WEIGHT LOSS
Regular readers of this newsletter will know from January’s edition that
the average person puts on over 8lbs in fat over the Xmas festivities. I
managed 5lbs this year, a record for me!. So how do those excess lbs
look now?
On the left you can see my weight graph from MyFitnessPal. You can see
from the graph that I lost weight before Xmas (good planning!), spiked
then lost the Xmas weight within a month, plateaued and then lost
significantly more in the following couple of months (ready for the
summer). How? Well, it certainly isn’t from starving myself or following
any fancy diet!
THE 16 / 8 PLAN
Simply put I have been eating clean foods as much as possible. Allowing
my body to detoxify, regulate my hormone levels and leave me energised
in order to train effectively. The 16/8 plan is easy to follow, you eat
all your calories in just 8 hours in the day, the other 16 hours your
body is busy processing the food.
So why does it work?
Several reasons. Primarily, if you are only consuming calories for 8
hours in a day, it means those late evening snacks (and alcoholic
drinks) are skipped. Condensing your food intake will also leave you
feeling full. There is also another reason this plan works but to
explain that I need to go back to the 80s and a well known video game –
PAC-MAN
Imagine PAC-MAN is the human growth hormone (HGH), going around the body
eating fat (the little yellow pills in the game) and converting it to
usable energy, skin, hair etc. This hormone is good and helps the body
to function properly. You may remember your parents telling you to go to
sleep early if you want to grow, well, they weren’t wrong. It is this
hormone that drives that, often coming out at night while you are not
eating! It can happily go about its job until the ghosts come along. The
ghosts here are bodies nasty hormones such as cortisol and insulin that
prevent Pac-Man from doing his job. These nasty hormones are also fat
storage hormones. They come out in the body when you eat, when you are
tired and when you are stressed! The more ghosts there are the less the
fat is converted and fatter you become. It will also stop you developing
and growing. Reducing the amount of insulin and cortisol in your body
reduces the amount of ghosts, eating in an 8 hour window reduces the
time the ghosts are in your body. You can reduce these hormones further
by eating clean foods (non-processed meals with low sugar content),
sleep more and de-stress. This will keep the hormones to a minimum
allowing Pac-Man to do his job!
Since Christmas, many of my clients and myself have followed this simple
plan and all have seen results just like mine. Check out our client of
the month below who has followed the plan well and has had great
success. Try it yourselves but make sure you stick to it! If you need
help then then email mark@nltraining.co.uk
