aren’t some kind of nasty molecule that make your bum grow bigger!  They are simply a measurement of the energy in the food you eat and burn.

Calories in vs Calories out

The energy balance equation is as follows - calories in vs calories out.  The left side of the equation (calories in) is simply the amount of energy we eat each day, in the form of carbohdydrate, protein and fat.  The right side of the equation (calories out) is simply the amount of energy we burn each day, as a result of our body’s metabolism.  The energy balance equation is usually assessed on a daily basis, rather than a monthly basis:

• If you eat 2000 and burn 2000, your weight will remain equal. 
• If you eat 2500 and burn 2000, your weight will go up by 1lb per week. 
• If you eat 2000 and burn 2500, your weight will go down by 1lb per week. 

Excess calories are stored as fat on your body, causing your weight to go up.  A shortage of calories forces your body to burn off fat, casuing your weight to go down - to understand how calories convert into weight changes read the magic numbers of weight loss.

Your energy balance changes every day!

It is so important to remember that calories in and calories out aren’t constant.  There will be some days when you eat more and some days when you eat less.  Think of those really strict diet days (1000 calories in) compared to those binge days (5000 calories in).  There will be some days when you burn more and some days when you burn less.  Think of those days when you go for it at the gym (3000 calories out) compared to those days when you slob out (1800 calories out).  However, just like your bank account, if you track your weight on a monthly basis you can calculate the exact number of calories your body is burning or storing on average per day.

TAKE NOTE- dieters often look at their weight daily and get upset when it bounces up and down.  These changes are just fluctuations in water levels, and aren’t actually long-term changes in fat weight.  That’s why it is important to track your weight and look at it’s path over longer periods of time.  It would be irrational to check your bank account everyday and start celebrating when money goes in or getting depressed when money goes out!  You assess your bank balance monthly, and you should do the same with your weight.

Liam

Personal trainer at The Slim Company - personal trainers in hertfordshire

So you’ve tried all the low-fat diets, you live by the healthy eating pyramid, and you have a fridge full of low-fat ready meals. So why is it that you just can’t seem to lose any weight?!  Don’t despair.  The truth is that for most people their excess weight isn’t actually from eating too much fat, it’s from eating too much carbohydrate.  Although a high fat diet will cause you to gain weight, the real culprits are bread, pasta, potatoes, sweets and alcohol.

Carbohydrate & Blood Sugar

All carbohydrate is broken down into sugar, which is also known as glucose.  Whether it’s apples, oranges or vegetables, pasta, bread or alcohol, all carbohydrate ends up being released into your blood in the form of blood sugar.  As blood sugar levels rise a hormone called insulin is released which transports the sugar to the muscles and organs to be used as fuel. Now here’s the important bit.  If blood sugar levels rise too high, insulin mops up all the excess blood sugar and converts it into that wobbly stuff that’s been ruining your confidence for the last decade.

When it comes to carbohydrate and fat storage there’s some pretty tough science, but let’s not go complicating things.  Here’s the carbohydrate metabolism equation in a nutshell:

carbohydrate —> blood sugar —> fuel for the muscles/organs
excess blood sugar —> flabby arms / love handles / pot belly

The more sugary the carbohydrate, like sweets or alcohol, the more it floods the blood with sugar and the greater the chance of it being stored as fat - usually in the most unflattering place possible. Even the less sugary carbohydrates, such as rice or pasta, will be stored as fat if you eat too much in one go and flood your blood with sugar.

Glycaemic Index & Glycaemic Load

The chances of the carbohydrate you eat turning to fat depends on if it is high ‘glycaemic index’ or high ‘glycaemic load’.

The faster the carbohydrate breaks down into sugar the higher it is on the ‘glycaemic index’ (GI). The slower the carbohydrate breaks down into sugar the lower it is on the glycaemic index. As you might have guessed, all the foods you love and worship are pretty much at the top of the GI list - think sweets, biscuits and alcohol. All the foods that you need to be pinned down to eat are at the bottom of the GI list - think beans, pulses and oats.

But it’s not just about GI. The larger the portion of carbohydrate you eat in one go, the higher it’s ‘glycaemic load’. For example, some foods that are low GI might actually be eaten in large quantities, such as wholemeal bread or pasta. Even though it is low GI, if you eat a great big load of it on a saturday night, it will still flood your blood with enough sugar to reverse any fat loss you achieved in the week.

The end result…

If you eat high GI and high GL carbohydrates when you are already full then you’ll be flooding your blood with sugar and all the excess will get stored as fat. That low-fat skinny muffin you had with your cereal for breakfast… turned to fat. That low-fat yogurt you had after your sandwich for lunch… turned to fat. That glass of wine with your evening meal… turned to fat. Even that low-fat cereal you saw on the telly and thought it was ok to eat as a late night snack because the woman on the advert looked so skinny… turned to fat!

Liam

Personal trainer at The Slim Company - personal trainers in hertfordshire

Most people understand the rule that if you eat more than you burn you gain weight, if you burn more than you eat you lose weight. This energy balance equation is well researched and well proven, but the diet and slimming industry has done a very good job of over overshadowing it with myths and fads.  This article aims to get back to basics and remind dieters and slimming club members of the magic numbers of weight loss.

•There are 3500 calories in 1lb of fat weight.

This means that you have to eat 3500 more than your body burns to store 1lb of fat weight, or burn 3500 more than you eat to lose 1lb of fat weight. In terms of food, 3500 calories is about 9 king-size mars bars, or 6 bottles of wine, or 4 large pizzas. Yummy! In terms of physical activity, it would take about 4 hours of non-stop running to burn off 1lb of fat, which is like running a marathon. Not so yummy.

Dieters often make the mistake of thinking that if their weight is up by 1lb on the scales, they must have stored 1lb of fat. Slimming clubs don’t teach their members that the weight on the scales is not just showing changes in fat, it’s showing changes in fat and lean tissue, and this lean tissue is mainly made up of water. On average water weight fluctuates by 3 - 4 lbs a day, so if your weight is up 1 or 2lbs in a day, the chances are it’s water retention.

To put it in perspective, an average sized woman who burns 2000 calories a day would have to eat 2000 calories + 3500 excess calories (5500 in total) to store 1lb of fat in a day. That’s not easy, but I’m sure you’ll have great fun giving it a good try!

•Burning 500 calories a day = 1lb of fat loss per week.

Let’s take the average sized woman again. If she were to eat 1500 calories a day and burn 2000, her body would burn off 500 calories of fat a day to make up for the shortage. This 500 calories burned a day over 7 days is 3500 calories over a week, resulting in 1lb of fat loss. Alternatively, if she were to eat 2000 a day and add 500 calories of exercise to her day, she would burn 2500 calories a day, and again the body would be forced to burn off 500 calories a day to make up for the shortage, also resulting in 1lb of fat loss per week.

The optimum rate of fat loss is between half a pound to two pounds per week - which means burning off 250 to 1,000 calories per day.

•100 excess calories a day = 10.4lbs fat gain per year.

Unfortunately for the food lovers out there, the same maths works in the opposite direction. If you overeat just 100 calories a day over 365 days, that’s 36,500 calories stored as fat each year. In weight terms, 36,500 calories is just over 10lbs of fat (36,500 / 3500 = 10.4).

This helps to explain how weight gain can easily go unnoticed, especially if you are weighing yourself every day. That 100 extra calories a day, just 1 cookie, means your fat weight will go up by 0.028lbs per day (10.4 / 365 = 0.028). Not even the best quality bathroom scales would notice such tiny changes in weight each day. Even if you weighed yourself monthly, your weight would only go up 0.86lbs (10.4 / 12 = 0.86), which is impossible to notice!

The good news is that you can make the energy balance equation work for you.  If you add just 100 calories of exercise to your day and cut out that daily cookie, you’ll be 10.4lbs lighter every year!

Liam

Personal trainer at The Slim Company - personal trainers in hertfordshire

Picture the scene.  It’s time to step on the bathroom scales to see if the first week of your new diet has paid off.  Surely you’ve lost half a stone this week, or at the worst about 4lbs.  You take a long, deep breath… one foot on… the other foot on… and the result… half a pound!! Half a bleeding pound?! After a few re-weighs and a tactical wee your weight still hasn’t budged! 

“That’s it I’m giving up!” 

You’ve probably heard experts say that hair loss is one of the side effects of crash dieting… what they forget to mention is that it’s usually because it’s been pulled out when your scales don’t tell you what you want to see!  Fear not dear slimmer.  These 3 golden rules of weight loss will not only save you from pulling your hair out, but will help to keep you motivated long enough to reach your weight loss target.

1) Manage your weight loss expectations.

Most people give up at slimming clubs because they don’t see weight loss results fast enough.  You may have seen people lose 4lbs a week on celebrity fit club or in your glossy magazine, but they will have been on a crash diet and done 4 to 5 hours exercise a day… not exactly realistic! If you’ve got a job, a family and a social life, then the most you should expect to lose is about 1 to 2lbs per week, or even less if you’re already very slim. 

2) Only weigh yourself once a week.

Our weight naturally fluctuates 3 - 4lbs a day, due to water levels, so weighing yourself daily will only frustrate you.  Even if you weigh yourself weekly, prepare yourself for weight fluctations and don’t give up if you gain a bit one week.  As a realistic target aim to lose 4lbs every 4 weeks, which is 1lb per week on average.  It may not seem like much but it actually means you’re burning off 500 calories a day, the ideal amount for long-term weight loss.

3) Track your weight loss over time.

We know that weight can bounce up and down week by week, but if you look at your weight on a graph you can see a trend over time.  This trend not only gives you a visual representation of your progress, but also tells you how many calories you’re burning each day.  This is far more motivating that just looking at weight changes on a week by week basis.  Click here to request a free weight tracker from The Slim Company.

Try to remember that the winners in the weight loss game aren’t the people who crash diet, lose 7lbs a week over two weeks, give up and put it all back on again. It’s the people who lose on average 1lb a week over several weeks and keep it off. 

Liam

Personal trainer at The Slim Company - personal trainers in hertfordshire

1) Forget fat… focus on your carbohydrate intake.

So many dieters make the mistake of following a rigidly low-fat diet, but don’t realise that the underlying cause of their weight gain is eating too much carbohydrate - usually in the form of chocolate, bread and alcohol. Sounds familiar doesn’t it?! The real cause of weight gain is raised levels of insulin - a hormone that promotes fat storage and blocks the hormones that trigger fat burning. Your Insulin levels rise the more you eat carbohydrate, so the only way to achieve lower insulin levels is to stop focusing on low-fat, fat-free, or 10% fat foods and start watching your carbohydrate intake.

2) Be realistic about your carbohydrate intake.

As a rule, the more you reduce your carbohydrate intake the faster you’ll lose weight, even with a high fat diet. But before you reach for your Atkins cookbook try to keep in mind that all very low-carb diets (a) ruin your social life, and (b) always result in rebound weight gain. If you’ve got a wedding or a holiday in a month then banishing carbohydrate is great for a quick fix, but be prepared to see your weight fly back on… and more! If you’re looking to lose weight long term then the only sustainable approach is to set goals to improve the quality, quantity and timing of your carbohydrate intake.

3) QUALITY - eat less of the junk food.

When you eat poor quality, refined carbohydrate your blood gets flooded with sugar leading to huge insulin spikes and increased fat storage. The worst offenders are sweets, crisps, biscuits, chocolate, cakes, white bread/pasta/rice, and frustratingly… alcohol! Cutting out all of these foods would make life miserable, so set yourself some realistic nutrition goals. How about keeping your alcohol intake to the weekend? Or only treat yourself to chocolate on a Sunday? Or cut down to one bag of crisps a day instead of three! Whatever your goal, make it realistic, sustainable and reward yourself for sticking at it!

4) QUANTITY - watch your portion sizes.

Portion control is an absolute must for keeping your blood sugar levels down, especially at dinner time when there’s less chance of it being burned off. Low-fat spaghetti bolognese, reduced fat shepherd’s pie, 10% fat sausages and mash… mountains of pasta and potatoes are an insulin nightmare just waiting to happen! Take your Friday night curry with rice, naan bread, a potato dish, a pudding and the usual booze… easily 2000 calories of insulin surging carbohydrate in one meal! Be realistic and have the Friday night curry, but get into the habit of having just two types of carbohydrate, not five!

5) TIMING - eat less and less as the day goes on.

You should breakfast like a king, lunch like a lord, dine like a pauper. The ideal timing of carbohydrate intake is to have a high-carb breakfast, a moderate carb lunch, but a low-carb dinner. Loading your carbohydrate intake before 3pm is important because you need fuel in the morning and daytime, but by 6pm it’s like putting petrol into a car that’s already got a full tank. If you get your carbohydrate balance right you should wake up feeling ravenous, your appetite should lessen as the day goes on and you should head to bed on an empty stomach - forcing your body to burn fat as you sleep.

Liam

Personal trainer at The Slim Company - personal trainers in hertfordshire

Most people think they have a slow one.  We all wish ours was a lot faster.  The slimming industry has made a fortune selling pills that supposedly boost it… Even my local curry house is claiming that eating spicy food will make it sky rocket! 

But what exactly is ‘metabolism’?  Why is it important? And how can it help us in our quest to fit back into our favourite jeans? 

Your body is a made up of trillions of cells.  Within each of those cells are chemical reactions that burn up the calories in the food you eat.  The name given to all of these calorie burning reactions is ‘metabolism’, and the speed at which this process happens is called your ‘metabolic rate’.  The faster a person’s metabolic rate, the more calories they burn each day.

Try to think of your metabolism like an engine burning up the fuel you consume.  Put in more fuel than your metabolism can burn, and the excess gets stored as fat.  Put in less fuel than your metabolism burns and you will burn off your fat stores to make up for the shortage.  Long term fat loss only occurs when you eat less calories than your metabolism burns.

So if your metabolism is like an engine, how much fuel do you need each day to run it? The government recommends 2000 calories a day for women and 2500 for men, but this is guesswork.  To find the real figure we need to look at the three factors that make up your metabolism -  Resting metabolism, Movement and Digestion. 

• Resting metabolism is the amount of calories your body burns at rest.  It is the energy required to sustain your organs and muscle tissue, even while you are sleeping.  The bigger you are, and the more active muscle you have, the more calories your body burns at rest.  Someone with lots of muscle will have a faster resting metabolism than a skinny person.
• Movement metabolism is the amount of calories your muscles burn when they are working, that is if they are working at all!  The more you move the more calories your body burns, so even chewing gum or fidgeting can increase the amount of calories you burn each day.  Someone who exercises daily will have a faster movement metabolism than someone who is sedentary.
• Digestion metabolism is the amount of calories it takes for the food you eat to be broken down and pushed from your mouth to your backside.  High protein, unrefined foods require more energy to digest than high sugar, refined carbs.  Someone who eats healthy food little and often will have a faster digestion metabolism than someone who binges on junk food.

The internet is swamped with slimming and weight loss pills that claim to speed up metabolism.  I’ll make this simple.  There are only three ways to speed up your metabolism - increase your resting metabolism, increase your movement metabolism, or increase your digestion metabolism.  If you want a faster metabolic rate, you have to:

• build more muscle to increase your resting metabolism
• be more active and exercise more to increase your movement metabolism
• eat better quality, higher protein meals to increase your digestion metabolism

No slimming or diet pills can do this for you, so it’s time to put an end to that little fantasy!  To boost your metabolism you have to get to a local gym, hire a personal trainer, and improve the quality, quantity and timing of your nutrition.

Liam

Personal trainer at The Slim Company - personal trainers in hertfordshire

I recently had my annual physical examination, which I get once every seven years, and when the nurse weighed me, I was shocked to discover how much stronger earth’s gravitational pull has become since 1990.  - Dave Barry

Most people know what they weigh.  Some have an idea of what they want to weigh.  Few really know what they should weigh.

Your beloved scales tell you very little about your health.  Scientists have found that it is not our ‘total weight’, but the amount of fat we have in our bodies which tells us how healthy or unhealthy we are.  There are two ways of working out our ‘fatness’ or ‘thinness’ - BMI (Body Mass Index) and Bodyfat %. 

Your BMI is your weight in kilograms divided by your height in metres squared.  For example, a 9 stone woman who is 5′ 5″ has a BMI of 20.5.  On the BMI scale, 

• under 18 is underweight
• 18 - 25 is a healthy weight
• 25 - 30 is overweight
• over 30 is obese
• over 40 is morbidly obese

The drawback to BMI is that it is guessing your level of fatness - from your height and your weight - and it can therefore give a misleading result.  For example, if you naturally have a large frame or if you have a lot of muscle due to high activity levels, you can come up overweight or obese on the BMI scale, when actually you have a healthy fat weight.

Your Bodyfat % is the percentage of your total weight that is made up of fat.  If you are 50% bodyfat then half of your total weight is fat, 33% = a third, 25% = a quarter…

Bodyfat % is a far more accurate measure than BMI, because rather than guessing, it actually tells you how much of your total weight is fat.  It also takes into account your age and, most importantly, your sex (as women naturally have more bodyfat than men).

If you are concerned about your weight then the best thing to do is get your Bodyfat % tested.  It is far more accurate, and it takes into account differences in fat and muscle weight, rather than just your total weight.  Most personal trainers offer bodyfat testing as part of their service, so why not book a session to find out what you should really weigh?

Liam

Personal trainer at The Slim Company - personal trainers in hertfordshire

Yes I know I had five skinny muffins… but the people who make them used the latest ‘calorie compression techniques’ so I won’t gain an ounce! - anonymous

I work with a lot of veteran dieters who have been through the slimming clubs and back again more times than they can remember.  They all share the same confusion as to how they’ve gained weight, but when I look at their nutrition there is no mystery.  Usually it is filled with so-called ‘diet and slimming foods’ - low fat biscuits, low calorie desserts, healthy option cereals and bars, diet ready meals and skinny muffins!

Slimming club members have been taught to follow a low-fat diet.  What they’re not told is that these high carbohydrate diet foods are often the underlying cause of their weight gain.

I noticed a certain healthy option yogurt that kept popping up in the nutrition diary of one of my new clients.  She showed me the yogurt and to be fair the label looked great! 

• Low in fat
• Full of calcium to help stengthen your bones
• Contains friendly bacteria to aid digestion

…all with big tick symbols just to remind you that you’re making the right choice!  Sadly for her, what they forgot to mention is the incredibly inhospitable, unfriendly, chin multiplying calories it contains - just over 600, which is about the same as a Big-Mac!

Some of the most well advertised diet foods do actually contain a large number of calories, even the ones that say ‘only 199 calories per pack’.  That’s like saying, ‘you’ll only have to run for 20 minutes to burn this off!’.  Doesn’t sound quite so appealing though does it?!

So next time you see a diet or weight loss food advertised on TV keep in mind -

• Diet foods are often full of poor quality carbohydrate.
• Slimming desserts are full of chemicals and sugar.
• Low in fat doesn’t mean low in calories.

My advice? Learn how to read the nutrition info (conveniently for the food manufacturers this is tucked away on the back) and ignore all the fibs plastered on the front!

Liam

Personal trainer at The Slim Company - personal trainers in hertfordshire

I’ve often thought about where all the fat goes when I diet.  One thing is for sure…. it doesn’t go far cos it keeps finding me whenever I lose it! I think it hides around the corner and jumps back on board when i’m not concentrating! - anonymous

That lady has neatly summed up the problem faced by all serial dieters - keeping the weight off.  Slimming clubs all over the world have made their fortunes from the weight rebound effect.  Start a diet… lose the weight… give up the diet… regain the weight…. and so on.  Sounds familiar doesn’t it?!

I remember one of my first ever clients telling me how, despite her being 16 stone, she was a ‘weight loss expert’.  True, she had been slimmer of the year.  Yes, she knew every diet inside out.  And fair enough, she had lost an incredible amount of weight at slimming clubs over the years - in total over 30 stone.  But for all her weight loss and diet expertise, she continually struggled to keep the weight off. 

Dieters repeatedly approach weight loss like the washing up.  The more it piles up, the less they want to deal with it.  When it does pile up too high they ignore it.  And when enough is enough they’ll find a massive burst of motivation, clean it all up, wipe their brow when the job’s done… and then sit back and let it pile up all over again! 

So what’s the big secret? How is it that some people lose the weight and keep it off while others see their weight rebound in a matter of weeks?  The secret is… sustainability.  Whatever you do to lose the weight, you have to sustain to keep the weight off.

If you’ve got 7lbs to lose for a holiday, then diet.  But diet in the knowledge it’ll all be back by the flight home!  If you’re looking to achieve a healthy weight long-term, dieting is not an option.  You have to change you’re nutritional habits so that you always eat the right amount for your metabolism.  There is no other way to sustain your weight loss.

So if you’re thinking about starting a diet or joining a slimming club, just remember one thing.  If you can’t eat like that for life, then you won’t keep the weight off for life.

Liam

Personal trainer at The Slim Company - personal trainers in hertfordshire