I Eat Well I Do Sports and I Don't Lose Weight

If this is your case, you will ask yourself: What am I doing wrong? Is there any food that is harming me? There are many false myths so it is time to clear up some ideas that can hinder your diet.

Before starting I want to share with you a phrase that I read a long time ago and I liked it: "that weight loss is the consequence of your training, not the reason". You should run for pleasure, to meet a challenge you have set, but not only in order to lose weight. Although exercise is going to help you, what you must modify to achieve weight loss is food. We are able to eat much more calories than we burn, and it has been proven that exercise alone is not capable of producing significant weight loss if the diet is not adapted. Also, if you run to lose weight, are you going to abandon this sport when you no longer "need it"?

That said, we will clarify whether or not some eating habits that are usually carried out with the aim of losing weight are correct or not.

Eat less

It seems like a lie but eating little and starving does not imply weight loss. If you are too restrictive with your diet, what you can cause is a slowdown of your metabolism and consequently an increase in the difficulty of losing weight.

This happens by adaptation, it is survival, if we give too little to our body it must survive and consequently it decides to reduce its daily caloric expenditure (basal metabolism) so that you can continue with your day to day. You must not let this happen.

To keep your metabolism agile and active:

Eat often, about every 3 hours, healthy food.

After workouts of more than an hour and a half add an extra snack such as a fruit with yogurt or a commercial recuperator

Do not eliminate food groups, your meals must be complete, remember "the idea of ​​the plate": a large portion of vegetables, a quarter of the plate of whole grains (carbohydrates such as bread, pasta, rice, ...) and the other fourth we will fill it with lean proteins (meat, legumes, fish or eggs)

Perform exercise. Exercise increases the calories we consume throughout the day but something more interesting is that it helps you to increase your muscle mass in this way your body will spend more calories daily, which will help you maintain weight.

Dine only on fruit and / or yogurt

Dinner helps you regain and complete your daily energy intake. For this reason it must be complete, therefore logically eating only fruit or fruit and yogurt will not provide us with enough nutrients.

Fruit is a healthy and necessary food, but if you put 2, 3 or 4 fruits together in a dinner, the amount of sugar will be excessive and will not help weight loss.

When dinner isn't rich enough in calories or balanced:

As we have mentioned in the previous point, if you go too little, your metabolism slows down, so it is useless to eat too little if what you achieve is to reduce your basal metabolism.

The next morning has a bad time. If we restrict intake in one meal, it is common for hunger to be greater in the next. Consequently, if you have little dinner the next morning you will be hungrier than usual and will have a hard time avoiding snacking.

If they have trained just before dinner you will not recover correctly.

Eliminate carbohydrates from your diet

Don't banish carbohydrates from your meals. Always add some bread, cereals, pasta, rice or potato to have enough energy and perform well in your workouts.

Choose them whole, so you enrich your diet with fiber, vitamins and minerals, being more nutritious and satisfying.

The amount will depend on various factors such as training, height and size but at least they will represent a quarter of the plate to about three quarters.

Salads fan

Salads are a quick resource that we often use for our lunches and dinners. But remember that a salad is a mixture of vegetables, various vegetables, but not a mix of any type of food.

A pasta salad that has macaroni, crab sticks, tuna, cheese, and olives is not a salad because where is the vegetable?

A salad may contain lettuce, tomato, carrot, cucumber, onion, bell pepper, asparagus, spinach, lamb's lettuce, beets, ... but keep in mind that cheese, tuna, olives and sausages increase the calories on your plate.

If you fancy you can consume a complete salad as a single dish such as a pasta salad, to which you can add pasta and some type of protein such as hard-boiled egg or tuna to the vegetable base. But you will do it by being aware of what you are using, thinking about the foods you add.

Take daily high fat foods like avocado, nuts and chia seeds.

These are foods that are very fashionable, you will have read a lot about them and there are reasons to recommend their consumption. Although each one has its special characteristics, all of them provide us, in addition to a good amount of vitamins and minerals, healthy fats and fiber, this provides good satiety and consequently a correct regulation of appetite and avoiding pecking and the consumption of other unhealthy food.

If you want to lose weight and you have the habit of consuming them, it is correct, what you should keep in mind is that, being rich in fats, they are calorie foods, so keep in mind three things:

Alternate their consumption and thus enrich your diet every day, it is not necessary that you consume them every day.

Small amounts. A handful of nuts and a fruit or yogurt with a tablespoon of chia or toast with tomato slices and half an avocado can be a successful snack.

Consume them at breakfast or as a snack to take advantage of their satiating effect and so you will not want to snack between meals.

I usually consume smoothies and detox shakes

There are no miracle foods. Detox smoothies, green juices, and fat-burning smoothies seem like a “discovery” for weight loss, but they may not be.

What happens to smoothies and juices?

If you like smoothies, they are an option to consider in your diet, but you should think about the foods you use to make them and what you want to get from them.

If what you want is to make a snack, try not to contain more than one fruit, the rest being green leafy vegetables. You can complete it with a dairy or a drink, such as:

A carrot, half an apple, a celery stalk, two hours of lettuce and a skimmed yogurt

If you want to substitute a meal, you should not use a smoothie, since getting a complete meal this way will be difficult and unnecessary. And if you are looking for a feeling of satiety it will not be a good resource either, in this case the foods that you need to chew provide more satiety.

Smoothies and smoothies are useful before exercising, since being liquid foods are easily digested. This makes it easy for you to feel heavy when you go out for a run. You can make a smoothie before training with:

Two lettuce leaves, a handful of spinach, half a banana, 4 strawberries and half a glass of rice drink

If you want the detox effect, a shake will not be the solution, the important thing is to make a healthy diet, but you can enrich your diet with antioxidants with shakes like:

Half a cucumber, a little, 100g pineapple and the juice of half a lemon

Broccoli, two carrots, half a cucumber, the juice of half a lemon and a little stevia

A bunch of spinach, an apple, a little ginger and water

What will help me lose weight?

Your allies to lose weight

The tricks do not exist, nor the foods that cause an immediate drop in your weight, but some that can help your goal:

Green leafy vegetables: vegetables such as lettuce, cabbage, spinach or Swiss chard are especially low in calories and very rich in fiber, so they add volume to your food and help you feel satiated with a very low calorie intake.

Legumes: they are rich in protein and fiber with which they fill us, complete our food and provide few calories. Although you must watch as the kitchens! Stew and fabada will not be the best options if you want to lose weight, better cook them with vegetables or eat them in a salad.

Dairy: if we choose them skimmed they will help weight loss, performance and health. On the one hand we have fermented milks such as yogurt and kefir which, by providing dairy bacteria, will help your digestions to be better, regulate your intestinal transit and the feeling of abdominal bloating that is generated throughout the day by the digestion of food. . In addition, dairy products provide us with good quality proteins that can be useful after workouts, a glass of drinkable yogurt provides you with protein and carbohydrate in a good proportion, you can also consume cottage cheese or fresh cheese beaten with a piece of fruit and you will have a recuperator perfect homemade.

Proteins of good quality: this nutrient manages to increase the burning of fat in your body, for this reason you must remember to consume them in main meals in a significant amount, choosing those foods that provide us with good quality protein and little fat such as lean meats, fish, eggs and legumes.

Eggs: They provide us with protein of high biological value and the latest studies certify that they do not cause an increase in cholesterol levels or cardiovascular risks. On the other hand, if we want to lose weight, they are a perfect food: rich in proteins, they promote thermogenesis (fat burning) and provide good satiety with a low calorie intake.

Whole grains: do not exclude them from your plate and less if you are a runner. Choose better whole (whole) cereals. You can also use foods such as oats in your breakfasts or snacks, enriching your diet with fiber and a progressive supply of energy.

Fruits: take two or three each day. As a runner it is good for you that one is a citrus to take more vitamin C and the other is yellow, orange, red or purple like red fruits, in order to enrich the diet with antioxidants.

Finally, as a general recommendation, avoid or consume very occasionally red and processed meats (such as hamburgers, sausages and fatty sausages), fast food such as pizzas or ready meals, salty snacks such as potato chips and, of course, beverages. alcoholic and sugary.

With these tips I hope you start the course with energy and can achieve what you propose and remember that if you need help you can go to the consultation of a dietitian nutritionist to guide you in a personalized way.