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Do you tend to eat on a regular schedule each day or do you find yourself grazing your way through the day, eating at different times each day? A research study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition compared the effects of a normal eating schedule with a random, grazing style of eating. The women in the study who ate at fixed, routine times each day burned more calories after each meal than women who ate unscheduled meals randomly throughout the day. Additionally, the women who ate regularly had lower peaks in insulin levels after meals, suggesting the possibility of better insulin control when eating regularly.

While it was a small study, it raises some thoughts about the benefits of an eating routine or schedule. Random eating times and grazing can set you up to consume more calories through mindless eating. Having a routine makes it easier to plan ahead and be prepared with healthier options to eat.

Need another reason to implement an eating schedule or routine? Having a plan in place for eating behaviors helps facilitate greater weight management success. Afterall, healthy habits don’t just happen–they take effort and planning.

At Vtrim, we distinguish programmed exercise from lifestyle exercise very clearly.  However, both play an important role in lifelong weight management.  Programmed exercise is exercise you do specifically for weight control.  You plan it into your day and you take time to burn calories.  That calorie burn, along with a reduced-calorie intake, creates the calorie deficit necessary for weight loss.  Regular exercise is critical to keeping weight off.  People in Vtrim build up slowly to burning 2000 calories per week (20 miles of walking) through programmed exercise.  Think walking, biking, swimming…

But what about lifestyle exercise?  What is it and how does it fit into  a weight management program? Lifestyle exercise represents the choices you make to be more active on a daily basis.  Think, stairs instead of elevator, parking farther away, raking leaves, walking to the store instead of driving.  All of these choices add up to burning more calories than if you had chosen their sedentary counterpart, elevator instead of stairs, park in the closest spot, pay the neighbor to rake your leaves, drive .25 mile to the store.

Think of lifestyle exercise as insurance.  You will NEVER be 100% accurate in calculating exactly how many calories you are eating and how many you are burning through exercise.  But just the act of recording in a food journal gets you closer to your actuals.  Lifestyle exercise covers this margin of error.  By moving more on a daily basis you are making up for the inevitable errors of journaling.  It is a fact that people underestimate what they eat and typically overestimate the calories burned through exercise.

Take stock of your daily routine.  Do you value “efficiency” over moving more?  This can be deceiving.  You’ll typically beat people waiting for the elevator when you take the stairs to the lower floors.  It is always a good feeling to make it to your destination at the same time as those who rode up but you burned a few extra calories to boot.

Don’t underestimate the importance of lifestyle exercise and get creative with new ways to move more throughout the day.  We like creative out of the box ideas.  Taking the stairs instead of the elevator is tried and true.  But, do you have any unique suggestions you’d like to share?

We at Vtrim were not surprised by the latest study in the New England Journal of Medicine that concluded, “Reduced-calorie diets result in clinically meaningful weight loss regardless of which macronutrients they emphasize.”  In other words no matter what your diet consists of, be it low fat, high protein or low carb, reducing calories on a regular basis is what leads to weight loss.

This has been the Vtrim mantra since day one.  It’s all about calories in and calories out.  You need to create a calorie deficit in order to lose weight.  The most sustainable way to do this is to decrease your food intake and ramp up your exercise expenditure.  The kicker is YOU decide what you eat.  Of course, we encourage eating a healthy, balanced diet in line with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans but ultimately it is your choice to eat what you want within your calorie goal.  Eat less and move more will achieve weight loss regardless of your diet composition.  Your heart won’t appreciate a diet high in saturated fat but your heart health and your weight loss are not one in the same.  Best to do both but it is not necessary for weight loss.

Principal Investigator Dr. Frank Sacks of Harvard said a restricted calorie diet gives people greater food choices which makes the diet less tedious and boring.  We agree wholeheartedy.  You need to find what is going to work for you in the context of your life.  A reduced calorie diet puts the onus on you to eat within your weight loss calorie goal.  If you are making choices that work for you, the chances of sustaining those behavior changes is greater.  Eat less and move more is a very simple concept that once again has been backed by scientifc study.  We at Vtrim know that simple concepts aren’t alwasy easy to consistently implement.  That is why group support within a program can be so beneficial to staying the course when you’d rather hang a hard left.  Check out what Vtrim has to offer.  Our methodolgy mirrors what the NEJM article says is most effective for weight loss.  Bottom line: Eat less, move more!