Our industry has made us believe that starving ourselves is how we lose body fat.
Yes, to lose body fat we have to be in a calorie deficit.
We have to eat less then what we burn and we move more.
Working with hundreds of people I have never had one person be happy eating 1000-1300 calories and maintaining their weight. Yes if its a short term goal or you training for a photoshoot or a holiday going lower may be required (person dependent).
Do you really think that’s realistic long term? If you maintain around these calories as of now and your goal is to lose body fat, in my opinion, you do not have the proper metabolism to do so. I mentioned already that to lose body fat you need to eat fewer calories then what your body burns at maintenance.
So let’s take a look here, first of all, our bodies are very good at adapting, if we eat a certain amount of calories for a long period of time our bodies can adapt to those set calories (especially if you’ve been eating like this for months/years)
Second, when looking at how many calories to consume we also have to take activity into play. How many calories do you burn in a day from activity / your job?
Third, look at how you feel psychologically. Do you feel tired, stressed, anxious, etc all the time. If so, those are big indicators that you are not consuming enough calories.
I’ll give you an example, you are a woman who weighs 160lbs workouts 3 times a week (full body routine) does 2-3 days of cardio and has an active job.
You have been eating 1300 calories for most of your life and wonder why you can’t lose any more body fat.
Well, we know that we need to eat less than 1300 calories or burn more calories then what we are already burning from our activity.
Let’s say we create a deficit by eating 300 calories less a day.
Now you are in a deficit eating 1000 calories a day instead of 1300 calories.
Okay, perfect we found your deficit calories.
You stick with these calories and are able to lose 10 lbs of body fat in 2 months
Until ... you have a family dinner.
All your favourite dishes are there, you have no clue how many calories are in what, so you say “f**k it, I am going to eat whatever I want”. You’ve restricted yourself so much, that you want everything and anything in sight.
You end up eating 2000 calories of your favourite dishes. You also end up having 5 glasses of wine, another 500 calories added. Throw in some dessert, now we have another 500 calories added.
So now you’ve consumed 3000 calories and you are now 2000 calories over your new target calories. You punish yourself the next day at the gym and do hours of cardio and starve yourself. 2 days of punishing yourself go by. You are exhausted, starving and have no energy and don’t want to cook. You end grabbing fast food. You order your favourite burger and fries combo.
You sit in your car and devour the meal. You get home and are still hungry. You rummage through the cupboards to find the unopened box of Oreos. You polish the box. No Oreos left, open the freezer and dig into the tub of ice cream. Again, you have now eaten around 3000 calories.
The cycle keeps repeating itself. After 4 weeks you have now gained 15lbs of fat.
You are in a worse position than before. Months go by and you finally decide to go back on a restrictive diet. The cycle repeats year after year until you finally give up ... but wait.
The key thing here is that you follow you calorie deficit that has been calculated=d specifically for you with your unique information, don't think you know better and just drop to a ridiculously low amount of calories because often times you will plateau and fail. Stay the course!
