A great misconception about losing weight is that, in order to do so, you have to dramatically cut calories.
A lot of people work on the basis that to achieve your ideal body and weight, you have to restrict your calorie intake. But fitness bloggers on Instagram are increasingly warning against being too restrictive with what you eat.
More often than not, we rely on a weight scale to tell us whether or not were healthy. And for more reasons than one, using your weight as a reference point to how fit you are is wrong.
And this woman shows us why.
Enter Sarah Puhto – she’s urging people to stop obsessively cutting calories in order to lose weight, after realising it was actually hampering her fitness goals.
Yesterday, the fitness blogger shared a side-by-side picture that showed her body last year when she restricted herself to fewer than 1,000 calories a day and weighed 54kg (8st 5lbs), beside her body now, when she’s eating between 2,000 and 3,000 calories a day and weighs 57kg (8st 9lbs).
The difference in weight is minimal, but the difference in her body and attitude are huge.
Puhto explains that she ‘didn’t think it mattered’ what she ate as long as it added up to fewer than 1,000 calories a day. She wrote: “This mindset was so messed up, I thought I would be happy if I ate less, weighed less and hit my goal weight of 50kg. But the less I ate the more unhappy I got with myself.”
In her Instagram posts, she said:
I would start weighing myself everyday and it became a really bad addiction.
When I felt hunger pains and when I was eating less than 1000 calories I thought I was doing ‘a good job’.
So in January this year, she decided she had to change her views on food. After realising her extreme diet was causing her body to go into starvation mode, she switched to a vegan diet and upped her calorie intake, saying her crash diet was ‘only a quick fix to losing weight and you’ll eventually gain fat back by eating junk food since your body is lacking food and craves junk.’
She estimates that she now weighs around 57kg but says she’s not sure because ‘I don’t weigh myself anymore, I don’t let numbers dictate how I feel about myself anymore. I just go on how I feel mentally, and I feel amazing!’
Her advice? ‘Don’t let numbers get you down and define you. Don’t go on some silly starvation diet- it won’t work in the long run. Food is meant to fuel you, not make you upset.’
That’s a lesson a lot of men and women could use.
