Imagine you’re feeling poorly about your body image and you think, hmmm if I just eat less and exercise more, I can lose the weight I want.
Ever attempted to lose weight with these methods? You try to burn off more calories than you consume in? New research is finally surfacing to prove the idea of calories in versus calories out to lose weight is a doomed approach in which people will fail at their weight loss efforts (CDC, 2021).
What’s most important about this information is that it’s the diet that fails, not the person.
This idea has been perpetuated by diet culture, medical professionals and our own peers, colleagues and neighbors for decades that if we just “eat less and exercise more” we can lose weight. This is NOT actually accurate and here’s why…
What research shows is that weight gain is actually a response from hormones, which are much more difficult to manipulate than how much we eat and how often we are moving/ exercising.
We often don’t have the ability to change our hormones of insulin and glucagon that regulates how our bodies store fat.
Why caloric restriction does not work
Our bodies are designed to survive, therefore we need regular food sources to live. Whether we deprive ourselves of calories intentionally or unintentionally, our brain does not know the difference.
All our body knows is that it is hungry, has been starved and wants to find the most available food source right away.
This will happen after weeks or months of restricting your caloric intake.
It might sound dramatic to say your body is starving, but that is what it believes to be happening. Sometimes this is psychological deprivation and at times, it is true malnutrition.
So when we return to a typical pattern of eating, because our bodies cannot sustain restriction, it is likely to hold onto every source of food/ energy for fat storage for the future in case you go into another state of restriction or how your body views it, a famine.
What actually happens is someone will experience gaining the weight back to where they began and sometimes to an even higher weight. This happens again to protect our bodies from a future restrictive state.
The other issue is that most of our calories we consume in a day do not account for our physical activity but rather are required for basic daily functioning for our organs to work. This is done so for our brain to function, our heart to beat, our lungs to fill with air, for our body to maintain a steady temperature to keep us warm. Therefore when we begin restricting, the calories are being deprived from the organs that all need to work for us to sustain our lives.
So when we begin to deprive our bodies of calories, it is impacting our organs ability to function.
Fun fact: Our brain is only about 5% of our total body weight, yet it takes up 20% of our daily caloric needs. So what does this mean? If you begin to restrict your calories, your brain is going to notice and not function as well.
So overall, caloric restriction does not support our day to day functioning, cannot be maintained ongoing, and will impact our brain’s ability to function at its highest capacity.
Why more exercise is also not the answer
Exercise is similar in that if we are continuing to move in excess and we are not replenishing our energy needs with additional calories, our brain again thinks it is starving.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to move your body. Movement is excellent for our health and bodies when done so in moderation or done in a way that continues to fuel our body’s energy needs.
Just think of olympic athletes in training, yes they are training multiple hours per day multiple times per week, but they are also fueling appropriately for those energy needs, hopefully!
You may choose to exercise or move your body for health reasons, but again, our body’s weight is more dependent on our hormones than calories and exercise so your body may not see a change in weight.
What you really need
The goal is to focus on your health, eating lots of variety of foods throughout the day, eating for pleasure and nourishment, moving your body, drinking water, getting enough rest, and taking care of your general health, including mental health.
This may feel disappointing to no longer focus on weight loss, however your weight was never the issue. The issue is how we as a society pathologizes weight and determines weight is indicative of health.
Weight is not indicative of health!
I cannot stress this enough! Weight does not tell us about someone’s relationship with food, how they move their body, what types of food they eat and how often, how stressed someone is or overall their daily functioning.
We have to reject this idea that weight tells us anything about health at all!
What to do instead, is to work towards a place of intuitive eating. A place that is based on internal cues, drives and satisfaction over external expectations and measurements of food.
The goal should be focused on health, not the weight itself. When health is the goal, your body and mind will feel better and the rest can also fall into place.
If you’re ready to get started on ditching the diet mentality, let’s work together!
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