Although the heat has already arrived, there is still a little margin until summer officially begins and the holidays arrive. In these moments in which we change our wardrobe and notice that the kilos gained during the winter mean that some of last year’s clothes no longer fit us, it is often tempting to resort to the famous miracle diets or slimming pills that promise to make us lose a lot of kilos in a few days despite the fact that we know that they do not work in the medium and long term. However, without falling into errors, still we can achieve changes with training and a proper diet between now and summer. We tell you about it with the help of Vitónica’s experts so you can get down to work starting today.
How much weight can I lose?
Very restrictive diets work at first and in the short term, since what they do is create a very high caloric deficit and make us lose fluids. This can translate into a weight loss on the scale during the first few days. The problem is that they are diets that are only sustainable in the short term because they do not generate adherence and usually lead to a huge rebound effect.
Combining diet and exercise, the weight you are going to lose between now and summer will depend a lot on the starting point where you are and your personal particularities. As a general rule, with an adequate diet in which a controlled caloric deficit is created, we continue to provide all the necessary nutrients and also create adherence, it is normal to lose between 0.5 and 1 kilo a week.
However, before letting ourselves be fascinated by the figure, we must bear in mind that not everything is so simple and weight loss is not usually linearRather, we tend to lose more weight during the first few weeks of training and dieting, only to hit some plateaus afterward that require us to make adjustments to both.
Also, a person’s weight can fluctuate on the same or adjacent days due to hormonal processes (especially in the case of women) and it is something totally normal. So, although the number on the scale is usually our reference value when assessing whether a diet and training work for us, it is not the best or the most important.
Other values such as percentage of body fat (which we can know through plyometrics or a bioimpedance scale), the amount of muscle mass or the visceral fat index are more interesting values to take into account. And it is that, with the same weight, two people can have a very different body composition.
How should your diet be?
In addition to creating a moderate caloric deficit (never below our daily caloric needs which, although they are individual for each person, are usually around 1,200 or 1,500 kilocalories) we must monitor the quality of those calories that we are ingesting. Only by opting for quality raw materials and leaving aside the ultra-processed ones is it very possible that we will lose weight.
Limit or eliminate in the best of cases the consumption of alcohol and controlling the amount of added sugar that we eat in our meals will also help us control our weight easily. In short: more food, less ultra-processed foods, less alcohol and a certain amount of control over the calories we eat. As always, the optimal thing is to go to a dietitian-nutritionist who can propose a personalized diet.
How should your training be?
We should prioritize strength training over long-duration cardio. And it is that, through training, what we are going to achieve are aesthetic improvements, more than a weight loss.
It may take more calories to do an hour of cardio than an hour of weights. The problem is that If we always do cardiovascular training, our body adapts becoming more efficient: after a short time you will need to increase the intensity of the exercise or the duration of it to expend the same calories that you consumed at the beginning.
With strength training, what we achieve is, with a proper diet in which we have an adequate supply of protein, to create muscle mass. This muscle mass will need energy during and after training to repair itself.Therefore, in the long term, strength training is more effective.
In case we want to perform a cardiovascular training, the most appropriate would be HIIT training (High Intensity Interval Training or high-intensity interval training). A combination of strength training + HIIT can be one of the best options to consider if what we want is to reduce our body fat.
Photos | unsplash