Only two months until summer - it's time to take care of yourself! But you have to get fit sensibly. With an expert, we will find out how many kilograms 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 a quick thing. Why won't you be able to lose more than 8 kg by next summer in a healthy way? What health problems canbe caused by extreme types of diets? And how to eventually lose weight properly? Nutritionist and gastroenterologist Svetlana Kovaleva answers all these important questions.
"If we are talking about proper weight loss, then you should immediately prepare that it will not be fast, " noted our interlocutor. — Because the body accumulates certain components for a long time, and to reset them, it also takes enough time. The metabolic rateprocesses in humans does not increase sharply.
The doctor's main recommendations refer to the main components of any diet: the calorie content and the ratio of proteins, fats and carbohydrates.
Calorie problem
— The diet should not be too low-calorie. Sometimes people begin not only to introduce fasting days into their diet, but practically switch to fasting. This is incorrect, the body will not perceive this as physiologically correct nutrition, it will only stress and not understand what to do in this situation. Therefore, reducing the volume of food should be gradual, " said the nutritionist.
Separately, it should be said about the caloric content of each meal.
- If it turns out that you can not have breakfast, you missed lunch, then the entire amount of calories should not be wasted before going to bed. Because we have circadian rhythms of the body and in the evening the body prepares for sleep and not for processing the calories taken.
Proteins, fats and carbohydrates
However, a thoughtless reduction in calories, even within normal limits, can be harmful to health if you do not take into account the amount of protein, fat and carbohydrates in the diet. What should it be?
Proteins: counting correctly
Most people, when losing weight, should take in an amount of protein within the normal range or slightly more, the doctor noted. But how to calculate it? It's actually very simple:
— Usually at the beginning, depending on the level of excess weight, it is considered that the protein is from 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 does not have to eat 90 grams of chicken, but he has to count how many birds, fish and meat he needs to give him the right amount of protein. We have many calculators for this on the internet.
In this case, chicken meat by hand will be 450 g. In addition, other products also contain proteins, so here you can calculate in detail depending on what a person eats in general.
Fats: healthy and not so good
"Excess fats should definitely not be present in the diet, " noted the nutritionist. - They are available in large quantities only in certain dietary options. When we talk about fats, their quality characteristics are important. You can use vegetable oils or eat plenty of beef, in which we get the protein, but also eat a lot of fat along the way. Although beef is not the worst option. There is often pork.
Or you can use cold-pressed vegetable oils, with pomace, with bitterness. All the useful substances are kept there and these oils are exchanged in a completely different way, not like butter and some dairy products, for example cheese, where there is more fat or oil.
Carbohydrates: moving from simple to complex
— Most often, diets are based on reducing the amount of carbohydrates. But the more correct approach is simply to qualitatively change their structure.
First of all, it is necessary to reduce the simple, or so-called added sugars as much as possible: sugar itself, sweets, ice cream and other confectionery products dear to our hearts, noted Svetlana Kovaleva. Anything made from flour, soft wheat pasta, refined rice and other simple carbohydrates should be eliminated from your diet. What should we replace them with?
— These are more whole grains that need to be cooked for a long time. Even oatmeal can be cooked in five minutes or it can be cooked for much longer. Plus, from side dishes where carbohydrates will prevail, 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 difficult if you adhere to another basic principle of proper nutrition - make up your diet from the simplest and most understandable products. A long composition on the package is not our option.
"It's just cereal, only chicken, not meatballs, meatballs, sausages or sausages, " emphasized Svetlana Kovaleva.
In addition, the frequency and regularity of meals are very important.
- There are many different opinions on this matter. But practice shows that plurality is necessary. Especially as a gastroenterologist, I can't pass up this topic. You need to eat at least three times a day, otherwise many of us like to eat once or twice - this will not work.
Drinking mode
"Also, you can't ignore the drinking regime, " noted the nutritionist. — More and more people began to come who drink three glasses a day. And it's also good if it's water, not tea or coffee. Andall metabolic processes take place in the water environment.
In addition, very often the feeling of hunger is misinterpreted. That is, it may be thirst, so the drinking regime should be adjusted.
How much water should you drink a day? Those same infamous eight cups? No. As with other food components, the required amount of water is calculated individually.
— There are also many formulas for calculation, but at the beginning I recommend this formula: 25 ml per kilogram of weight. The daily norm of water appears, other drinks conditionally, for simplicity, are taken as half of the volume drunk and the calculation is carried out.
If a person consumes much less and has related problems, such as high blood pressure, 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 if there is an increased amount of salt in the food, because this is the simplest option that helps to retain water and increaseblood pressure. Water itself usually does not contribute to this.
Don't forget about training
Changing the diet is the basis of losing weight, but we must not forget physical activity, the expert noted.
— 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 having to maintain muscle mass is another. We still want a beautiful figure, and besides, the more muscles we have, the more intense the rate of metabolic processes in the body will be.
The choice of training program is also an individual matter, not to mention the fact that it is necessary to gradually and carefully increase physical activity. But that's a topic for another conversation.
Extreme weight loss and its dangers
Do you dream of losing a few tens of kilos before the summer? Consider 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?
"With a healthy regimen, the medical community has accepted a norm of 4 kg, " answers the nutritionist. gets fatty liver.
Also, if there are repeated attempts to lose weight, then there may be stagnation of bile or stones already formed in the gall bladder. Therefore, it is important to provide the necessary support and ensure that the rate of weight loss is not too fast.
What will happen if you go overboard and go on an extreme diet or even starve yourself?
— First, the muscles will "melt" and water will leave the body. Because of this, you will feel bad - at least your mood will not be very good either. In addition, questions will arise about the functioning of the gastrointestinal tract: this stillis a complex of organs that must work regularly and correctly, otherwise problems may arise.
There can also be problems with the biliary system, and there can be many consequences of disrupting its functioning: from gastritis to impaired motility of the gastrointestinal tract, constipation, bloating due to poor functioning of the intestinal microflora, etc.
If you decide to sit on mineral water or an extreme minimum of calories for several weeks in order to fit into an evening dress for the holiday, keep in mind: after such a diet, you cannot avoid malaise, headaches and other ailments, against the background of which even hunger itself does notto be so scary. Therefore, the doctor recommends, you should still prepare for an important event in advance - or honestly buy a dress in your size.
Minimum number of calories per diet
We've all heard that the average person needs about 2, 000 kilocalories a day. But, of course, this amount is very average: for some it 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 opportunities for sports, " emphasized Svetlana Kovaleva. — Therefore, I cannot say unequivocally about the upper limit.
The number of kilocalories for maintenance and weight loss varies and also depends on how much people actually eat "in the beginning", noted the nutritionist. But if you sharply "cut" 500 kilocalories from the "initial" caloric intake, the person will experience terrible hunger - and such a diet does not existlead to healthy weight loss.
— We now have many calculator apps that effectively calculate the required number of kilocalories using certain formulas; this will be the easiest to use.
As for the lower limit of calories, the doctor emphasized that you should not resort to diets with a calorie content of 1000-1200 kcal per day - nothing good will come of it.
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 can encounter not only an aversion to oatmeal and broccoli, but also intense hunger. Even if the diet itself is balanced, the stomach, accustomed to large amounts of food, will send desperate signals to the brain about the need to eat another half a box. How should we be? Nutritionist shares life hacks:
- First, you should try to gradually give up the large amount of calories so that the body does not feel this hunger too much.
The second point is to distribute the meals evenly. That is, if we have calculated a certain amount of calories with the help of some application and eat it three times, and in the meantime we are terribly hungry, then we try to distribute the same amount of food over four meals. Because if before a person could eat a bun or eat a sandwich, now we try to approach nutrition more systematically.
Hunger doesn't just appear on an empty stomach: sometimes we've eaten, but we feel like we haven't. Then you just have to wait a certain amount of time. You can walk the dog, just go for a walk, distract yourself with something.
The fact is that the gastrointestinal tract needs time for the stomach to contract. If a person has eaten a lot, then his stomach is simply larger in volume. Here we will wait more for this effect.
But in general, I recommend that you distribute meals evenly throughout the day or come up with some healthy breakfast that will not disrupt our entire diet and lead to the fact that the number of calories will increase more than planned.