Why Calorie Cutting Doesn't Work To Lose Weight
This is a quick expansion post applying the content from yesterday's long form post to a specific health and fitness topic - losing weight.
I’m tinkering with doing a long form post, and then following it up with a bunch of short posts to expand and go deeper on the subject matter in the long form post. Let me know how you like it.
Regarding losing weight via cutting calories:
A typical weight loss diet puts you at 1200 or 1400 calories per day of food. That is not even close to enough calories for the vast majority of adults - yes, even you need more calories than that.
In yesterday’s post, I talked about the three reasons why you make everything harder than it needs to be.
One of the reasons I highlighted was: you only know how to experience life in the extremes - usually going for the most extreme diets (yes, 1200 calorie diets are considered extreme) and the hardest workout program until you burn out.
When you cut calories to 1200 or 1400 from wherever you were before, let’s say 2000 or more calories, your body takes note of that and begins to respond.
Your body senses “hm, seems like there is not a lot of food around.” And the natural thing to do then is for your body to lower the rate at which it burns calories for energy, ie, your metabolic rate.
If there isn’t a lot of food, and you only have so much stored on your body as fat, it makes sense to slow down the burn rate so that you hold onto what you have until times of plenty come back around.
This is the natural process your body is doing every day where it tries to maintain homeostasis, or a state of equilibrium where things are generally steady. Nothing too extreme one way or the other.
By doing a calorie cutting diet, you’ve just taken your body to one end of the extreme.
Guess what happens when you start increasing your calories again, either intentionally or by giving up and eating whatever you want again because this diet isn’t working anyways…
You’ve lowered your metabolic rate so the calories coming in are now much more likely to be stored as fat (future energy) on your body since your body is not running a metabolic rate that is high enough that can put them to use immediately.
The outcome is a quick weight gain from an amount of food that seems like it shouldn’t have done that to you.
When you swing for the extremes, the only outcome is to swing back the other direction.
So what should you do instead if you want to lose weight?
You need to become more active.
This is a sedentary world, yes, even for trainers like me, I’m sitting down being sedentary right now as I write this to you. You need to recognize that you are not active enough and you need to be more active. Maybe you need to exercise more, too, but I’m talking here about being ACTIVE. You need to lead a more active life if you want to tap into a higher metabolic rate.You need to know what you’re eating currently so you can figure out what to change.
With my clients, we find out three big things: calories, macronutrients, and micronutrients. Then we make adjustments from there to get better nutrition so the body can move into a state of losing stored fat.You need to recognize that food is not the only way you make energy. You also many it from sunlight and the Earth’s electrical charge.
When working with clients, one of the first things I do is help them optimize their environment so that their inner biology can respond with results inline with what the client wants - whether that’s weight loss, better sleep, fewer symptoms, etc.
Found this helpful? I’m preparing my next coaching group to go through my 30 day Transform program to focus on these principles and more to transform their habits, their health, and themselves.
Common results are weight loss, inches lost, less bloating, more energy, better sleep, and more effortlessness in the process. Send me an email to kate@fitforreallife.com with TRANSFORM in the subject line if you’d like to learn more.