Going Down Two Sizes

Going Down Two Sizes

When you are losing weight, there will come a beautiful time were you have to go down in dress size. I recently went from a UK size 14 to 10. That means that a lot of my old dresses are too big now. So I’ve asked my lovely mother to fit them down to my current size.

This is a dress from Dorothy Perkins I bought in the start of January 2015, not thinking about my weight loss journey at all. When I got the dress, it was already a bit too big, especially in the bust and waist. Now, months later, I want to use this dress for a friend’s wedding. So my mom fitted the dress down from UK size 14 to 10. The two pictures to the left are from the original size 14 and the two to the right, is after it has been fitted down. In all, the dress lost 12 centimeters around the bust, wait and hips. Uh, and 8 centimeters around the arms. I am so happy! Now it fits perfectly and I love it. A big thank you to my lovely mom! <3

Use yourself as Motivation for your Weight loss!

Use yourself as Motivation for your Weight loss!

When I decided to lose weight, I immediately found some old photos of myself from a time were I had much more confidence and was happy with my body and how I looked.

I’ve used this photo as my wallpaper many times, to keep reminding myself what I’m striving for.

I think that when you’re on a weight loss journey, it’s crucial to be motivated and inspired. An old photo of yourself from a time were you had a weight that you felt great, confident and happy about is the best motivator you can find. I’ve read and heard many times that it’s a good thing to visualize what you will look like when you have reached desired weight – what better way to do this, than an old photo of yourself? Then you already know that you are capable of achieving your goal. You also know that your body has been at that desired size before. For me, that has made it a lot easier. Certainly a lot more relatable than a random photo of a beautiful fit woman hanging on my fridge.

Exercise should be Fun!

Exercise should be Fun!

Exercising and working out is supposed to be fun and challenge at the same time! I’m having so much fun working out and trying new things.

If you don’t think working out if fun, try to find some music that you like with a happy and upbeat beat. Or try working out to a video to mix things up.

I’ve almost reached my goal!!

How to Calculate Calories for Weight loss

How to Calculate Calories for Weight loss

When you have decided that you want to lose weight, it is a good thing to start out by calculating your calorie requirement per day to find out how much of a deficit you will need for your weight loss.

I’ll try to keep this short and simple, so it is easy to understand for everybody.

1st – Calculating your BMR

The first thing to do, is to calculate your BMR, which is short for Basal Metabolic Rate. It is the amount of energy or calories your body burns just by being alive (and doing nothing). To find your BMR you can use an online calculator which uses your height, weight, age and gender. Please note that it is only an estimate.

I used this calculator from MyFitnessPal or you can simply use another site, just search for ‘BMR calculator’.

My BMR is currently at 1391 calories/day. This is how many calories I’m burning just by doing nothing. Now we have to know our total daily calorie requirement, which is also how many calories we will need to maintain our current weight.

2nd – Calculating your total daily calorie requirement

For this step you have to take your BMR number and multiply it with your level of activity. The level of activity is how much exercise you are doing right now and planning for your weight loss.

Level of exercise Multiply factor
Rarely 1.2
1-3 days per week 1.375
3-5 days per week 1.55
6-7 days per week 1.725
Every day or often twice a day 1.9

For me, I exercise 1-3 days per week at the lowest. I like to pick the lowest because on weeks where I get in more exercise I’ll just have a bigger deficit than planned. Anyway, you have to take your BMR  number and multiply it with the factor for the level of exercise.

For me, the calculation would look like this: 1391 calories x 1.375 = 1913 calories/day.

That means that my total daily calorie requirement is 1913 calories I would need to eat in a day to maintain my current weight.

But because we want to lose weight, we go to step #3.

3rd – Creating the right Calorie deficit for you

In this step you have to think hard about how fast you want to lose weight. Please don’t just pick the fastest way, for many people that doesn’t work or last for long. I think it is better to pick a normal steady peace and lose weight in a healthy way. But it is your body, so it’s all up to you.

Daily Calorie Requirement 10% Caloric Deficit 20% Caloric Deficit 25% Caloric Deficit
2000 calories/day 200 calorie deficit = 1800 calories/day 400 calorie deficit = 1600 calories/day 500 calorie deficit = 1500 calories/day
2500 calories/day 250 calorie deficit = 2250 calories/day 500 calorie deficit = 2000 calories/day 625 calorie deficit = 1875 calories/day
3000 calories/day 300 calorie deficit = 2700 calories/day 600 calorie deficit = 2400 calories/day 750 calorie deficit = 2250 calories/day
3500 calories/day 350 calorie deficit = 3150 calories/day 700 calorie deficit = 2800 calories/day 875 calorie deficit = 2625 calories/day
4000 calories/day 400 calorie deficit = 3600 calories/day 800 calorie deficit = 3200 calories/day 1000 calorie deficit = 3000 calories/day

As you can see on the table, the higher daily calorie requirement you have, the greater the deficit will be to lose weight. The percentage of the calorie deficit also decides how long it will take you to lose weight. You can calculate your own deficit based on the table like this:

[your daily calorie requirement] x [percentage caloric deficit] / 100 = your calorie deficit.

Then take your calorie deficit and subtract from your daily calorie requirement like this:

[your daily calorie requirement] – [your calorie deficit] = how many calories you can eat per day.

Just to show you an example, my calorie deficit equation would look like this:

1913 x 25 / 100 = 478 calorie deficit and then it would be 1913 – 478 = 1435 calories that I can eat per day.

Your calorie deficit should be from both exercise and diet. There is two ways to make a calorie deficit and that’s by ‘saving’ the calories (not consuming them) and by burning them (exercise). For a healthy weight loss it is recommended that your deficit should be from both exercise and diet. That means from my 478 calorie deficit which I have, I can choose to either save them or burn them. I do a combination of both and how I do that is by only consuming my 1435 calories per day and then on days where I exercise and burn more calories, I consume more calories than on days where I don’t work out.

Let me explain:

Days where I don’t work out (rest days) – Consuming: 1435 calories.

Days where I work out – Depending on how many calories I burn, I can eat half of the calories I burned as extra calories for that day. Like, If I burned 300 calories form exercise a day, I would eat 150 calories extra that day. That is because when you exercise your body needs more energy to keep going. You can eat all the calories which you burned without gaining weight, I just like to only consume half.

Now, I can’t give you an estimate in days, but I can tell you that, the lower the percentage is the slower/longer your weight loss process is going to take and the higher the percentage the faster it will go. You can adjust the percentage to your liking depending on how much of a deficit you want. Again, please don’t just opt for the fastest way. It really depends on how much you weigh from the beginning. You can always change your deficit, if you feel that you need to eat more calories or less, just remember that eating more will result in a slower process and eating less in a faster process.

Please don’t eat under 1200 calories for women and 1500 calories for men. This is the absolute lowest calorie intake we need to keep our body healthy. The National Institutes of Health recommends eating between 1000-1200 calories for women and 1200-1500 calories for men. If you eat less calories than this recommendation, it can lead to dizziness and unpleasant side effects. What is worst, is the fact that eating less calories than needed won’t help you lose weight, but you’ll actually gain weight.

I recommend that once a month you look at your current weight and calculate your calories, just to see if your on track or you need to adjust your deficit. Remember to listen to your body, if you feel hungry at the end of the day, maybe eat a few more calories and if you want, you can add in some more exercise to burn more calories.

4th – Keep going!

Remember that weight loss is 80% diet and 20% exercise, so you have to get in some exercise and eat healthy.

I want to mention that I’m not a doctor or an expert in this field whatsoever! This is just what has been working for me and it might or might not work for you. I would strongly advice you to contact your doctor or a fitness/health expert especially if your weight loss is of greater scale!

This only functions as a guide. I recommend reading more on the subject by searching on Google (or another search engine).

I do hope it helps somebody out there.

I feel so confident!

I feel so confident!

Since I’ve lost weight I feel so much more confident than I was before. Today I did a workout with my mom and we had so much fun!

We also filmed some part of our training and I’ll post that very soon. I’ll also be doing a more detailed video about my workouts with my mom in the near future. And here’s some more ‘model’-like pictures of me. I really love these! It was so much fun and I feel like I just realized that I’m pretty, lol. Actually, it’s more that I feel pretty.