Lose the fat, not the muscle….the key to healthy long-term weight loss!
Category: Diet, Fitness, Weight Loss
As a Registered Dietitian, I counsel clients daily on how to lose weight in a healthy manner. What your scale says is not a definitive measure of your body composition. Even after losing weight, you might still be considered to be over-fat. This happens when the weight you lose comes predominantly from muscle and not from fat—producing an unhealthy body composition.
When you are trying to lose weight and you don’t consume enough calories or the right balance of foods, you may lose some body fat, but you will mainly lose muscle. You NEVER want to lose muscle, if you can help it. You do want to LOSE THE FAT!
Losing muscle causes your metabolism to slow down and decreases the amount of food and calories you can eat to maintain the weight you have lost—leading to easier regain of your lost weight.
THE NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF UNHEALTHY BODY COMPOSITION:
*Heart disease
*High blood pressure
*Stroke
*High Cholesterol
*Diabetes
*Urinary Incontinence
*Back pain
*Certain types of cancer
*Excess fatigue
How do you achieve a healthy body composition?
#1. Eat adequate calories – calorie needs are different for every person. People who exercise require more calories than those people who don’t exercise. To determine your calorie needs, I recommend seeing a Registered Dietitian or other health care professional for a Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) reading. An RMR is provided by having you breath into a tube, which is attached to the RMR machine for about 10 minutes. The machine measures your carbon dioxide and oxygen levels to accurately determine how many calories you need each day. The reading will cost about $50.00, but is well worth the cost.
#2. Eat enough protein – for weight loss that will lead to a healthy body compositon, most women require 80-100 grams of protein per day and men 130-150 grams per day. You can get your protein in lean meats, poultry, fish, eggs, egg whites, low-fat cottage cheese and low-fat cheeses like mozzarella, low-fat ricotta, and parmesan cheese. Soy protein in the form of tofu, tempeh, or soy burgers are also a good choice.
#3. Drink adequate water – the average person will benefit from drinking about half of his or her current weight in ounces of water each day. Adequate water helps to detoxify your system during weight loss, since many toxins are stored in our fat cells, which are being released during weight loss.
The body composition program I offer incorporates the nutritional support necessary to achieve fat loss and preserve muscle. If you need help, please contact me for more information at robin@robinbeeson.com
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