Are You Eating Enough?
Diet culture has changed so much over the last several years but one diet trend we can’t seem to get rid of is ‘eat less, lose weight.’ For a lot of people, that is the case. It is very easy to over consume calories, especially when eating food from a restaurant or when you are ‘eyeballing’ a spoonful of peanut butter. On the other end of the spectrum, think of those people that are chronic dieters, they are always cutting cutting cutting but nothing seems to be happening. They are eating next to nothing but still can’t hit the number on the scale that they’d like to see. Now what if I told you to INCREASE your food intake in order to drop weight? What happens when we diet too much is the body goes into this ‘starvation mode.’ In the past, when food was scarce, the body learned to adapt and burn its fuel slowly so it would have something to run on when food was not an option. Even though in today’s society food is not necessarily difficult to come by, the body still reacts in the same way. If you are constantly refusing to eat over 1200 calories per day, your body isn’t going to respond the way you want; especially if you have been eating that way for weeks and weeks.
So now what? If eating less isn’t the answer then how do you drop weight? Start by increasing your macronutrients/calories. Am I saying go from eating 1200 calories to 2400 calories overnight? Probably not. To figure out how much you should be eating you should use a TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) calculator or nutrition calculator, my favorite is Precision Nutrition’s online calculator. Let’s say the calculator tells you you need 2200 calories per day to maintain your current bodyweight. Start by increasing your calories by 300-400 for a week, let your body adjust, then increase by another 300-400 the next week, until you reach the 2200. Using this example, said person should be eating their ideal amount of food within 3 weeks. The reason we don’t want to just double our calories overnight is because now the body is so use to eating such a small amount, a sudden influx of a ton of calories will likely result in some digestive issues, bloating, and not feeling all that great. If we increase slowly, these feelings will not be much of an issue.
Once you have gotten yourself to your maintenance calories, what should you do? STAY THERE. Let your body have what it’s been dying to have for weeks, let it heal. Eat at this level for at least 8 weeks but ideally closer to 12. You may find that you actually drop weight and lean out at this time. Being properly fueled, your body will finally be able to build muscle and likely burn some fat along the way. Now, nutrition calculators are not magical devises, they are not 100% spot on accurate every time. You may find that you are still dropping weight at that 2200 calorie mark, in that case up your total calories to 2400 and see how that goes. Knowing your ‘maintenance’ level calories is especially useful when you do want to go into a cut or bulk because then you have a better idea of exactly how much more or less you should be eating in order to elicit body composition changes. Happy eating !
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