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How To Eat Clean And Lose Weight With Whey Protein Shakes
Losing weight and looking lean sounds like a piece of cake to beginners. I started my weight loss journey thinking it was easy. Boy, was I wrong! Read on to find out what happened...
I went online and read a few weight loss articles that say that as long as you burn more calories than you consume, you WILL lose weight. Doesn't that sound simple? Yet, why are so many people still finding it hard to lose weight? There has to be something more...so I kept on researching.
Starvation Diets DON'T Work
I soon discovered that those starvation diets didn't work! Or they worked for a while...but such diets are just not sustainable. Sooner or later, those on a starvation diet will binge and put back on all the weight that they had lost.
So it's not as easy as calculating the amount of calories I consume and the amount of calories I burned. Then as I did more research, I soon uncovered lots of mind boggling formulas - BMR, BMI, Body Fat Composition, Nutrition planning, etc. All involves some kind of calculation.
I mean, hey, I though I'm supposed to be working out and losing weight. Who would've thought I would end up doing MATHS?!? Seriously, some of these calculations are just mind boggling. So I decided to forget about all that stuff, and just GET TO WORK.
Weight loss journey starts
I started my weight loss journey by trying to lose as much fat as possible. I learned from the Internet that cardio will help me burn fat. And I did have quite a bit of fat around my waistline to burn. So I picked running.
I ran 3 to 5 times a week. At first, running was REALLY hard. I couldn't even slow jog for 20 minutes continuously. Then I started getting stronger and better, and after 8 weeks, I could run 45 minutes to an hour continuously.
Obviously, I lost A LOT of weight. I went down from 73kg right down to 66kg. That's a lot of weight to lose.
Unfortunately, it was too good to last. It was a HUGE mistake to be doing so much cardio. I lost a lot of fat. But in the process, I realized that I also lost a lot of muscles. That's the reason why my overall weight plummeted.
In fact, my body was in a catabolic state for so much time that my health started to suffer.
Well, I thought exercising will give me MORE energy, not less. So who knew my health could be getting from bad to worse with intense cardio?
I knew I had to change my training routine and diet.
Putting on muscle.
This time round, I focused more on building lean muscle mass AND burning fat at the same time.
To build up lean muscle mass, I consumed a lot more protein and started taking whey protein shakes.
To burn fat, I continued doing my cardio but I cut down A LOT. Instead of a 60 minute session, I reduced it to a 30 minute session. I then spent more time on weight training to stimulate my muscles for growth.
I did this for about 12 weeks or so and realized that I had a significant weight gain. From 66kg, my weight shot up to 70kg, and stayed there. My upper body strength increased tremendously, and I was no longer feeling tired all the time. In fact, I felt A LOT better.
I can only attribute the results that I'm getting from eating cleaner. You see, in order to build muscles and burn fat at the same time, I need to eat lots of protein and stay away from sugar and fat. That's the definition of eating clean, so let me repeat: STAY AWAY FROM SUGARS AND FAT!
So how to go about eating more protein while avoiding sugar and fat?
I tried eating chicken breast meat that is either boiled or steamed. That is clean protein with zero fat and sugar. That worked for a while. But I soon got bored with just eating chicken breast.
So I experimented with other protein sources such as fish, lean pork and eggs. And as long as I stuck to boiling and steaming, I find that I didn't put on any extra fat and my body fat percentage kept going down. It was at 18%. Then it went down to 15%, and now it's at 12.5%.
Also, I noticed that as long as I continued drinking soft drinks, I had trouble lowering my body fat percentage. Even one a day is too much! So I reduced to only 1 soft drink every 3 days. I didn't want to completely eliminate soft drinks from my diet suddenly. Perhaps I can really get rid of them in the near future.
It's not just about working out.
So you see, in order to get lean, it's not just about the workout. A big part of the process comes from your nutrition. If you can't eat clean, forget about having a lean body with 6 pack abs. A single can of soft drink can undo all the hard work you put in a 15 minute run.
You have to remember that it's harder to burn calories than it is to put on calories. I mean, how long does it take you to consume 500 calories? You can easily eat an oily meal and take in 700 calories in 20 minutes. But to burn 700 calories, you need to workout for 2 hours. That's just going to put too much stress on your body.
So stay away from all fatty, oily and sugary foods. Eat plenty of clean proteins as well as vegetables. A side note: fruits may contain more sugars than you know and may not be good for you. Whey protein shakes is probably one of the cleanest sources of protein you can get.
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