Perspective Change #3 (Part 1)- Learn to Eat as much as possible and be comfortable with it.

You need to learn to eat as much as possible in order to optimize your metabolism.

This means that yes, Ladies you need to EAT.

This is a post primarily geared at women but I think that everyone can find some useful information. We need to change the perspective on what it means to “diet”.  Diet doesn’t mean you are starving and it doesn't mean eating only cucumbers and white fish all day.

Will you be hungry in a fat loss phase?  Yes, hunger is a physiological response to fat loss BUT you should not be starving and eating 500 calories a day.

Indoctrinated from an early age

Growing up I’m sure many of us heard our mothers and grandmothers discussing diets.  Dieting for our mothers and grandmothers included the grapefruit diet, cabbage soup diet, or eat 1 meal a day to lose weight.  Sadly they would do these fad diets and lose weight but in most cases gain back even MORE weight (rebound) when they went back to eating normally.

As women we have had it ingrained into us that if we want to lose weight then we need to eat 500 calories a day and starve.  We will be martyrs to fit into those pants!

This is all wrong.

The goal should be to be to eat as much possible when you’re in a fat loss phase.  Most women that I work with are undereating. Before I began working with my coach, I too was under-eating and I know Better

Throw out Mom and Grandma's Ideas about Dieting and Eating

“Women should eat like birds”

Get over this one with a quickness.  I eat about 5-6 times per day and I have gotten comments from people such as:

“You’re eating again!  

You just ate!  

You ate all that!”

People pride themselves on eating such small amounts of food...but they forget that I already know how that really story goes.

People pride themselves on eating that small amount in public and then when they go home at night they GO IN on the cupboards because they are starving.

The truth is we need to throw out that garbage about women needing to eat like birds and  exist on lettuce and carrot sticks all day.

Let me ask this question: For all the eating like birds didn’t most of our mothers and grandmothers STILL complain about gaining weight ?  Why?  

It Doesn't Work

Noted expert Dr. Layne Norton has extensively researched and talked about metabolic adaptation. In his paper Metabolic Adaptation to weight loss and the athlete: Implications for the athlete Dr Norton and his colleagues came to this conclusion

To accomplish these goals, it is recommended to approach weight 

loss in a stepwise, incremental fashion, utilizing small energy 

deficits to ensure a slow rate of weight loss. Participation in a 

structured resistance training program and adequate protein 

intake are also imperative.

Meaning:  In order to lose body fat in a safe, effective, and 

sustainable manner it is important to have small and incremental 

calorie deficits to ensure a slow rate of weight loss.  In the actual 

paper, Dr. Norton and his colleagues that the goal needs to be to 

eat as much as possible while still maintaining a deficit.

You can read the actual paper here

Dr. Norton's research is in the context of athletes  but I have wondered how many women in the general public are unable to lose weight because of metabolic adaptation.  I see countless women eating next to nothing all day but salad or Special K chips and then bouncing on the elliptical for an hour. These women consume very little protein and do next to no resistance training. Over the long term many do not look any different and some have gained weight.  

Dr. Norton is sought out by women who have dieted for fitness competitions on severely low calorie diets and high exercise volume and now find themselves facing a weight gain rebound. 

No matter what they do they cannot lose fat. Dr. Norton has this to say about why people who continually drop calories and up exercise reach a point where they no longer lose fat and begin to go in the opposite direction.

The reason they can’t drop body fat is because their body adapts to the low calorie intake and the high calorie output so much to where they don’t get any caloric burn from exercise. They also have very little thermogenic effect from foods and low basal metabolic rates. Their metabolism is blunted, so they don’t have any type of metabolic cushion to work with and thus they can’t lose adipose tissue.” says Layne Norton.

Your body loves adaptation so when people tell me that they are going on ridiciulously low calorie diets or a “trainer” told them to eat 1100 calories a day, my face looks like this little boy in the picture  

Read these next words carefully: It is okay for you to EAT.  This may take some getting used to, but feel good about eating!  EAT!  I remember when I first started with my coach, she increased my food significantly.  At first I thought “what is up with all this eating.  I’m going to get fat” but I hired her because I knew she got results.  That first cycle I lost 2 pounds.  As i told her in that first update, I knew that I was under eating but I needed someone to tell me that and to let me know it was okay.

I was scared to eat too much because I worried I would get fat.  When I meet with some clients and tell them I need them to increase their food, they look at me as if I were nuts and then they look at me even crazier when I tell them that they don’t have to run to lose fat or cardio doesn’t need to be over 30 minutes per day. 

When they follow that advice, appetites start raging, metabolism begins firing back up, inches are lost, and the scale begins to move.

Remember your goal is to eat as much as possible while still maintaining a caloric deficit to optimize your metabolism.

Here are 3 easy ways to make these small changes

1) Cut down on Alcohol Consumption and/or Limit it to the Weekends

As I teach clients they don't call it beer belly for nothing! Alcohol contains empty calories and cutting down alcohol consumption can easily cut out 1000 surplus calories per week.

2) Increase Protein Consumption

6 Chicken Breasts or 6 pieces of Bread? Which is harder to finish? Chicken Breasts no doubt and think about it. Protein helps you to feel full and doesn't cause as much of a blood sugar crash.

3) Eat at Regular Intervals

There's no magic to eating every 3 hours but eating at regular intervals helps with blood sugar stabilization and also helps you to get more food in without feeling overwhelmed.

In Part 2 we will discuss additional strategies for eating more.