Training Tip Tuesdays with Karon Hawkins: #1 – The Golden Rule of Weight Loss

Here is the Golden Rule of Weight Loss: Caloric Deficit​. The first step to losing weight is
burning more calories than you consume. It’s as simple as that. Your diet is the majority of the battle. You can spend as many hours as you want exercising but, ultimately, how you eat will reflect how you look, how you feel and the results that you’ll be able to get from your health journey.

Having a mindset focused on the long-term for the changes we want to see in our bodies will allow us to gain them. This is why I referred to our exploration of the fitness world as a “journey.” ​It’s not about traveling from Point A to Point B. It’s about going from Point A to Point Z and tweaking our lifestyles along the way. Every strategy, diet, or exercise routine won’t work for everyone. A more custom, individualized approach is how you will get the weight loss you want.

Experiment and figure out what works for you. Everyone is different and everyone responds differently to certain foods and nutritional strategies. As long as you are burning more calories than you are consuming, the weight loss will happen.

A useful number for all of you out there is something called your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR). ​This number is essentially the amount of calories your body will burn if you do nothing all day. ​There are other variables included in the amount of calories you burn per day, such as your Physical Activity (exercise, gardening, doing chores around the house, etc) and Eating (your body uses energy to digest food!). However, the RMR comprises the largest amount of your Total Energy Expenditure (TEE)​.

The best results possible come from combining physical activity with sustainable eating and transforming it into something you actually enjoy and can stick with. Once you figure how to put the two together, you’re golden.

A great resource to calculate your TEE can be found at the USDA’s ChooseMyPlate.gov. It is a great starting point to find out how many calories you need to consume to maintain your current weight and to help build a new plan to get into that deficit.

You can also check out my video below. It will give you some tips on how to get into that caloric deficit and stay there for weight loss. It will also give you some general tips on turning fitness into a lifestyle!
Training Tip Tuesday #1: The Golden Rule of Weight Loss

Sources:
1. Mcmurray, R. G., Soares, J., Caspersen, C. J., & Mccurdy, T. (2014). Examining
Variations of Resting Metabolic Rate of Adults. Medicine & Science in Sports &
Exercise,46(7), 1352-1358. doi:10.1249/mss.0000000000000232

2. Ohkawara, K., Hikihara, Y., Matsuo, T., Melanson, E. L., & Hibi, M. (2012). Variable
factors of total daily energy expenditure in humans. The Journal of Physical Fitness and
Sports Medicine,1(3), 389-399. doi:10.7600/jpfsm.1.389

3. Weight Management Using Lifestyle Modification in the Prevention and Management of
Type 2 Diabetes: Rationale and Strategies. (2005). Clinical Diabetes,23(3), 130-136.
doi:10.2337/diaclin.23.3.130