Summer is only two months away - time to take care of yourself! But you need to get in shape wisely. With an expert, we will find out how many kilos you can lose in a month, why extreme diets are harmful and how to get rid of the feeling of hunger by changing your diet.
We will tell you the basic rules that will help you get rid of excess weight.
Basic rules for safe weight loss
Everyone dreams of a "beach figure" and it is quite possible to sculpt it, even if you have dozens of extra pounds. But this is not something quick. Why won't it be possible to lose more than 8 kg healthily next summer? What health problems can be caused by extreme types of diets? And how, in the end, do you lose weight correctly? All these important questions are answered by nutritionist and gastroenterologist Svetlana Kovaleva.
"If we talk about proper weight loss, you need to prepare immediately so that it is not quick, " our interlocutor noted. — Because the body has been accumulating certain components for a long time, and to reset them also takes enough time. The speed of metabolic processes in people does not increase markedly.
The doctor's main recommendations concern the main components of any diet: calorie content and the ratio of proteins, fats and carbohydrates.
Calorie issue
— The diet should not be too low in calories. Sometimes people begin to not just introduce fasting days into their diet, but practically start fasting. This is incorrect, the body will not perceive this as a physiologically correct diet, it will only become stressed and will not understand what to do in this situation. Therefore, the reduction in food volume must be gentle", stated the nutritionist.
Separately, it should be said about the calorie content of each meal.
- If it turns out that you can't eat breakfast, you skipped lunch, then the entire amount of calories should not be lost before bed. Because we have circadian rhythms of the body, and at night the body prepares for sleep, and not for processing incoming calories.
Proteins, fats and carbohydrates
However, thoughtlessly reducing calories, even within normal limits, can be harmful to health if you do not take into account the amount of proteins, fats and carbohydrates in the diet. How it should be?
Proteins: counting correctly
Most people, when losing weight, need to consume the amount of protein within the normal range or a little higher, the doctor noted. But how to calculate this? It's actually very simple:
— Normally at the beginning, depending on the level of excess weight, protein is considered to be 1 to 1. 5 grams per kilogram. This means pure protein. That is, let's say a person weighs 90 kg.
This means that he should not eat 90 grams of chicken, but should count how many poultry, fish and meat he needs to provide him with the necessary amount of protein. We have many calculators for this on the Internet.
In this case, immediately the chicken will be 450 grams, plus other products also contain protein, so here you can calculate in detail depending on what the person eats in general.
Fats: healthy and not so good
"Excessive fats, without a doubt, should not be in the diet", observed the nutritionist. - They are supplied in large quantities only in certain diet options. When we touch on the issue of fats, their qualitative characteristics are important. You can use vegetable oils or eat plenty of beef, from which we get the protein, but also eat a lot of fat along the way. Although beef is not the worst option. Often there is pork.
Or you can use cold-pressed vegetable oils, with cake, with bitters. All beneficial substances are preserved there, and these oils are exchanged in a completely different way, not like butter and some dairy products, for example cheeses, where there is more fat or oil.
Carbohydrates: changing the simple to the complex
— Most of the time, diets are based on reducing the amount of carbohydrates. But a more correct approach is to simply qualitatively change its structure.
First of all, it is necessary to reduce simple sugars, or so-called added sugars, as much as possible: sugar itself, cakes, ice cream and other confectionery products that are dear to us, noted Svetlana Kovaleva. Anything made with flour, soft wheat pasta, refined rice and other simple carbohydrates should be eliminated from your diet. What to replace them with?
— They are more complete cereals that need to be cooked for a long time. Even oatmeal can be cooked in five minutes or much longer. Furthermore, in side dishes where carbohydrates will predominate, we can also add proteins - we are talking about legumes.
Simplicity and regularity
Correctly calculating the calorie content and the ratio of proteins, fats and carbohydrates in dietary nutrition will not be at all difficult if you follow another basic principle of proper nutrition - composing your diet from the simplest and most understandable products. A long composition on the packaging is not our option.
"It's just cereal, just chicken, not meatballs, meatballs, sausages or sausages, " Svetlana Kovaleva emphasized.
Furthermore, the frequency and regularity of meals are very important.
— There are many different opinions on this subject. But practice shows that multiplicity is necessary. Especially as a gastroenterologist, I cannot ignore this issue. You need to eat at least three times a day, otherwise many of us like to eat once or twice - it won't work.
Drinking regime
"You also cannot ignore your alcohol consumption regime, " noted the nutritionist. — People who drink three glasses a day started coming more and more frequently. And it's also good if it's water and not tea or coffee. And all metabolic processes occur in the aquatic environment.
Furthermore, the feeling of hunger is often incorrectly interpreted. In other words, it could be thirsty, so the drinking regime needs to be adjusted.
How much water should you drink a day? Those same notorious eight glasses? No. As with other nutritional components, the required amount of water is calculated individually.
— There are also many calculation formulas, but to start I recommend this formula: 25 ml per kilogram of weight. The daily water norm appears, other drinks are conditionally, for simplicity, taken as half of the volume consumed, and the calculation is made.
If a person consumes very less and has related problems such as hypertension, then there is no need to reach this volume suddenly. You can add 200 ml every 2-3 days to assess your condition, pulse, blood pressure and analyze whether there is an increase in the amount of salt in your diet, as this is the simplest option that helps retain water and increase blood pressure. Water itself generally does not contribute to this.
Don't forget about training
Changing your diet is the basis for losing weight, but we cannot forget physical activity, noted the expert.
— In rare cases, it is possible to achieve the desired rate of weight loss without physical activity, because cutting calories is one thing, but still needing to maintain muscle mass is another. We still want a beautiful figure and, in addition, the more muscles we have, the more intense the rate of the body's metabolic processes.
Choosing a training program is also an individual matter, not to mention the fact that it is necessary to increase physical activity gradually and carefully. But this is a topic for another discussion.
Extreme weight loss and its dangers
Do you dream of losing a few dozen pounds before summer? Think about whether you are ready to sacrifice your health for such a dubious achievement. How much weight can you lose per month without harming your health?
"In a healthy regime, the medical community has accepted a rate of 4 kg", responds the nutritionist. — That's about a kilo a week. Of course, there may be individual differences: a little more, a little less, but when there is excess weight, liver steatosis usually occurs.
In addition, if there have been repeated attempts to lose weight, there may be stagnation of bile or stones already formed in the gallbladder. Therefore, it is important to provide the necessary support and ensure that the pace of weight loss is not too rapid.
What will happen if you go to extremes and go on an extreme diet or even starve yourself?
— First, the muscles will "melt" and the water will leave the body. Because of this, you will feel bad - at the very least, your mood will not be very good either. In addition, doubts will arise about the functioning of the gastrointestinal tract: it is still a complex of organs that must function regularly and adequately, otherwise problems may arise.
There may also be problems with the biliary system and many consequences of disruption of its functioning: from gastritis to impaired motility of the gastrointestinal tract, constipation, bloating due to poor functioning of the intestinal microflora and so on.
If you decide to take mineral water or an extreme minimum of calories for a few weeks to put on an evening dress for the holiday, remember: after such a diet you cannot avoid malaise, headaches and other diseases, against which even hunger itself will not be so terrible. Therefore, the doctor recommends, you should still prepare in advance for an important event - or honestly buy a dress in your size.
Minimum number of calories in a diet
We've all heard that the average person needs about 2, 000 kilocalories per day. But, of course, this amount is very average: for some this is too much, while others will starve with such a calorie intake.
"All this is calculated individually, because people have different initial parameters, different types of activities, different ages, different options for doing sports, " emphasized Svetlana Kovaleva. — Therefore, I cannot say unequivocally about the upper limit.
The amount of kilocalories to maintain and lose weight varies and also depends on how many people actually eat "in the beginning, " the nutritionist noted. But if you drastically "cut" 500 kilocalories from the "initial" calorie intake, the person will feel terribly hungry - and such a diet will not lead to healthy weight loss.
— We now have many calculator applications that effectively calculate the required number of kilocalories using certain formulas; This will be the easiest to use.
As for the lower calorie limit, the doctor emphasized that you should not resort to diets with a calorie content of 1, 000 to 1, 200 kcal per day - nothing good will come of this.
How to deal with hunger while losing weight?
Giving up heavy meals and switching to a healthy diet is not an easy task. Often along this path, you may encounter not only an aversion to oatmeal and broccoli, but also extreme hunger. Even if the diet itself is balanced, the stomach, accustomed to large volumes of food, will send desperate signals to the brain about the need to eat half a can more. How to be? A nutritionist shares life tips:
- Firstly, you need to try to gradually move away from a large amount of calories so that the body does not feel too hungry.
The second point is to distribute meals evenly. In other words, if we calculate a certain amount of calories using an application and we eat three times, and between them we feel terribly hungry, then we try to distribute the same amount of food over four meals. Because, whereas before a person could eat a bagel or snack on a sandwich, now we are trying a more systematic approach to meals.
Hunger doesn't just appear on an empty stomach: sometimes we eat, but we feel like we haven't eaten. So you just need to wait a certain time. You can walk the dog, just walk, be distracted by something.
The fact is that the gastrointestinal tract needs time for the stomach to contract. If a person ate a lot, his stomach simply increased in volume. Here we will wait longer for this effect.
But, in general, I recommend distributing meals evenly throughout the day, or suggesting some type of healthy snack that doesn't disrupt our entire diet and cause the number of calories to increase more than planned.