Healthy eating with aisling murray from whelehans pharmacy

This is a continuation of my article last week; I discuss the fact you need to eat less and move more to have successful weight loss. Last week I discussed how so called “healthy foods” such as muesli may not be as healthy as you think and how stress and carbohydrates affect your weight.

If you are not losing weight and have altered your diet for the better, here are some further reasons you may be unsuccessful.

4. You’re not active enough.
The food you consume accounts for 80% of your body size the other 20% comes from exercise. The best type of exercise for losing weight requires you to move frequently at a slow pace two to four times a week. Exercise like swimming, Zumba, walking, hiking, cycling, and easy cardio are all ideal. Preforming these types of exercises can strengthen the cardiovascular and immune system.

Exercising like this doesn’t use your glycogen (energy store) reserves instead it burns fat stores and don’t forget even the smallest movement counts.

5. You’re going into “Chronic Cardio”.
Like with everything, you can do too much. If you go overboard even with slow paced exercise, you can cause what is known as “chronic cardio”. This occurs when your heart rate increase above 75%+ range for an extended period of time. As a result your body starts to tap into you glycogen stores and burns it up instead of fat.

Your body then craves sugar to replace the lost stores; this is where an individual may crave unnecessary carbohydrates, usually simple and High GI carbohydrates. This can also cause weight gain, the loss of muscle, raise cortisol levels, and compromise any weight loss progress you might have made.

6. You’re eating too much.
I always recommend to clients to eat six small meals per day. The aim is to keep your blood sugar levels stable and metabolism working all day long. A few months of irregular eating patterns, skipping meals, dieting and cutting out major food groups, can take a toll on your body.

It can take some time for the body to get into a steady rhythm where it realises it’s going to be re-fuelled every few hours. Once the body achieves a consistency of receiving food more often, weight loss will be achieved.

8. You haven’t removed all the unhealthy food from your kitchen
It’s incredibly difficult to improve your diet if you still have unhealthy food lurking around the kitchen. You may not think that the crisps you had at lunch did any harm to your healthy eating routine but eating them once a day every day is going to impact negatively on your weight.

I always say it’s important to have treat food once in a while but every day is not advisable.   If you are struggling with weight loss its best remove all the processed, high salt and sugary foods from the fridge, out of sight indeed is out of mind. The temptation to eat unhealthy food then subsides and snack food becomes a healthier option.

Whelehans Nutrition Service
Whelehans nutritional service is a private one to one advice service with our nutritionist Aisling Murray. Aisling’s areas of interest include weight loss management, nutrition education and food intolerance. Our nutrition service offers you the chance to change your life in an affordable but positive way by focusing on your overall wellbeing as well as the chance to follow up on your progress.

To be continued….next week I will discuss further reasons you may not be losing weight

Aisling Murray has a Bachelor of Science in Nutrition and offers a one to one specialist nutrition service at Whelehans Pharmacy. Call Whelehans at 04493 34591 for an appointment