A big portion of the audience that follows this page is skaters who are perhaps a little more seasoned and are finding skating at a later stage in their life. What usually comes with this scenario is a skater that is a little less conditioned, which goes hand in hand with carrying a little more weight. As we all know how much difference a few extra kgs can feel like when performing on the board, this one’s for you guys.

The first crucial piece of information we need to delve into when talking about weight loss is an understanding of energy balance. Energy balance simply refers to the relationship between the energy (food) coming into the body, vs the energy going out (activity). You may have also heard this same principle being expressed with the saying “Calories in VS Calories out”. What’s important to keep in mind here is that calories are simply a unit of measurement (like centimetres and metres) used to represent the energy equation going in and out of the body.

Now, the ‘calories in VS calories out’ equation is what we are trying to manipulate when we attempt to lose weight. In fact, it is the basis of each and every diet you have or will ever come across. It is not something that is up for debate, it is the law of thermodynamics and, like gravity, it is simply Fact. We must learn to manipulate it in our favour in order to drop weight. Essentially, we need to make adjustments in our nutrition in order to make the calories in be less than the calories out. This is what’s known as a Calorie Deficit.

So how do we do this?

This blog series will show you some simple and actionable steps in order to begin manipulating your daily/weekly nutrition and begin changing the equation in your favour. For best practice aim to layer only one step at a time. Setting habits through small, actionable steps is the key not only to success with weight loss, but also to keeping that weight off in the long term.

Layer 1: The food diary

Creating a food diary is one of the easiest and most effective ways to create a calorie deficit in someone’s diet. It is essentially bringing awareness to what you are having and when. In the majority, people simply have no idea of what they are eating which precedes a false assessment of our own diets, with us exclaiming how we “eat healthy all the time”.

It allows us to highlight things like those chips we stole off our kids, or the nightly dessert that seems to have crept into our evening meal, although my personal favourite is the “holy fuck, I didn’t realise I drank that much” moment! Creating a food diary allows us, for the first time, to see what we are actually doing as opposed to what we think we are doing.

How to do it:

• Set up a page in the Notes section of your phone
• Write the heading ‘Food Diary’ up top
• Write the date (continuing this for each new day)
• Then simply record anything and everything that you eat or drink (water not necessary) and the time you had it
• Do this continuously every day

At the end of the week, look back and begin to make some changes. What’s important here is that you choose the lowest hanging fruit. Don’t aim to change everything at once but rather make small, easy changes.

Some examples could be:

• Aim to drink alcohol 3 nights instead of 5
• Cut out dessert or limit to 2 nights a week
• Cut fizzy drinks or change to a zero-sugar version

Choose one and make this your weekly goal.

From here, you can begin to track your weight every week. For best results aim to weigh yourself 3 times a week, upon waking, and then take the average. This allows you to see the effect of the changes you are making.

Didn’t drop weight this week? Look back on your food diary and see how well you did at sticking to your goal. If you nailed it, set a new goal for the following week. Continue to do this until you begin to see the scale start to move in the direction you want.

If you did drop weight, you now have an opportunity to continue the same way for the following week and really ingrain this new habit, or set a new one and keep the party rolling. 

This constant feedback with the scales will continue with each and every new step we layer on so be consistent and remember to take a few measurements throughout the week at the same time of day in order to account for fluctuations from things like water, heavy meals, sodium levels, and, for women, your menstrual cycle, which can all have a big effect on the number on the scale.