I wanted to touch a topic which concerns everyone or has disturbed people over the years. Let me begin with saying that weight management and excess body fat is something everyone struggles with and are often clueless on how to get fit and healthy in a sustainable manner.
Is weight management something you have always struggled with throughout your life or is this something that has recently become a point of worry due to various factors like - injury, post-pregnancy, stress, busy work schedules, poor eating habits etc? Have you fallen prey into weight loss tricks and gimmicks in the past and not seen any results or put on more weight instead?
Then this article is for you, to give you a starting point and for you to understand the science behind it to get real results.
I know you must have tried everything under the sun like, fad diets, slimming meal replacements, pills, exercises and have eventually lost motivation and become more restless because you don't know who and what to believe.
Hence, I wanted to give all, a little introduction about the weight management program offered at NutriBoom. This program will leave you with a all-inclusive tool bag of clever food ideas, health guidelines, fitness and exercise tips that you can use for yourself and your family to make the best choices for lifetime.
Before starting this weight management program, it is important to analyse your starting point, the journey we will embark together and the end goal. The map of your journey will be designed by me using profiling methods for different body types and assessment questionnaires.
The NutriBoom Weight Management Program:
It is a 3 pillar strategy: Lifestyle, Meal Plan and Physical activity, which includes the following-
current weight ,calorie consumption, physical activity level (PAL), basal metabolic rate (BMR), body mass index (BMI), body fat measurement, nutritious recipe, low calorie alternatives, calculated and calorie distributed meal plans, satiety management and realistic and manageable Timescales.
Understand basic terms:
A. Energy: Body uses food as a source of energy. This energy is measured in calories. Energy is used to walk, talk, breathe, sleep or run. All activities burn calories.
B. Calorie: Calorie is the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of 1g of water by 1°C. A calorie is one unit of energy obtained from food.
C. Basal Metabolic rate: Every activity burns calories. The rate that these calories are burned is called the Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). A person's BMR is usually about 3/4th of person's energy needs. Infants, young children and adults with higher muscle mass tend to have a higher BMR. Older adults tend to have a lower BMR.
D. Body Mass Index: BMI is a tool to measure if your body weight is healthy or not. BMI has a limitation it cannot tell you if your carrying excess fat as it does not differentiate between excess fat, muscle or bone. BMI centile is gender specific and hence it is paramount to consider all the parameters like height, weight, age and gender. Also in some cases it is good to consider ethnicity, because it can be a useful tool to determine your genetic predisposition to certain chronic diseases (for e.g. Black, Asian and other minority ethnic groups with a BMI of 23 or more have a higher risk of getting type 2 diabetes and other long term illnesses).
E. Physical Activity Level (PAL)= A person's PAL is determined by the things a person does in a 24 hour period. It can also be estimated from the physical activities that person performs each day. Each activity is connected to a particular level of activity.
Level 1 : Sedentary
Level 2 : Light Exercise
Level 3: Moderate exercise
Level 4: Very active
Level 5: Extreme
F. Total energy requirement = Combining basal requirements with needs based on physical activity levels, you can calculate your TER.
Setting realistic goals and having a proper one-to-one guidance or nutrition coaching is paramount in making a long-term lifestyle change.
If we think about the successful athletes and actors out their who we look up to for our body goals, their success is no doubt due to their relentless effort but the major role here is played by the ongoing professional mentoring they receive from their nutrition coaches and personal trainers.
Having a coach who will be able to give you sound and evidence based information is an extremely powerful tool you can incorporate in your life to achieve your weight-loss or weight-gain goals.
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