Weight loss fads may come and go, but in the end, your weight is determined by the difference between the number of calories you consume and the number of calories of energy you use.  

Healthy eating shouldn't be about sacrificing the pleasure that you get from food. If you create healthy meals that taste great, then it is going to be a lot easier to embrace changes to your diet.

Even the super fit, like X-Weighted's very own Mr Paul Plakas crave unhealthy foods from time to time. "My absolute favourite food is pizza. Seriously, I'm a big fan of pizza and if I had to only eat one food for the rest of my life it would be that," says Paul. He also admits to loving chocolate, especially a scoop of chocolate gelato on a hot summer's day.

In the Daniel episode of X-Weighted Families, we saw Dr Macklin explain to Daniel's family the connection between diet and ADD/ ADHD. In recent years, there has been a large body of research saying that the symptoms of ADD and ADHD can be lessened by changing what we are feeding our children and introducing more essential fatty acids in to their diets.

Now that we've announced the winners of the X-Weighted National Challenge, the blog is set to go quiet for the next few months. Although the blog posts will still change every day, we will be recycling content from the past 10 months. 

Paul Plakas will be stopping by the Vancouver YWCA National Challenge final weigh-in on Saturday at 2:30pm. Please come on by and say hi!

Do you think that when women get older they need to cut their hair short?

Dear Paul, how and where can I get my true body fat measured? I am hovering at the same weight but am seeing results (in my clothing, strength and appearance) but I want to get a true reading.

You need to find a place that will do a Dexa Scan for you. That is the best method of finding out your true body fat level. I’d suggest that you do a Google search to find one in your local area.

Dear Paul, how much protein do I need to be eating to build muscle? 

An adequate amount is 1 to 1.2  grams of protein per kilogram of body weight.

Dear Paul, can you eat too much protein?