Weight loss has always been a hotly debated topic, but when it comes to keeping the weight off, it’s important to establish a weight loss management plan that you can sustain. This includes a combination of a healthy, nutrient-rich diet and consistent physical exercise. Overcommitting and setting unrealistic goals isn’t conducive to weight management longevity. Instead, it’s the small but achievable lifestyle changes that will provide a foundation for long-term success in both weight loss and weight maintenance. In the below guide, F45 shares their expert advice in weight loss management using a holistic balance of F45 workouts and dietary modifications.
What is weight loss management?
Weight loss management focuses not only on the short-term goal of weight loss, but rewiring your habits and making incremental changes to your lifestyle so that you avoid regaining weight in the long-term. We can split weight loss management into two stages: weight loss and weight maintenance. To understand these phases, we’ll first need to look at the ways our body expends energy. This can include:
- High-intensity physical exercise: cardio, resistance training, playing sport, etc.
- Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT): walking, typing, gardening, fidgeting
- Maintaining homeostasis: the normal function of organ systems –breathing, regulating body temperature, circulation, etc.
For effective weight loss, your energy expenditure needs to be higher than your energy intake (the food you consume)3 – this is commonly referred to as a ‘calorie deficit’. For weight maintenance post-weight loss, your energy intake and energy expenditure should be equal.4 Lifestyle adjustments through diet and increased physical activity can result in weight loss, but these alterations need to be maintained to manage your weight loss.
Taking a holistic approach to weight loss
Approaching your weight loss from a holistic standpoint by combining diet, exercise and manageable lifestyle changes is more likely to yield positive, long-term results. While diet accounts for a large percentage of weight loss5, weight regain is less likely to occur when combined with a consistent, sustainable workout routine.6 There are so many health benefits to physical exercise outside of weight loss, including strengthening and toning muscles, better aerobic and anerobic fitness, improved sleep and mood and safeguarding your body against injury.7 It’s important to remember that when you experience rapid weight loss, either through crash dieting or weight loss medication, you lose both fat and muscle. It’s your muscles that burn kilojoules, so when you resume your typical eating habits, your body will burn fewer calories than before.8 This can result in more weight gain if you don’t have a weight loss maintenance plan in place.
Tips for long-term weight management
Behavior and lifestyle modifications are the key to weight loss maintenance. We recommend entering into your plan with clear, realistic objectives, while remembering to be kind to yourself if or when you deviate. A healthy diet and a mixture of high and low-intensity exercise will be your tools for weight management longevity. Below, we will take you through some nutritional tips and F45 workouts that you can integrate into your plan.
Cardio workouts
For adults aged 18 to 64, it is recommended that you perform 2.5 to 5 accumulated hours of moderate physical activity per week or 1.25 to 2.5 accumulated hours of high-intensity physical activity per week (or an equivalent combination of both).9 Ideally, this should also be spread over the course of the week to minimise sedentary time. For some, this may feel difficult to achieve, which is where the community and qualified instructors at F45 step in. Several 45-minute cardio workouts can help you smash this goal with explosive movements that target all areas of the body.
Strength training
Like we touched on before, strength training is an essential component of any weight loss management plan, and you should aim to perform strength training exercises at least 2 days per week.10 F45 resistance workouts are designed to help you build lean muscle mass to mitigate muscle loss caused by rapid weight loss. This increased muscle also protects your bones and joints from injury, which is particularly beneficial as we age. Our resistance workouts are led by experts, giving you full-body resistance training to help strengthen and tone your muscles, and encourage the body to burn more calories post-workout when the body is performing lower-impact movements and basic life-sustaining functions (homeostasis).
Eat a balanced diet and avoid ‘elimination’
Bad diet habits, such as fad dieting and elimination of food groups, are generally not sustainable long-term. While a reduced intake of sugar, saturated fats and alcohol will be beneficial to your overall health, cutting out food groups completely can present challenges later when they are re-introduced into your diet. Using a ‘reward’ system or adopting negative words like ‘cheat’ can demonise certain foods and trigger an unhealthy cycle. Instead, we recommend that you eat a balanced diet of high-fibre, nutrient-dense foods and minimise the consumption of processed foods. When making alterations to your diet as part of your weight management program, we suggest seeking professional advice from a qualified dietician.
If you’re ready to kick start your weight loss management plan, visit an F45 studio today.
1 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1521690X02902277
2 www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK559138/
3, 4 www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/weight-loss-a-healthy-approach
5 www.medicinenet.com/is_it_true_weight_loss_is_80_diet_and_20_exercise/article.htm
6 www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK221839/
7 www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/HealthyLiving/exercise-programs
8 www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/weight-loss-a-healthy-approach
9 www.health.gov.au/topics/physical-activity-and-exercise/physical-activity-and-exercise-guidelines-for-all-australians
10 www.health.gov.au/topics/physical-activity-and-exercise/physical-activity-and-exercise-guidelines-for-all-australians
