“Learning to count your calories can feel like doing a university degree. What we suggest is tackling it in bite-sized pieces.”
When it comes to weight loss, we can easily get stuck trying the “all or nothing” approach. This can mean things like drastically reducing our daily caloric intake or starving ourselves to attain our weight loss goal as quickly as possible.
This method can work if we are focusing on short-term results, but if we are considering the long term, it’s challenging to sustain. A safer and more realistic approach is to aim for a slight caloric deficit so that you can lose weight while still maintaining overall health and well-being.
A caloric deficit simply means eating fewer calories than you burn off each day. The longer you stay in a deficit, the more weight you will lose. Even if you only have a slight deficit, you will still see results and it will be easier to keep the weight off. Whereas if you reduce your calories to an unrealistic extent, it can mean putting the weight straight back on again when returning to regular eating.
The ideal way to achieve a caloric deficit is to count how many calories you are eating in a day and make sure you are burning off more than that amount. Either by increasing your exercise or just being more active throughout the day.
Learning to count your calories can feel like doing a university degree, haha. What we suggest is tackling it in bite-sized pieces.
Start by writing down your food in your notes and share it with your nutritionist, personal trainer, or accountability buddy. This can help curb mindless snacking and those times you’re zoning out while eating.
Next, focus on consistently including your 5 veggies and 2 fruits each day.
Once you’ve nailed that, aim to include protein in each meal.
Take it step by step, because if you try to do it all at once, you’ll likely get overwhelmed.
Once you start to feel confident and consistent, you can try using a calorie-counting app like MyFitnessPal.
And if you get stuck, there’s plenty of research online or shoot us a message—we’d be happy to offer some guidance.
P.S. If you want to reach your fitness goals a little quicker, check out our 7-day trial at our Burleigh gym. It includes a one-on-one sit-down with our personal trainers to cover nutrition and get you started on the right track. Click to learn more about our personal training and group classes.
