Only two months until summer - time to take care of yourself! But you need to get in shape wisely. With an expert, we’ll figure 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 it be possible to lose more than 8 kg in a healthy way by the coming summer? What health problems can be caused by extreme types of diets? And how, in the end, to lose weight correctly? All these important questions are answered by nutritionist and gastroenterologist Svetlana Kovaleva.
"If we talk about proper weight loss, then you need to immediately prepare yourself that it will not be quick, " our interlocutor noted. — Because the body has been accumulating certain components for a long time, and to reset them, it also takes a sufficient amount of time. The speed of metabolic processes in people does not increase sharply.
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 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 be stressed and not understand what to do in this situation. Therefore, the reduction in food volume should be smooth, " said the nutritionist.
Separately, it should be said about the calorie content of each meal.
- If it turns out that you cannot 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 in the evening the body prepares for sleep, and not for processing the calories received.
Proteins, fats and carbohydrates
However, thoughtless reduction of 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. What should it be like?
Proteins: counting correctly
Most people, when losing weight, need to consume the amount of protein within the normal range or slightly higher, the doctor noted. But how to calculate it? It's actually very simple:
— Usually at the start, depending on the level of excess weight, protein is considered to be 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 should not eat 90 grams of chicken, but he should count how much poultry, fish, and meat he needs so that they give him the required amount of protein. We have many calculators for this on the Internet.
In this case, offhand, the chicken will be 450 grams. Plus, other products also contain protein, so here you can calculate in detail depending on what a person eats in general.
Fats: healthy and not so good
"Fats in excess, without a doubt, should not be in the diet, " the nutritionist noted. - They are provided 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 you can eat hearty beef, in 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 the 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 simple to complex
— Most often, diets are based on cutting the amount of carbohydrates. But a more correct approach is to simply qualitatively change their structure.
First of all, it is necessary to reduce as much as possible simple, or so-called added sugars: sugar itself, cakes, 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 to replace them with?
— These are more complete cereals that need to be cooked for a long time. Even oatmeal can be cooked in five minutes, or it can be cooked much longer. Plus, from side dishes where carbohydrates will predominate, we can also add protein - 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 adhere to another basic principle of proper nutrition - compose your diet from the most simple and 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.
In addition, the frequency and regularity of meals is very important.
— There are many different opinions on this matter. But practice shows that multiplicity is necessary. Especially as a gastroenterologist, I cannot ignore 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 regime
"You also can’t ignore the drinking regime, " the nutritionist noted. — People who drink three glasses a day began to come more and more often. And it’s also good if it’s water, not tea or coffee. And all metabolic processes occur in the aquatic environment.
In addition, very often the feeling of hunger is interpreted incorrectly. That is, it could be thirst, so the drinking regime needs to be adjusted.
How much water should you drink per 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 at the start I recommend this formula: 25 ml per kilogram of weight. The daily norm of water appears, other drinks are conditionally, for simplicity, 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 whether there is an increased amount of salt in your food, because this is the simplest option that helps retain water and increase blood pressure. Water itself usually does not contribute to this.
Don't forget about training
Changing your diet is the foundation for losing weight, but we must not forget about 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 we still need to maintain muscle mass is another. We still want a beautiful figure, and plus, the more muscles we have, the more intense the rate of metabolic processes in the body will be.
The choice of 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 tens of kilos 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 harm to your health?
"In a healthy regime, the medical community has accepted a rate of 4 kg, " answers the nutritionist. — That’s about a kilogram a week. Of course, there may be individual differences: a little more, a little less, but when there is excess weight, fatty liver usually occurs.
Also, if there have been repeated attempts to lose weight, then there may be stagnation of bile or already formed stones 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 to extreme lengths and go on an extreme diet or even starve?
— First, the muscles will "melt" and water will leave the body. Due to this, you will feel bad - at a minimum, your mood will also not be very good. Plus, questions will arise regarding the functioning of the gastrointestinal tract: it is still a complex of organs that must work regularly and properly, otherwise problems may arise.
There may also be problems with the biliary system, and there can be 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 sit on mineral water or an extreme minimum of calories for a couple of weeks in order to fit into an evening dress for the holiday, keep in mind: after such a diet you cannot avoid feeling unwell, headaches and other ailments, against the background of which even hunger itself will not be so terrible. 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 on a diet
We have all heard that the average person needs about 2000 kilocalories per day. But, of course, this amount is very average: for some this is too much, while others will starve on such a caloric intake.
"This is all calculated individually, because people have different initial parameters, different types of activities, different ages, different options for playing sports, " Svetlana Kovaleva emphasized. — Therefore, I cannot say unequivocally about the upper limit.
The number of kilocalories for maintaining and losing weight varies and also depends on how many people actually eat "at the start, " the nutritionist noted. But if you sharply "cut off" 500 kilocalories from the "starting" caloric intake, the person will experience terrible hunger - 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 1000-1200 kcal per day - nothing good will come of it.
How to cope with hunger while losing weight?
Giving up heavy meals and switching to healthy eating 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 another half a can. How to be? A nutritionist shares life hacks:
- Firstly, you need to try to gradually go away from a large amount of calories so that the body does not feel this hunger too much.
The second point is to distribute meals evenly. That is, if we have calculated a certain amount of calories using some application and eat it three times, and in between we feel terrible hunger, then we try to distribute the same amount of food into four meals. Because, if previously a person could eat a bun or snack on a sandwich, now we are trying to take a more systematic approach to meals.
Hunger does not only appear on an empty stomach: sometimes we have eaten, but we feel like we haven’t eaten. Then you just need to wait a certain time. You can walk the dog, just take 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 longer for this effect.
But, in general, I recommend distributing meals evenly throughout the day, or coming up with some kind of healthy snack that will not disrupt our entire diet and lead to the fact that the number of calories will increase more than planned.