So many people I work with seem to get by on a ridiculously low calorie intake.
They train hard, sometimes twice a day, yet eat below 2000 calories. When in theory they are burning 1000 from training.
Yet, they still can’t lose weight – Why?
There are potentially so many reasons, some medical which I will NOT talk about here.
Other reasons generally include:
Over reporting of calories burnt
Under reporting of calories consumed – often people only report the good days and forget the bad. The bad can sometimes be so bad, that one day can ruin a whole otherwise good weeks eating.
Stress.
The first two are quite straight forward and are essentially behavioural and easier to change.
The last one is chronic and requires a much more measured approach.
Below I will detail with their consent, one of my one to one clients (Andrew’s) scenario.
Andrew is a business owner and father to 3 teenage kids.
He works hard, likes a beer or two at the weekend and trains 10 sessions a week.
He averages 6 hours sleep a night.
At 5ft 9in and 85kg his BMR (amount of calories needed to survive) was 2040 per day.
He was though consuming on average 1800 and training 10 times per week.
He lost some weight to begin with (without my intervention) and then stalled.
Andrew had basically put his body into a state of chronic stress over a period of years.
Not enough sleep, too much training, working too hard. poor quality food choices, plus life stressors from his family.
He was doing too much and not getting anywhere – Frustrating!
What did we do?
Firstly we improved the quality of his food and worked on sleep routines, building to 7 hours per night – this took some time to adjust to put he persevered.
In conjunction with his coach we reduced his training volume and slowly increased his calories by 50 per week.
We also added some strength training to his otherwise aerobic dominant routine.
We did NOT do all this at once but gradually made the changes – He was patient.
Within 3 months he was at 2300 calories and had put on NO weight.
Weird right?
In fact he had gained some muscle and lost some fat, yet his weight stayed similar.
From there we began to reduce calories back down very slowly.
Again by 50 per week.
He began to lose weight.
Over the next 3 months he got down to 78 KG and reduced his body fat by a huge 8%.
Whats more he was running faster and recovering better.
When Andrew was eating less, he was not fuelling his training and certainly recovering poorly.
Hence he got no faster and no lighter.
Andrew worked with me for 6 months which cost him £350.
Not everyone is prepared to spend that much on their health and performance.
I think it’s a small price to pay but that’s my oppinion.
It’s why I set up my private coaching group The Total Triathlete:
Its a group of like minded triathletes trying to achieve better body composition, health and performance.
Most of our communication is on the private Facebook page where some communicate more than others.
There is though NO limit, you can contact me on there as often as you like – the more you do the better your results.
I personally coach you on this page but……
You also get to see other athletes dilemmas and very often there is a cross over with yours.
No, its not £350 although arguably it should be!
It’s £10 a month and you get a FREE copy of my E-book on sign up.
If you are not where you want to be body fat wise, you need to join:
Jamie “eat more” Leighton