How to Lose Weight and Maintain Energy

By Nancy Clark, MS, RD, CSSD

If you want to lose weight and reduce excess body fat, you must understand that diets don't work. To lose weight healthfully and successfully keep it off, you should look at your eating. After all, eating contributes to weight problems, in particular the overeating that commonly occurs after blowing a strict diet.

Strict diets rely upon willpower. Strict diets leave you feeling denied and deprived of one of life's pleasures–food.

Rather than diet, you should learn how to healthfully eat diet portions of any food you currently enjoy and would like to eat for the rest of your life.

Healthful eating offers more long-term success than does crash dieting. Healthful eating also ensures adequate intake of vitamins, minerals, protein, and carbohydrates– all nutrients needed to run at your best.

The following eating tips can help you successfully lose weight by running plus have energy to keep enjoying it. Plan to gradually lose weight at the realistic rate of about 1% of your body weight per week.

Twelve Steps for Successful Weight Reduction

1. Write down what you typically eat in a day, then evaluate your meal patterns and eating habits. Do you nibble all afternoon? Devour huge dinners? Eat non-stop at night?

   If you eat very little during the day but then indulge at night, experiment with eating a bigger breakfast, lunch, and a planned afternoon snack. This will help you be less hungry at dinner and be better able to eat a smaller dinner.

   By giving yourself permission to eat more calories during the day, you will not only have more energy to run, you will also prevent yourself from getting too hungry. Generally speaking, people who become ravenous at night don't care about what they eat, nor how much they eat. They simply feel the urge to overeat.

2. To lose weight by running, you have to create a calorie deficit. That is, you have to burn off more calories than you eat. Knowing your calorie budget and the calorie content of foods can be helpful to prevent over and under-eating.
   
   You can educate yourself about calories and portion sizes by reading food labels and, once or twice, measuring foods such as cereal, milk, rice, and pasta so you can learn how much food fits in your calorie budget. Because most people repeatedly eat the same ten to fifteen foods, learning the proper portions is a manageable one-time task.
3. Subtract 20% of your maintenance calories to determine an appropriate calorie target for weight loss. For example, if you maintain your weight on about 2,000 calories, you should plan to lose weight on about 1,600 calories.

   If you cut back more than 20% of your normal intake, you will likely become ravenously hungry and be at high risk for blowing your diet.

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4. Organize your eating into a balanced plan. For example, divide a 1,600 calorie diet into three meals plus snacks, such as:
   
   
   • Breakfast 500 calories
   • Lunch 500 calories
   • Snack 100 calories
   • Dinner 500 calories
   
   Be sure to spend enough calories during the day so you will have plenty of energy to run at your best. Daytime meals invest in your ability to "diet" at night because you will be less hungry.

   You will not gain weight by eating a substantial breakfast or lunch. But you will gain weight if you skimp on these meals, get too hungry, and then overeat in the evening.

5. Eat slowly. Overweight people tend to eat faster than their normal-weight counterparts. You should try to pace your eating because your brain needs about 20 minutes to receive the signal that you have eaten your fill.

   No matter how much you consume during these twenty minutes, the satiety signal won't move any faster. Practice chewing slowly, putting down the fork between bites (rather than eating non-stop), tasting the food and savoring it.

6. Once a week, plan a "maintain weight day" and enjoy (a reasonable portion of) birthday cake or other special meal. This will help you honor your reducing program when tempted at other times. When enjoying this special meal, eat it slowly to fully appreciate the taste. After all, the best part about food is the taste.
7. Keep away from food sources that tempt you to lose weight. For example, read the newspaper in the living room rather than in the kitchen, next to the cookies.

   Avoid jogging past the bakery. Stand away from the buffet table at a party. By keeping food out of sight, you will be more likely to keep it out of your mind, and out of your mouth.

8. If you tend to eat because you're bored, stressed, tired, or lonely, make a list of ten activities you can do instead of eating: water the plants, take a bath, call a friend, work on a jigsaw puzzle, go for a walk, go to sleep, read a fun book.
9. If you eat because you're stressed, learn how to handle stress and anxiety without over-eating. Take steps to resolve the real problem. Recognize no amount of food will satisfy anxiety-hunger.
10. Think positive. Every morning before you get out of bed, visualize yourself eating appropriately and achieving your nutrition goals. This will help you start the day with a positive attitude. Continually remind yourself that you would rather lose weight and be leaner than overeat.
11. Measure fat loss by looking at yourself naked in the mirror. If you see and pinch less fat, you have less fat. If you weigh yourself, do so once a week first thing in the morning, after you have gone to the bathroom and before you have eaten.

    Don't weigh yourself after running or at night; that gives a false weight. Remember, if you are building muscle while losing fat, the scale may not change but your body will look different and your clothes will feel looser.

12. Be proud of your healthy eating patterns and keep reminding yourself that when you eat well, you not only feel better, but you also feel better about yourself. Plus, you have enough energy to run and enjoy life.

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To determine the appropriate calorie range for your reduction diet, you first need to estimate your maintenance calories:

• Multiply your appropriate weight by 10 to determine your resting metabolic rate (RMR, the amount of calories you need to simply lay in bed all day and breathe). The RMR accounts for about half to two-thirds of total calorie needs.
  

  Example: 130 lbs x 10 = 1,300 calories for RMR

• Add about half of that number for moderate daily activity excluding your purposeful exercise. If you are generally sedentary or very active during the day, adjust the daily activity calories by adding or subtracting 10 to 20%.
  
  Example: 0.5 x 1,300 = 650 cals for daily activity
  1,300 calories for resting metabolic rate
  +650 calories for moderate daily activity
  1,950 calories without exercise
  
• Next, add calories burned during your exercise program. Use the following chart to help estimate your calorie expenditure for some popular sports. The information is based upon body weight and calories burned /minute of activity:

Copyright: Nancy Clark, MS, RD, CSSD
Nancy Clark's new Sports Nutrition Guidebook (2008), Food Guide for Marathoners, and Cyclist’s Food Guide are available at her website www.nancyclarkrd.com.

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