[emily1]

Hi, I had a BMI of 24 and I dropped 2kg/month until I lost 8kg. Now my BMI is 21.3 and my weight loss has stopped! im so frustrated.

This is what I eat:
breakfast: 1 banana and some raisins
lunch: 80g protein, 50g starch, 160g veg
snacks: 2 fruit
dinner: 80g protein, 160g veg

and, due to work, i only exercise about twice a week now. do you think it's slowed down because i've stopped exercising?

and do you think its better to exercise morning, evening or either it doesnt matter?

[Mayuri]

Hi Emily.

You're right, you can increase your metabolic rate by exercising more. You can also increase it by making sure you eat whenever you are hungry.

If you allow yourself to go hungry or feel starved, then your body will think there's a famine on, and start storing fat as an emergency stores. It will also slow down your metabolic rate so it doesn't deplete too much energy before it can refuel.

By making sure you eat as soon as you're hungry, you let your body start to work in an optimal way again and your metabolic rate will increase again.

Remember also that exercise simply means moving your body more. All you have to do is move your body more than you are doing currently, and anything extra that you do will mean you burn more calories!

So what else could you do that involved moving your body more ie that gets your heart working a bit faster or you breathing deeper?

One of the easiest ways I found to get in more exercise (I had a long-term knee injury that meant I couldn't do the kind of high-impact intense exercise I used to do before) was simply to buy a pedometer and go for a walk in the park every day. Just 3 times round the park every morning or at lunch, listening to my ipod, and I was doing 10,000 steps - brilliant for weight loss! (I dropped 3 dress sizes in just a few weeks!)

Hope this helps!

Mayuri.