How to lose weight without cutting out the foods you enjoy!

This is the golden question, how do we lose weight without cutting out the foods we enjoy? Surely it is impossible right?

Well you would be glad to know that the answer to this question is no. It is not impossible and I am going to briefly explain how you can lose weight and still eat the foods you enjoy.

Long story short the best way to do this is to track your calories and stay within your calorie goal. This should be set by a professional not just assumed by yourself if you don’t quite understand how to calculate your calories.

If we track our calories we are taking control of the foods that we are eating and the calories in those foods. For example, if our daily calorie target is 2300 and we wanted to have 3 chicken enchiladas for our evening meal which come in at roughly 300cals per enchilada, then we know that we are going to have 1400 calories left for the rest of the day (2300-900).

So now we work out what our breakfast is going to be, a bowl of porridge and peanut butter with protein powder coming in at 650 calories, meaning we have 750 calories for the rest of the day (1400-650). So now I have 750 calories left for the day to use on my lunch and any snacks I may have, A ham salad sandwich, a protein bar and a protein yogurt will see me through coming in at 650 calories for my lunch which means I have 100 calories left to play with. So for my pudding after my enchiladas I am going to have 2 caramel rice cakes which equates to 102 calories meaning I have gone over by 2 calories, I can probably burn that off going to the toilet :)

That is a quick ‘menu design’ I went through with a client last week to highlight that you can still enjoy the foods you want and stay within your calories, it is just about planning ahead and keeping yourself accountable for the foods you are eating.

To highlight some main tips of how to lose weight without cutting out the foods you enjoy:

• Track your calories,

• Take into account any ‘special occasions’ or any time you are knowingly going to go over calories - this way you can adapt the rest of the week to claw back the calories you have ‘spent’,

• Don’t deprive yourself of the foods you enjoy - you will resent the health and fitness journey and more likely to give up,

• Be in control of the amount of food you eat when it comes to your ‘treats’ (chocolate, ice cream, biscuits etc’,

• Get a coach - this will keep you accountable and allow you to track progress with someone who is able to adapt training plans where neccessary.

The bottom line is you can still enjoy all the foods you want and you can still lose weight/build muscle or whatever your goal is. You just need to be sensible and enjoy everything in moderation and within your calorie goal depending on what your goal is.

If you are unsure how to do this and would like some help just click the button below and I will get in touch :)