Rachel is 24. She works in a big city. She’s busy. She works hard and plays hard.
One day she noticed a bit of extra was building up. Extra weight that is. But she was perplexed, how had it happened? She didn’t eat to excess. She ate salads. Yes she enjoyed a glass of wine but who doesn’t at her age?
So after our conversation, she looked at her behaviours with food and drink. In the following analysis it’s safe to assume that Rachel eats enough food to give her the energy she needs for everyday life. About 2000 calories per day.
It turns out people bring cake to work. All the time. Almost every day. Birthdays, Anniversarys, Fridays, fun days. It was almost any and every excuse/reason was used to bring cake to work. And it would be rude not to eat it, right?
How much cake? A slice, a cupcake, a bun. Let’s say on average each one had about 250 calories in it. This is probably less than reality. So one cake five days a week, thats 250 x 5 = 1250. Over 8 days thats 250 x 8 = 2000 calories.
As a general guidleine it seems to be accepted that women need about 2000 calories per day. So this cake habit means one extra day’s calorific intake for a woman every 8 days. Over three months that’s 11 days extra calories. That’s quite a lot.
Then she looked at wine. Wine had become a regular habit. Weekends would see serious drinking, but everyday there was some. Let’s say a couple of glasses.
That’s about 350 calories minimum. Five days a week. So 350 x 5 = 1750 extra calories a week. Or put another way over 6 days, that’s 350 x 6 = 2100 calories, or an extra day’s calories per 6 days. And that’s not counting the extra drinking at the weekend.
All of a sudden the cause of the extra weight came clearly into view. It made perfect sense. The cakes and the wine. And there was probabaly other areas to consider.
That’s the thing about the beach diet, when you look at behaviours the causes of weight gain usually come clearly into view. They stare at you. They are obvious. You cannot avoid them. Well you can, but it’s harder to fool yourself.
Rachel made some behavioural changes with some medium term goals. She stopped most of the cakes, not all, but most. She stopped most of the wine mid week, not all, but most. And guess what? The weight fell off. It toook time, but it happened.