I am most certainly not an
advocate of counting calories, or diets that revolve around creating
caloric deficits through either eating less or exercising more to
achieve weight loss.
A few points on calorie restriction:
It is not entirely wrong, the principle that if you consume less than
you expend and create a deficit then you can lose weight, however there
is a threshold on what that deficit should be, too much of a deficit
will lead to low Leptin (the starvation hormone) levels and put the body
in to a starvation mode, use muscle mass for energy, slow down
metabolic rate and store whatever food one does eat as fat to produce
more Leptin in the fat cells. So to simply not eat much, be hungry and try
to expend energy through exercising (eat less, move more approach) is
in fact an unhealthy weight loss, not necessarily fat that is lost but
more bone and muscle, and can ultimately result in further weight gain
as it teaches the body to react to famine by not expending as much
energy and storing energy when it can.
But what makes one believe that for every man, no matter how tall
they are, or heavy they are, or muscular or skinny… that all adult males
require a daily intake of 2,500 calories. Why is 2.500 calories the
mark for everyone? Surely the amount of food we need per day in order to
function properly would vary from person to person based on a lot more
variables rather than just age and gender and activity level, and that
we have moved beyond this view that one size fits all.
It DOES matter entirely, where those calories come from. If it were
only a question of excess calories, then people could live on 2-3 mars
bars a day and lose fat.
Studies have shown that people who go on diets such as Atkins or
Paleo, diets that don’t ask you to count calories, but to avoid
carbohydrates, all processed foods and do not allow any sweets and focus
on eating only the right things and as much as you like, were found to
in fact not be consuming excessive amounts of calories even though they
feel like they are eating lots of food and are not hungry. [i]
If 100 grams of Rump steak contains 125 calories, you could in theory
eat 10 a day and only have consumed 1,250 calories. Or a 100-gram
skinless chicken breast at 116 calories, you could theoretically eat 10
chicken breasts a day and only have consumed 116 calories.
If you ate the above then you would not only be full, the protein
would be used for growth and repair and any excess would be used for
energy, but you wouldn’t eat that much without eating vegetables too,
dark green ones, the ones that are very low calorie but extremely high
in micro nutrients, like spinach or broccoli for example, which contain
practically no calories at all, 100-grams of spinach contains 24
calories. You could consume more than half a kilo in spinach a day and
it would only have added 120 calories.
If you ate in a similar manner to what I’ve described above then you
would find that you would be constantly full, due to the fact that
protein suppresses hunger too, and you would probably not even get
through 10 fillets of chicken or steak for that matter, probably only
4-5 would do.
The point is that you are feeding your body things that it needs,
which will contribute towards developing lean mass, which will also
speed up metabolism, your carbohydrates are restricted so you are
keeping insulin levels low, and therefore allowing for triglycerides to
move in and out from the adipose tissue (allowing fat stores to be
mobilized for energy) through the pancreas’s secretion of the hormone
Glucagon which converts fat into energy.
So the way that many people who go on calorie restricted diets do it,
is to go to the supermarket and buy processed foods and read on the
back of the packet how many calories are in it. When you should really
be eating foods that do not have labels at all, and get things from over
the counter at the butchers, fishmongers and the vegetable aisle, you
can pretty much forget the rest of the supermarket.
Which concludes essentially with the point that if you eat the right
things, there is no need to count calories, as I have shown above, it is
very difficult to exceed 2,500 calories per day when you are eating
these foods alone. If you then start adding in products such as a
baguette, that’s 240 calories roughly in itself, or a can of coke
contains 142 calories, or 100-grams of penne pasta contains 352
calories, these are the foods that not only have little nutritional
value but are filling us up with empty calories, if our diets include
these things, which they do for most people it is not very difficult to
consume excess calories. With these foods present as staples of ones
diet another needed measure is introduced which one on such a diet is
constantly in need of monitoring called ‘portion control.’
It is not that I disagree with the principles of calorie restriction,
but I am more concerned with my clients eating the right things, as
opposed to them reporting to me that they ate a go ahead cereal bar, a
piece of fruit, a weight watchers biscuit, a chicken salad sandwich on
brown bread, a small low fat yogurt and some whole grain toast.
Which sounds politically correct and healthy, however in reality it’s
not, there is not enough protein or vegetables and is full of refined
starch and sugars, but to the public it sounds healthy, because it
includes words like ‘Go ahead’, ‘Fruit’, ‘Weight watchers’, ‘Salad’,
‘Brown bread’, ‘low fat’ and ‘whole grain’.
The above is in fact a disaster diet, promoting insulin resistance,
loss of lean mass, hunger throughout the day and promoting weight gain
when one comes off the diet, referred to as yo-yo dieting.
Calories are certainly not all created equally, carbohydrates are not
equal to protein calories or fat calories for that matter. They are not
all just energy, carbohydrates alone are only used for energy, whereas
protein and fats serve other essential bodily functions first and only
then in excess can be used for energy when needed, fats and proteins are
essential, hence why we have essential fatty acids and amino acids
which we must obtain from food, there are no essential carbohydrates.
A diet must address macronutrient and micro nutrient needs, and this
must be achieved through choosing high quality foods that have a high
nutrient content, low glycemic load and low calorie content.
So for example, to argue that oranges contain a high amount of
vitamin C, does not justify eating oranges every day, oranges also have a
high fructose content and are not the best source of Vitamin C
available, a kiwi however would be a better choice than an orange. In
fact Vitamin C need not be obtained from fruit at all, an even better
choice would be from vegetables such as broccoli, kale, bell peppers or
brussels sprouts.
This just proves that what I have been saying the whole time, eat right and get results, eat processed junk and look like you do. TRAIN WITH WAYNE
[i] Truby, H, Commercial weight loss diets meet nutrient requirements in free-living adults over 8 weeks: A randomised controlled weight loss trial, published in Nutrition Journal, 2 September 2008 http://www.nutritionj.com/content/7/1/25
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