How to Lose Weight By Eating More? Come on, Mark! Is that a misprint? If not, are you telling me that I may have to eat more in order to lose weight when everyone else says I need to be eating less? I'm confused!
No, the title is not a misprint and yes, I am telling you that if you want to lose weight, you quite possibly may need to be eating more! We'll dive into this one by, first, looking at your metabolism.
Your metabolism, in the simplest of terms, is the rate at which your body burns calories (or uses energy). Your body burns calories all day long (even when you are asleep) in order to keep all of your physiological systems up and running. Everyone of us has a speed at which our metabolism is working and that is referred to as our Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). Your BMR is the minimum amount of energy (calories) required to maintain your body's life functions at rest.
So let's say that your BMR is 1400 calories. This means that if you were to lay in bed all day without doing anything (don't even think about it!) your body would burn 1400 calories on its own just taking care of itself . But most of us do not lay in bed all day. We go to school, have jobs, visit family and friends, play games, take walks, clean the house and perhaps spend some time in the gym. All of this takes energy. Now, let's assume that all of your particular daily activity requires an additional 800 calories. We add this to your BMR (1400 cals.) and find that your daily requirement of energy is 2200 calories. In other words, to maintain your current size, weight and body composition, you would need to eat 2200 calories a day.
Now, using our simple math, we know that if you eat less than 2200 calories a day you will lose weight and if you eat more than 2200 calories a day...well then your weight will increase.
So by now you are probably asking yourself, "Then why does Mark instruct some of his clients to eat more if they want to lose weight?" It just doesn't seem to make sense with the simple math. How about I show you what I mean...
We will use a fictitious woman by the name of Lily. Using our previous example of a BMR of 1400 calories with an added daily expenditure of 800 calories, we see that Lily requires an intake of 2200 calories a day. In reality, after monitoring Larry's food intake for several days, I find that Lily is eating only about 1300 to 1400 calories per day. "Wow!", you say. "Lily is going to shed weight like crazy!"
Now, I don't want to disagree with you, but au contraire my friend! You see, Lily has been at this same caloric intake for months. Some days she eats more and some days less, but her average intake of calories and the foods she eats have remained the same for some time now. Lily's metabolism has reset itself so that she can survive on this lower caloric intake. That's right. Lily's metabolism has changed. And not for the better! Remember in my last blog, we talked about the body being able to adapt for survival purposes and a thing called "starvation mode"? Well, Lily is in starvation mode. Her metabolism has slowed down in order to conserve energy for all of her extra activity. This means she is burning less calories! And the spiral continues downward. The less she eats, the slower her metabolism becomes. The slower her metabolism, the less calories she burns and the more fat she retains. Then Lily asks me, "Why can't I lose my weight?" And by now, you should know my response...."Because you are not eating enough, Lily."
Now let's look at this from the other angle. How does this eating more thing actually work? We have already learned that we definitely do not want to slow our metabolism down because this leads to our body burning less calories and retaining fat. So logic states that if we want to lose weight then we must speed up our metabolism. Remember, the more cranked up your metabolism is, the more calories your body will burn simply at
rest. We can raise our metabolism by consuming more calories and by participating in more physical activity (exercise, anyone?).
By consuming more calories, you are providing your body with the supply it needs to meet all of your daily energy demands. This means that your body does not have to search elsewhere for energy. But if you do not ingest enough calories to meet these needs, your body must get its energy from somewhere else and it may be from your fat stores. But once you are in starvation mode, a majority of your energy comes from your body burning its own lean muscle mass. And here is where we have a huge problem! You see, lean muscle is the biggest contributor to a higher metabolic rate. The greater the percent of lean muscle your body contains, the more calories you will burn each day. This means that the more lean muscle mass we possess, the faster our metabolism will be! Take note that muscle burns more calories than fat. Are you starting to get it? So many of us are actually burning the very resource (muscle) our body needs to speed up our metabolism. But we don't want to lose muscle weight. We want to lose fat weight. Now it gets even more exciting! In order to build lean muscle mass, we need the calories (energy) to do the work that is necessary to build that muscle....hence more calories!
And then there is exercise. Both resistance training (lifting weights) and aerobic exercise (like running) are important for building muscle and burning calories. But we will address these more closely at another time.
So, to lose weight, we still need to eat less calories than our body actually requires on a daily basis. My point is that we need to eat just enough to stay out of starvation mode and so that we can build lean muscle mass while continuing to lose fat. When our body realizes that it is getting enough calories to survive, it will begin to allow the fat stores to be used for energy and we will lose weight. And as we eat more, exercise more and add lean body mass, our metabolism will reset itself at a higher point and we will burn more calories throughout the day and we will eventually need to supply ourselves with even more calories, while still watching our weight and fat decrease! Pretty neat, huh!
OK, so I have explained to you that you may have to eat more to start losing that weight. But how much more? We will tackle that next time as well as learning more about how to rev up your metabolism!
Continue to pursue health,
Mark
No, the title is not a misprint and yes, I am telling you that if you want to lose weight, you quite possibly may need to be eating more! We'll dive into this one by, first, looking at your metabolism.
Your metabolism, in the simplest of terms, is the rate at which your body burns calories (or uses energy). Your body burns calories all day long (even when you are asleep) in order to keep all of your physiological systems up and running. Everyone of us has a speed at which our metabolism is working and that is referred to as our Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). Your BMR is the minimum amount of energy (calories) required to maintain your body's life functions at rest.
So let's say that your BMR is 1400 calories. This means that if you were to lay in bed all day without doing anything (don't even think about it!) your body would burn 1400 calories on its own just taking care of itself . But most of us do not lay in bed all day. We go to school, have jobs, visit family and friends, play games, take walks, clean the house and perhaps spend some time in the gym. All of this takes energy. Now, let's assume that all of your particular daily activity requires an additional 800 calories. We add this to your BMR (1400 cals.) and find that your daily requirement of energy is 2200 calories. In other words, to maintain your current size, weight and body composition, you would need to eat 2200 calories a day.
Now, using our simple math, we know that if you eat less than 2200 calories a day you will lose weight and if you eat more than 2200 calories a day...well then your weight will increase.
So by now you are probably asking yourself, "Then why does Mark instruct some of his clients to eat more if they want to lose weight?" It just doesn't seem to make sense with the simple math. How about I show you what I mean...
We will use a fictitious woman by the name of Lily. Using our previous example of a BMR of 1400 calories with an added daily expenditure of 800 calories, we see that Lily requires an intake of 2200 calories a day. In reality, after monitoring Larry's food intake for several days, I find that Lily is eating only about 1300 to 1400 calories per day. "Wow!", you say. "Lily is going to shed weight like crazy!"
Now, I don't want to disagree with you, but au contraire my friend! You see, Lily has been at this same caloric intake for months. Some days she eats more and some days less, but her average intake of calories and the foods she eats have remained the same for some time now. Lily's metabolism has reset itself so that she can survive on this lower caloric intake. That's right. Lily's metabolism has changed. And not for the better! Remember in my last blog, we talked about the body being able to adapt for survival purposes and a thing called "starvation mode"? Well, Lily is in starvation mode. Her metabolism has slowed down in order to conserve energy for all of her extra activity. This means she is burning less calories! And the spiral continues downward. The less she eats, the slower her metabolism becomes. The slower her metabolism, the less calories she burns and the more fat she retains. Then Lily asks me, "Why can't I lose my weight?" And by now, you should know my response...."Because you are not eating enough, Lily."
Now let's look at this from the other angle. How does this eating more thing actually work? We have already learned that we definitely do not want to slow our metabolism down because this leads to our body burning less calories and retaining fat. So logic states that if we want to lose weight then we must speed up our metabolism. Remember, the more cranked up your metabolism is, the more calories your body will burn simply at
rest. We can raise our metabolism by consuming more calories and by participating in more physical activity (exercise, anyone?).
By consuming more calories, you are providing your body with the supply it needs to meet all of your daily energy demands. This means that your body does not have to search elsewhere for energy. But if you do not ingest enough calories to meet these needs, your body must get its energy from somewhere else and it may be from your fat stores. But once you are in starvation mode, a majority of your energy comes from your body burning its own lean muscle mass. And here is where we have a huge problem! You see, lean muscle is the biggest contributor to a higher metabolic rate. The greater the percent of lean muscle your body contains, the more calories you will burn each day. This means that the more lean muscle mass we possess, the faster our metabolism will be! Take note that muscle burns more calories than fat. Are you starting to get it? So many of us are actually burning the very resource (muscle) our body needs to speed up our metabolism. But we don't want to lose muscle weight. We want to lose fat weight. Now it gets even more exciting! In order to build lean muscle mass, we need the calories (energy) to do the work that is necessary to build that muscle....hence more calories!
And then there is exercise. Both resistance training (lifting weights) and aerobic exercise (like running) are important for building muscle and burning calories. But we will address these more closely at another time.
So, to lose weight, we still need to eat less calories than our body actually requires on a daily basis. My point is that we need to eat just enough to stay out of starvation mode and so that we can build lean muscle mass while continuing to lose fat. When our body realizes that it is getting enough calories to survive, it will begin to allow the fat stores to be used for energy and we will lose weight. And as we eat more, exercise more and add lean body mass, our metabolism will reset itself at a higher point and we will burn more calories throughout the day and we will eventually need to supply ourselves with even more calories, while still watching our weight and fat decrease! Pretty neat, huh!
OK, so I have explained to you that you may have to eat more to start losing that weight. But how much more? We will tackle that next time as well as learning more about how to rev up your metabolism!
Continue to pursue health,
Mark