(I’m assuming that you’ve read my previous post on IF – so you already know the benefits of fasting, who should avoid fasting, the protocol I personally use, and what you can and can’t eat/drink during a “water fast”, which is the type of fasting I’m talking about here. If not, please read the previous post before continuing.)
Low Calorie Lies
Different people, or even the same person at different times, respond differently to eating a diet with the same number of calories.
This might well be something you’ve experienced yourself. Have you ever followed a diet with the same number of calories and found it didn’t work as well as the first time? Or that different diets affect your weight differently, even though they contain the same number of calories?
As a fitness trainer, I’ve seen this with countless people, including myself.
Previously, when I was in the eat-less-move-more and it’s-all-about-calories-in-vs-calories-out mindset I’d brush this off. I put it down to, ‘everyone’s different’ or ‘maybe I/they weren’t counting calories properly’. Of course, sometimes that could truly be the case, but I’ve begun to understand that could often be something more complex going on.
People (myself included) use the example of a car engine as a way to simplify explanations of how our bodies use fuel. But, this can actually be misleading. The human body is far more complex than a car engine. Or indeed any engine that has ever existed.
We are learning more and more about how our bodies react differently to different foods. These reactions determine what happens with the energy (measured in calories) from the foods we eat.
There’s increasing evidence to show the amount of calories our bodies use (i.e. ‘calories out’) depends not only what foods those ‘calories in’ came from, but also on the timing and frequency of eating.
What I’m saying is, it’s not only about calories – it’s about WHAT foods you’re getting those calories from and WHEN you eat them.
I’ve come to realise that calories-in-calories-out is a deceptive over-simplification, which has caused a lot of people a lot of frustration and misery. Not to mention the damage to our health that has resulted from believing calories are only thing that matters.
If this blog post series achieves nothing but helping a few people break away from this damaging misconception I’ll consider the time I’m putting into it well spent.
How ‘Calories Out’ Gets Skewed
So, how exactly does what and when we eat impact on the amount of calories our bodies expend?
Recommended reading.
Dr Jason Fung has written an excellent book covering this, The Obesity Code, for in-depth understanding I highly recommend you read it. He’s an expert, I’m not, I’m just here sharing my personal views and experiences.
The process is complex enough for Dr Fung to need several chapters of his book to explain, so I can’t cover every detail here. But I’ll outline the basics.
On low calorie diets people tend to opt for foods low in fat but high in carbohydrate – bread, pasta, cereal, low fat yogurt, etc. ‘Low fat’ versions of most foods tend to higher in carbohydrates.
You’ve heard of insulin, right?
It’s powerful stuff. Sometimes it’s referred to as our master hormone.
Whenever we eat our bodies release insulin. The purpose of this is to sort of open up our fat cells so the energy from our food can be stored in them for later use.
Foods high in carbohydrates and sugar cause a lot of insulin to be released.
As well as opening our fat cells for storage, insulin also prevents fat being RELEASED from the cells. So, when insulin is present none of the fuel stored in our fat cells will be used.
Think about it – If the body is a state where insulin is instructing it to store energy as fat, why would it release energy from the fat cells?
It doesn’t.
Even if the amount of energy coming in (via food) is fairly small, as is the case in a low calorie diet, if your diet is rich in carbohydrates you’ll be triggering the release of insulin.
Combine this with eating little and often, as many low calorie dieters do, and things start getting really fun.
Because the body is being stimulated to release insulin so regularly, you rarely get a chance to enter a state where it’s possible for fat to be released from your cells. Insulin is always there blocking it – by eating all those carbs regularly you don’t give your insulin levels much time to drop back.
Slow BMR or Bust
Sorry, it gets worse.
We do also store energy in our blood, muscles and liver as well as in our fat cells, but these stores are really quite small.
Once those small energy supplies are depleted, because it’s not able to access to its main energy reserves in the fat cells, the body starts to reduce the amount of energy it uses.
It simply HAS to do this, or we would die.
If the body has no fuel to function it cannot survive, this is a survival mechanism. Having no access to fuel (in this case because insulin is keeping the fat cells “locked”) means the body must use less fuel in order to survive.
This is why eating too much carbohydrate too often can keep us fat EVEN IF the actual number of calories in our diet is low.
The Eat-Less-Move-More Myth
I’m afraid we’re still not done with how much the calories-in-vs-calories-out oversimplification thing sucks.
You must have noticed how sugary and carby foods are more “moreish” than other foods, right?
The reason you can’t out-run a bad diet goes deeper than calorie balance.
Once you pop, you can’t stop! There’s a reason for that.
As mentioned, our bodies release a spike of insulin in response to carby/sugary foods. Not long after the level of insulin begins to drop – this causes us to feel hunger.
This is why it’s virtually impossible to eat one chocolate from a box or cookie from a jar without feeling the (often unconscious) urge to dip your hand back in for another. It’s also why you feel hungry soon after eating even big portions of foods like bread and pasta.
So, if we eat a low calorie diet we’re already hungry because we’re not getting as many calories as normal – AND we also experience low energy levels because the body is refusing to release much fuel (the survival mechanism I just explained). PLUS, thanks again to insulin, we’re also getting an extra shot of hunger…
Is it any wonder these diets make us hangry and frustrated?
As if that’s not enough to make you feel like crap, when you inevitably cave in and chomp loads of food, you’re probably going to blame yourself thinking it’s your own fault for failing.
“Shame on you, you didn’t have enough will power,” is usually the message at least implied by the diet industry. “You should just eat less and move more, but you’re too weak to do that on your own, so cough up for membership of our diet club or to have someone look at your food diary”.
(I’m not saying clubs and coaches can’t help us, they can be great, but I highly recommend you get one who understands what I’m covering here.)
How are you supposed to eat less when your body is already in survival mode, reducing energy expenditure to keep you alive? It goes against the most primal urge for basic survival.
As for the “move more” part – you’re running on low-energy mode already, moving more is the last thing you want to do and feels like hell!
Is this starting to resonate?
Here’s the good news. Now you understand this you can stop getting down on yourself over your failed willpower – that’s not what happened. It’s NOT about your willpower.
Results using IF and my 10-Week Transformation workouts.
Truth is, we don’t stand a chance of winning this thing with willpower and low calories. What’s more, you don’t need to.
There’s a far easier way of shedding fat which comes with all the amazing benefits I mentioned in my first post including rejuvenating your body, vastly improving your health, and feeling better mentally and emotionally (not least because you’ll be out of this deprive/binge/beat-myself-up cycle).
But before we talk more about that let me just address the inevitable question – “How come low calorie dieting seems to work for some people?”.
Low Cal Works… At First
One of the reasons we’ve all been labouring under the calories in vs calories out delusion for so long is people do lose weight on it in the short term (and the diet industry has done a great job of obfuscating the fact that most don’t keep it off).
This short-lived weight loss happens before our bodies slow our metabolic rate to burn less energy and also before a few other changes resulting from what and how frequently we eat on a low calorie diet.
Let’s take a quick look at these changes.
First up Insulin Resistance. When insulin is released in large quantities and on a regular basis the body becomes less sensitive to it. This is kind of like how a person who drinks a lot of alcohol on a regular basis will become more tolerant to it – after a while they find they need to drink more alcohol to feel the same effect.
So it goes with insulin – the body starts needing more insulin in order for its signal (“time to store fat”) to be actioned by the fat cells.
This doesn’t mean that less energy is stored as fat. The energy has nowhere else to go after the (much smaller) energy stores in our blood, muscles and liver are full. It has to go to our fat cells.
So, as we become less sensitive to insulin more insulin is released by the body.
Stuffed Cells
Now, let me introduce you to glucagon.
Glucagon is great. You know I said that insulin opens up fat cells so energy can be stored in them? Glucagon sort of opens the doors to the fat cells in the opposite direction – it allows fat to be released for energy.
But insulin, often called our “master hormone” suppresses glucagon. With the increase in insulin due to insulin resistance comes a decrease in glucagon. Our fat cells are now like a cul-de-sac at the end of a one-way street – energy can come in, but it can’t get out.
Despite eating food packed with calories you never feel full.
When this happens you’re going to be tired and you’re going to be hungry.
This makes you feel like eating high-energy, sweet tasting, comfort foods. We are hormonally programmed to want to those foods, even though they’re going to make us more hungry and cause even more insulin to be released worsening the problem. But in that moment of craving you probably don’t know this, you just want the discomfort and cravings and tiredness and mental frustration to stop. It’s horrible. So you eat the foods you think will end it.
Due to this compound effect, our fat cells are starting to get pretty stuffed by now. When this happens even more insulin is required to store energy in them – so more insulin is produced. And we start becoming even less insulin-sensitive (more insulin resistant).
Constant Insatiable Hunger
Now, let me introduce another hero hormone, leptin.
Leptin is ace. Well-stuffed fat cells produce leptin to tell the brain no more fuel is needed for storage. In this way leptin stops us feeling hungry and makes us feel satisfied.
But because of the advice we’ve been given about never skipping meals, access to artificially mega-tasty processed foods, and other social influences it’s highly common for people to eat when they don’t even feel hungry.
We eat for taste, we eat to be sociable, we eat because we’re told we’re not supposed to skip meals.
We don’t stop eating because it’s rude, or we mistakenly think there’s something more virtuous about stuffing our bodies with unnecessary health-harming calories than putting them in the bin. Or sometimes we’re just so out of touch with our bodies that we have no idea when we’re full.
You know this is real.
In the same way we become less sensitive to insulin we become less sensitive to leptin. Our fat cells are screaming “no more” via leptin being sent to the brain to let us know we’re not hungry. But if the “not hungry” message keeps being ignored it becomes fainter and fainter until we get to a point where we go through life having little idea of when we’ve had enough to eat.
So, we keep eating, at least at regular mealtimes. The fat cells get crammed even further, insulin production gets ramped up even more, glucagon is further repressed and leptin becomes a more and more silent voice.
Ouch.
Keep reading though, I have some better news coming up…
The Reset Button
It’s a process, not a button press, but the reset is real.
There is a simple, safe and completely free way to effectively ‘reset’ our bodies so we regain sensitivity to insulin, allow glucagon to do its fat-releasing work, and once again become aware of the leptin’s fullness signals.
You probably know where I’m going with this…
Some people compare fasting to a reset button for the body.
Personally, I don’t quite go with that. It won’t happen like pressing a button, it won’t be instant or without effort, it’s more of a reset PROCESS. But I’m here to tell you it does work.
With no food going into your body, insulin depletes and glucagon is allowed to do its job of releasing energy from our fat cells.
With regular fasts of long enough durations, gradually our sensitivities to the hormones involved in fat storage and release, hunger, and satiety (fullness) awareness return.
Using intermittent fasting we can eat more calories compared to low calorie dieting and shed more fat, feeling less hungry and more energised – especially if those calories are from food which doesn’t trigger insulin spikes. So we want fats, proteins and slow-release carbs (more on this coming up).
In my next post I’ll explain how IF helps us maintain muscle while shedding fat, why we don’t go into the dreaded “starvation mode”, how it keeps us physically youthful, and the mental health.