Day 15, I am halfway through my Whole30, I am feeling better but I am getting slightly concerned that… I NEED TO EAT MORE!! That is basically the name of the game, I aim to have a calorie deficit of 150 calories a day based against my perceived TDEE (Total Daily Estimated Expenditure) of 1700 calories a day. In fact, the past week I am averaging around a 513 calorie deficit each day. Shocking….. So as I type, I am starting to think why is this happening? Why can’t I eat enough? Before I start looking for answers within me, it is fair to say that there are millions of people in the world who are tryong to lose weight and are not eating enough calories each day. They are starving their bodies and they don’t even know it. For example I have seen this week that Pauline Quirke (Sharon from Birds of a Feather and that really scary woman in Broadchurch) has always publically battled with her weight and it has been reported that she has put on a lot of weight again. Magazines are stating that she has had some kind of breakdown related to her weight gain. Bloody hell, I am on a mission to lose my baby weight but at least I can do it without public backlash. I kid you not, I have just googled “Pauline Quirke Weight Loss” and the following pages were the top hits on google. “Pauline Quirke piles on the pounds again”………………….from the Mirror “Not so light as a feather”……………now magazine The poor woman, what’s worse is that people actually buy this stuff! So lets look at Pauline Quirke, lets look at her struggle. My understanding is that Pauline Quirke went on the Lighter Life Diet. I take my hat off to the woman because if I restricted myself to 530 calories a day I would go mental and possible end up in a ladies prison! 530 calories a day……seriously this blows my mind. Your body is a finely tuned machine, it needs fuel (calories) to survive. Yes too many calories can make us put on fat and a calorie deficit can help to lose fat but, eating too few calories a day will cause you some issues. Hormonal function will down regulate which, basically means that they wont work as well. This is bad, very bad. We are our hormones, every thing we do is pretty much controlled by hormones. Our metabolism will slow down, Women may mess their menstrual cycle up (I am guilty of this…once I ate too few calories and had a 58 day cycle!), you could start to lose your hair (guilty of this too), you can get grumpy, moody and emotional because you brain hormones are not working as well as possible. So don’t drastically cut calories!!Pulling it back to the point of this blog post, why is it that I am not eating enough calories a day? I don’t always eat in the morning, I find it hard to eat first thing, so I can get to 11am – 12pm before I have had anything to eat. I am not eating enough fat in my diet…I can easily address this I am not eating enough healthy fats in y diet. Fat is roughly 9 calories per gram, so it would make sense to use this to up my calorie intake. It main seem strange to be talking about losing weight and upping my daily calorie intake, what I need to think about firstly with my eating plan is performance. If I start to feel like I am not performing well I know that I have not eaten enough. My main clue is my mood, if I get grumpy which is really unusual for me I know that its because I haven’t eaten enough. A bit of a rambling blog post but I hope I have made some valid points. Please don’t be scared of calories, don’t be scared to eat, don’t be scared of the diet culture that our society has made as mostly its full of rubbish claims and scare tactics. Eat good quality, whole foods and your body will reap the rewards xxxxx
Katie
Katie has been in the health and fitness industry since 2001. After 7 years working within a major health club chain Katie set up her own company and now trains her clients at their homes and online. A passion for learning and helping people be the best that they can be has seen Katie consistently add to her list of qualifications. A qualified NLP practitioner, metabolic typist, sports massage therapist and personal trainer Katie aims to work with clients both physically and mentally. Since 2011 Katie has been a tutor and assessor for a nationwide training company that trains people to become Personal Trainers. She manages to squeeze all this in whilst also being a full time Mum of a 2 year old little boy.
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