Here’s another post, inspired by my current situation. The soccer season starts again in a few weeks, so I will need to be fit by then. However, after the season ended roughly 2 months ago and especially during my holiday, I’ve gained a few pounds in weight. I’ve been trying to get rid of those, but without some insights this is a lot harder than it should be. Thanks to Brad Howard and John Barban (known as fitness instructors and from the program The Adonis Effect) I now have those insights.

When trying to lose weight, only two things are of major influence. The first one is: how much do you eat, e.g. the amount of calories you consume. The second one is how much you exercise/work out, the total amount of calories you burn. Both of those are things you decide about.Whenever you want to lose weight, all you have to do is consume less calories or work out significantly more.

This however doesn’t mean you should go on a crash diet. Your body has some back-up mechanisms, which will eventually make it adapt to the low calorie uptake, resulting in a lower amount of food needed for the same amount of uptake of calories. Your body is simply finding ways to be more effective. Therefore it might help to suddenly eat less. But maintaining an extremely low calorie diet is very hard to achieve and in the end it is counterproductive.

Dividing your meals on a lot of small ones won’t help either. It’s all about the amount you take in per day. If you take more meals, you are more likely to eat more. If there’s anything you want to do, it would be skipping meals. If you do this regularly (and not with high and low peaks) you can lose some weight while maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

While skipping meals, there are a few options. My advice would be to stick to your breakfast (especially when you’re in school, because you’ll need to be fit to learn). The breakfast forms the basis of the day. You’ll stay hungry for the entire day when you don’t eat it (so you eat more on your lunch and diner). This is because you probably didn’t eat for 12-18 hours between diner and the next lunch However, if you take the breakfast, but after that skip the lunch, your meals will be better divided. There’s one thing I need to warn you about though. If you keep on skipping lunch daily, your body will adapt again. So do it moderately and don’t suddenly start on it skipping lunch daily. This will work the first few weeks, but after that you’ll have trouble taking it one step further.

The last thing I want to mention are the drinks you take. If you eat less, you can satisfy your hunger by drinking more. Drinking at least 2 liters of water per day is a healthy standard. You’re body will store less water, so you actually lose weight (though you’ll need to visit the toilet a bit more often in the beginning). Other drinks than water will contain calories most likely. In drinks they easily add up, so therefore sodas, alcoholic drinks and such aren’t good for losing weight.

Next week I’ll try to write an article about the effects of alcohol and coffee on losing weight. I’ll see you soon!