THE TRUTH BEHIND CALORIE IN, CALORIE OUT WEIGHT LOSS METHODS
If I could permanently eliminate one myth from your mind it would be this:
less calorie-in and more calorie-out = successful weight loss
As a fitness and nutrition coach, this is a strategy 9 out of 10 individuals I talk to have tried, initially with some success, but quickly finding their way back to the same weight (or more) than what they weighed before starting. There’s so many factors that need to be taken into account when losing weight, from lifestyle habits and movement, to sex hormones, cortisol and thyroid hormones. So, I want to provide you some knowledge surrounding this strategy and educate you why this myth can be so damaging.
The Damage Calorie Counting Can Have
The majority of us (including me!) have tried what is known as a calorie restrictive diet and have probably been known to obsessively read the nutrient facts of foods, skipping meals to balance out our calorie count or doing a juice cleanse for 2 weeks to feel skinny for that important event.
I don’t even have to ask, I know that after those efforts, your weight returned, and if you did it long enough, other symptoms came along with it that don’t feel so great, likely including a more challenging time losing weight.
The most common, and simple, thought process when it comes to weight loss is to think about eating less and doing more. I mean, sure, it makes sense on paper…
If you usually eat 1200 calories and instead you eat 800 and workout daily for an hour, you should be losing weight, right? That’s what so many pills, shots and diets are showcasing these days too: stunt your appetite and eat less and you will lose weight. And often, yes, you will lose weight (initially), but let me ask you these questions that are rarely thought about when thinking this is the route to weight loss…
How long can you sustain eating so little?
Where do you get your nutrients from if you aren’t eating them and what happens when you don’t get those nutrients?
Why are so many of you not losing weight when you are eating less and doing more?
What else is affected when you eat low calorie?
What happens to your thyroid, hormones and metabolism?
And the question least asked, what do you do after you eat so little?
Well, I’ve got answers and they back up why I’d call calorie counting damaging.
You get your vitamins and minerals from food.
These are the components of food that are vital for body function, repair, growth and disease prevention. It’s ironic that we don’t think about this part when we want our shape to change, but I can promise you if you focus on these harder, your shape will more easily change. Let me explain further.
When you starve your cells, you decrease their function.
Most people are starting to eat less and do more at a state of health that is already less than optimal, one that is high in stress, low in quality sleep, with several health woes and discomforts from energy dips to PMS and they are desperately desiring weight loss.
Those health woes aren’t there for no reason and eating less and doing more isn’t going to solve them. You have it backwards.
Solving the health discomforts, the outstanding biofeedback markers is going to make your body function more efficiently. Solving the reason why you have those experiences is your key to sustained weight loss and this is why so many of you are not losing weight when you are eating less and doing more. Your body likely doesn’t need less calories (nutrients), it’s more likely that it is needing more and to fix bodily discomforts from the roots.
When you eat lower calorie, you not only will have a harder time getting adequate nutrition, but you will also downregulate cellular processes in the body like your metabolism, thyroid and sex hormones and more. This is an inevitable and a big reason that you want to be conscious to increase calorie intake after you have been in a calorie deficit…a calorie deficit, or low calorie, is not a place you should stay and live.
Busting Myths Spread By Trending Diets
Many clients come to me after having tried the wackiest of diet trends but the one that comes up often is a juice cleanse.
A huge juice cleansing company in the US states that customers report “weight loss, increased energy, less bloating and decreased belly fat, a boost to your immune system, and improved digestion and overall gut health.”
Let’s unpack that.
Juice cleanses are short term ‘diets’ that promise a lot, and sure, you may likely feel lighter or ‘cleansed’ after only consuming fruit and veggies for 72 hours or a week, but when you return to eating as you did before, those couple of pounds you shed are just gonna return.
Depending on the combination of nutrients in the juice cleanse you may choose, many are actually packed with sugar leaving fiber, fatty acids, amino acids and more to be less than optimal. And while yes, cleanses are temporary, the only reason you may see weight loss utilizing them is due to consuming fewer calories than you normally eat, which means, when you go back to eating, you’ll see the weight come right back on and, it’s important to know that by eating less for that shorter time period, you will also slow your metabolism.
This is a similar reason why most diets fail and you may find yourself in search for the next best solution vs actually not having to look for another solution and living in your results for more than a few weeks. That is the goal after all, isn’t it? To sustain a shape and weight that you feel best in?
My final words on cleanses is that while it can be great to push extra nutrients via the form of juice, the cleanses that most are embarking on are ineffective and can leave the body with more issues than less, including digestive, blood sugar imbalances and metabolic slow down.
True Nutrition Coaching
Let’s not just make this blog a rant, right - I am also here to offer solutions! As a nutrition and fitness coach, I live for this stuff, I LOVE teaching about nutrition so let me focus on the other side of what isn’t going to work and bring you to what a successful weight loss path should look like.
Your health history and lifestyle are assessed
While thoroughly looking at:
What have your past weight loss efforts looked like?
Is there a reason you cannot lose the weight that you want (think behavioral/consistency, not measuring progress, or could there be something underlying)?
Do you have any signs of thyroid issues or think you might have a slow metabolism?
What are your daily habits like from stress and nutrition to exercise and sleep?
It’s a multi-month process
If you want a body you love forever, not just for your best friend's wedding day, it’s going to be a longer process than you are seeing marketed to you (let’s be honest, we are in a society where quick and fast is idolized, hence why so many are turning to injections these days).
So what might a sustainable process look like? Here’s a general road map:
The first step is to take a moment to assess how you are currently feeling and what got you here. Things to look at:
Behavior patterns and lifestyle
Expectations and progress measures
Challenges or trends of fluctuating consistency
Physiological symptoms related to things like PMS, energy lulls, sleep disturbances, digestive upsets, bloat, mood fluctuations, hair/skin/nails issues, aches and pains, immunity issues and more
Once you’ve done this, you’ll want to look at what 1-2 changes you can make in your day to day actions that could create the biggest effect on creating a NEW outcome.
This first step may be quick, or it may take time. It depends how well you can implement changes and how many changes need to be made. I see some clients take as little as 1-2 months to establish and others need much longer to learn new strategies, there is NO judgment here but it will shift expectations and timelines and that’s important so you don’t self sabotage!
2. After you’ve implemented the lifestyle stuff, then you can see what still doesn’t feel so good.
✖️ Are you still having trouble sleeping even after you’ve improved on your stress management, night time and morning routines and late night eating?
✖️ Is your digestion still hit or miss even after focusing on eating hygiene and improving your water and fiber intake?
✖️ Does PMS still hit you every month even after incorporating more omega fatty acids and less processed foods?
✖️ Or do you still have those afternoon energy dips despite sleeping better?
This is when we can choose to run more detailed functional labs or align more strategic supplements and protocols to support.
Taking weekly time to assess and reflect on your body’s biofeedback and behaviors helps you to continue to adjust strategically. This is where having objective support can be helpful because, as humans, we are emotional and can often rush the process that sometimes just needs time. Our coaching clients have a detailed form for their weekly check-ins with their coach that helps them and us to do this strategically.
If lifestyle support has not fully improved issues, it is likely time to gather data via functional testing and utilize strategic protocols to heal and align imbalances. This will take guidance from a health professional.
3. After working through any healing protocols, IF needed, then it’s time to really up-level nutrient status and metabolic function.
From here you will feel more in control of your body and start to build that trust with it again. I promise you that your body is not up against you. Remember amidst your journey that symptoms are the way your body tells you something is off and is a protective mode for survival.
This is often where reverse dieting is best integrated to prepare for a healthy fat loss phase.
4. Let’s do this! Fat loss phases last usually 8-16 weeks.
Did you notice I said WEEKS, not months or the entire year?
The reason so many continue to chase results is because their strategy to getting results is not optimal for their body and therefore they continue to try diet after diet and program after program which often leads to dysregulated hormones and mindset. If you find this is you, please take some time to reflect and think about investing. Life is too short to live any way but strong, healthy and feeling dang good!
5. Maintenance is the majority of how we should be living.
This is where we are not trying to diet or eat less or change our shape, we are actually living in our optimal health and shape most of the year! After over a decade of coaching I’ve found this is rarely a place women have experienced and yet it should be the majority of your experience.
How To Start Your Health Journey
As nutrition coaches, we will obviously advise you to seek professional help from a coach (we offer online services too!) and if that’s a path you’re interested in, get in touch to find out more.
But we do also understand that you might not be in the place to start coaching right now, so we want to give you the tools to give it a go on your own. You might start these steps and then hit a wall and that’s fine, you’ve still laid a good foundation and you can bring that to our coaches to discuss how to move past the blockage.
Log what you eat throughout the day for a week. Log EVERYTHING! Every snack, every cup of coffee and glass of water. You can use an app like My Fitness Pal or just log on your phone or a notebook. Do not lie or omit items, it’s only you who is going to see this and it’s for your benefit!
Take a look at your lifestyle. How much exercise are you doing? How many steps per day? How much sleep are you getting? What social situations do you put yourself in? (especially where food and drinks are concerned). Do you have time to just be in your day, practice ‘self care’ or play?
Now research ideas for meals, snacks and drinks that get your balance of proteins, carbs, fats as well as your phytonutrients coming from fruits and veggies. Choose a couple of recipes per week and practice them, then start to look at the rest of your meals as combinations of nutrients. What proteins and carbs can you bulk prep to make combining different tastes for meals easy? The goal is to build up a repertoire of meals to help make the prep quick and easy.
Take a look at this blog on protein packed snacks and keep an eye out for a recipe downloadable I’ll be publishing soon!
Measure progress. This will likely look different than what you are currently measuring progress as. Scale weight can be a helpful marker but I’d step away from that for now and instead focus on building up consistency in daily behaviors, nutrition and movement and focusing on how you feel:
What doesn’t feel so great right now? What behaviors are lacking consistency right now? List those and then rank them weekly to see if you are progressing. Progressions can look like behavioral improvements, consistencies, biofeedback (energy, sleep, managing stress, digestion, etc) getting better too.
If you’re worried there could be underlying issues impacting your weight, you can book an appointment with our team here at VRHC to run labs and see what’s going on inside.
Let us know how you get on! We are always here for a chat, on social media or by email. You can book in a free call with no obligations to get a little helping hand too. Good luck!!
Want some life changing inspo? Check out the transformations of our amazing clients so far!