Lets break some of these god damn myths that circulate about weight loss

First of all the word diet invokes stress immediately. Stop using it. I have never been guilty of putting any client on a diet I have only ever addressed their nutritional regime.

Second, the use of the word 'weight' is too expansive, the body is made up of fat, muscle tissue and water (75% water) so essentially the water is very influential when manipulating 'body weight'. Stepping on scales only gives you an idea of the collective weight between these components of the fat, the muscle and the water. It does not tell you more specifically how much body fat you are carrying.

When determining how much weight you want to lose you need to specify what type of weight, I would assume it was going to be fat you wanted to lose. When I started basic training for the Royal Marines I went in at week 1 at a grand total of 16Stone 7 lbs with 12% body fat, which meant that I was relatively big and quite lean. However, 12 weeks into it after sleep deprivation, restricted calories, endless amounts of nights spent living under the stars and never ending bouts of CV training I had dropped down to 13 Stone! I had lost 3 and a half stone - but it was all muscle as my body fat had only dropped down to 11%. Why? . . .

Let me explain.... it will help you to understand what might be happening with your weight management goals too. When you exercise, your body requires fuel obviously for energy. The body has 3 choices, energy from fat, from protein or from carbohydrates (in the form of glucose / glycogen). Now then, the theory of losing weight is quite simple - Calories out has to exceed calories in = you lose weight.

However, looking more closely, think about it, the body will decide on which source of energy it wants to use, in my case it decided to use the proteins (muscle tissue) and a little bit of body fat and of course whatever carbohydrates I had sat in my liver and whatever I was also ingesting at the time. The problem is, the actual process of a fat cell being burned is quite complex within the body, more complex than the utilisation of proteins and carbs, SO... why on earth would the body bother going to all that trouble to burn fat for you when it is has readily available energy in the form of carbs and proteins. This is why you keep hearing me harp on about dropping your Insulin levels because for as long as your Insulin levels are high, you will not tap into your fat stores, you will simply keep drawing on your carb supply. How many people do I see buying 'sports drinks' at the gym who wish to lose weight?

The trick is to protect your protein reserves by taking on board sufficient amino acids (protein building blocks) and lowering your Insulin levels to allow your body to finally switch to using fats. There are certain natural formulas that do encourage lipolysis (fat production) Essentially these natural products point the body more at fats than proteins for energy. Eg; Omega -3 and L-Carnitine.

So taking myself all the way back to basic training, had I known then what I know now, I would have lowered Insulin levels, massively increased proteins and amino acids and I would have probably spared some of the muscle and dropped by body fat down even further to 8% perhaps.

There are no diet pills, there are no tablets that melt body fat, liposuction doesn't work because it can create an uneven skin tone and won’t enhance health and fitness levels and normally results in a repeat visit. But do consider that it can actually be quite easy when you think about the information above.