5 important facts about weight loss

I have noticed that I have been asked a lot of questions in the "weight loss" department by my lovely students. Hereby some important facts if you want to lose some weight and keep yourself in shape:

1. Cardio is overated in weight loss.
    I always hear people saying, "do cardio if you want to lose weight...". Sure, cardio exercices help in weight loss, but it is overated. When you start a new cardio exercice, you may notice a result, but your body is such a precise machine, after a while, it will adjust itself to burn a minimum carlories when you do the same cardio exercice.
    The best thing to do is to vary exercices and do HIIT (hight intensity interval training), you will see that will save you a large amount of time (HIIT takes 15-20 min) and give you a much better result.
    A lot of women avoid weight lift, big mistake!! Weight lift is SUPER important in weight loss (see fact 4).

2. You can't spot reduce.
    One of the most asked question in my classes is "how can I make my waist/tighs/butt smaller?"
The fact is that you can't "sport reduce" when you lose weight, your body decide where to shred... and usually the belly part is hard to lose because the fat there is important for your survive; vice versa fat on your face for instant is not vital for your survive so it comes off first when you lose weight
    Also genetic plays an important role as well, if you natually have strong calves, they will get thinner when you lose weight overall but you can't expect the spot reduce on your calves only...
    Some spot exercices help you to redefine your body when you lose weight, I always recommand Pilates to my students.

3. If you don't eat enough, you won't lose weight (or worse, you gain weight)
    Lots of girls make the mistake to eat very very little to keep their weight and most of the time, the result is not ideal and they start to have some negative effect such as lack of concentration, dizziness during workout and deterioration of the quality of their skin/hair/nails.
   The reason is simple, when you don't eat enough your body shut down the metabolism to be in a "starving mode". Another problem with reducing food to lose weight is that you have to eat less and less if you want to keep the weight off. This is also the reason of "yo-yo" weight.

4. You may gain weight and lose size.
    Muscle is not lighter than fat!!! Only 1kg of muscle has less volum than 1kg of fat. A toned 60kg lady (at 1.65m) looks slimmer than a non-toned one, and in term of clothing size, you will see a difference as well...
    As mentioned in fact 1, weight lift is important in weight loss. Same weight of muscle burns more calories than the same amount of fat! So don't skip weight lift in your workut routine...
    And your best friend during your weight loss combat shouldn't be a balance, but a mesurement tape... lots of peple only trust their balance and neglect the fact that they may gain muscles and keep the same weight, but cm comes off from the waist/hips...

5. To keep the weight off, change your diet!
    Diet plays an important role in weight loss. Your body has a PH value, and the food you eat determine this value. Most of the people who have weight problem have a PH value too acid. A healthy body should have a PH value neutral (7). There's a category of food called "alkalin food" which helps to keep your bodie's PH neutral and your weight stable.
    Some examples of alkalin food:

• lime
• grapefruit
• courgette and most of green veggies
• almond

I will try to put on more recipes based on alkalin food in the futur. In the meanwhile, keep working it, girls!
:-) xoxo