14th October 2013 - Q and A

So I sent out an Instagram post asking if you would like me to answer any of your questions to which I got some replies. So here goes;

1. How many calories did you eat and how much did you exercise when you first started losing weight? by @ladyleahlincoln
Okay, gonna be honest and say I did way too much cardio and ate way too little. When I was really serious about it, I was eating about 1200-1400 calories a day and doing over an hour of cardio a day, with maybe a rest day a week. I was pushing myself way too hard and it really didn't do me any good. As soon as I stopped doing that, I put about 5lbs back on.
Now, I'm doing weights, eating 1700-2000 calories and doing HIIT cardio 2-3 times a week and feeling much healthier and stronger.

2.What's been the hardest part to get rid of? I've also lost 25lbs and I am at my dream weight but I can't get rid of my stomach which always makes me feel like I'm still fat! by @amara_s
I totally know how you feel. Around my midriff or my stomach is definitely the last place to lose it for me too. The problem is, you can't spot reduce areas of fat on your body, you have to just lower your body fat percentage overall and that's why it's so important to eat clean to get rid of these problem areas. Remember ABS ARE MADE IN THE KITCHEN!

3. Sometimes you don't seem to eat a lot of food, would you be interested in doing a collage of what you eat in a day? by @choosingclean
You're right, it looks like I don't eat a lot because I don't post everything I eat. I post my main meals but I'm basically always snacking on nuts, grapes etc. I also take way too many teaspoons of peanut butter during the day hehe. But my metabolism stays up this way, I don't think people would be interested in a handful of nuts every couple of hours though, I try to keep Instagram as interesting as possible.

4. How much and what do you have on a cheat day? I want to know how much is too much. by @the_pledge
Okay this has changed a lot over the past couple of years for me. More recently, when planning my cheats to one night a week, I don't limit myself. The point of it is that I know during the week I can have what I want that one night so I think limiting myself would defeat the purpose of the idea of cheating (my personal opinion anyway). Even more recently, I've been having healthy 'cheats' where I basically eat as much of the healthy foods as I like. For example, natural popcorn, natural peanut butter, bananas, dates etc. And I much much prefer this type of cheat because I know I'm getting the goodness in but I'm still getting the refeed kind of feeling you get from cheating.

5. I work out and I have a balanced diet although I don't lose weight, what can I do? by @maria_delelec
Well this is a bit of a broad question to be honest! What you need to do is educate yourself on proper eating and nutrition and incorporate effective workouts in to your routine, not just running on a treadmill for an hour, that will not do much in the long run. Honestly I can't answer this question, it's way too broad and it depends on yourself personally, everyone is different. I'd google proper nutrition and perhaps a beginners weight training scheme to start :)

6. I have an eating disorder and haven't worked out for three weeks! I'm going nuts that I can't work out and am being treated in a hospital soon due to my eating and excessive workouts. I'm only on 600 calories and under a day because I'm under strict orders not to move around. What can I eat that will help my stomach be flatter? Any tips on what you think I should do? by @francescapetropoulos
Thanks for confiding in me of your ED and I'm really sorry to hear you're struggling. I know my advice is not very loud compared to others but you need to focus on overcoming your ED and getting healthy. Having a flat stomach does not mean the whole world and there's much more benefits of living a healthy, active lifestyle, eating lots of nutritious, high calorie foods than restricting yourself. You only get one body and you're malnourishing it and mistreating it by eating so little and working out so much. I know I'm probably not the first to tell you and I know you might not listen but if there's anything I can do to try and punch it in to your head that having an ED and eating that little a day is not good for you then I will. Please realise healthy is sexy, fit is sexy. Super skinny is not. I hope you recover and I send love to you.

7. Do you have any ideas for what I can eat for lunch? Because I can't find anything interesting to eat and then I start to binge eat. by @tinap0408
I get you. Lunch is a difficult one for me too, I much prefer breakfast and dinner. Honestly, recently I've not been having lunch and just eating smaller portions of food every hour or so inbetween breakfast and dinner like bananas, nuts etc. But if you want to have a meal, try making a nice pasta (spinach and pine nut pasta is so good and different) or make your sandwiches more adventurous with different types of meat. Also, try new things like hummus if you haven't or lamb/duck meat etc. I try to think of lunch as just another dinner and try to get lots of protein in!

8. What are some exercises to get ride of or tone love handles? by @mikastuckey
Well I kind of touched on this above on one of the other questions. Unfortunately, you cannot pick an area and reduce the amount of fat from that area even if you did 1000 different variations of crunches a day. What you have to do is lower your body fat percentage which is done by eating right (lots of good proteins and fats) and doing effective cardio workouts (like HIIT, weight training etc). Unfortunately, you need to keep eating right and working out, you cannot pick and choose where you would like to lose the weight sadly.

9. I love to eat healthy but I always seem to steer in the direction of binge eating unhealthy foods! How do you cope with this? by @daniwenger10
Again, touched on this in one of the other questions but I found that making one day a week where I could cheat and eat what I wanted allowed me to focus on eating healthy the rest of the week and I knew that I'd have 6/7 days completely clean. As we all know, it's about eating clean 80%-90% of the time, noone expects you to eat clean 100% of the time, it's pretty impossible, there's gonna be slip ups. I've also recently, for my cheat days, allowed myself as much healthy 'cheats' as I like. This involves lots of banana and granola eating and lots of popcorn haha! You just need to push through the temptation.

10. Is it absolutely essential that I keep track of how much kcal I burn per day, hence buying a new HRM? by @syarinahabd
I think yes and no to this question. I think in cardio terms, it's not important. The amount of calories you burn is not really important, it's about the quality of the cardio. For example, doing 20 minutes of high intensity interval training has shown to be much much more effective than spending an hour doing a fitness class/running on a treadmill. Obviously, you burn more calories in the hour but with the 20 minute HIIT session, your body continues to burn calories for 24-48 hours later and your metabolism is high at that time so it's much better.
But, in terms of weight training, I prefer to have my HRM because I can see how well I'm performing. I can tell when I'm slacking and when I've pushed myself so it helps me in that term.


So guys, thanks if you read that all it's just a tad lengthy haha. I will say this on my Instagram but if you have any other questions you would like me to answer just let me know and I will. I know it's always good to have someone who has been through it answer so just comment on my instagram post about this and I will answer in another blog post.
Thanks to @ladyleahlincoln, @amara_s, @choosingclean, @the_pledge, @maria_delelec, @francescapetropoulos, @tinap0408, @mikastuckey, @daniwenger10 and @syarinahabd for the questions :)