If you're not aware of the current debate happening in the nutrition space, here are the sparknotes:
One side believes the only thing to weight loss is eating less & moving more to induce a calorie deficit.
IE Eating less than you burn, by either eating fewer calories or burning more calories.
The other side believes that you don’t need to cut calories to lose weight, you just need to eat the right foods.
Here's the issue with both of these perspectives...
The "Eat Less, Move More" side believes our metabolism is fixed. Meaning you have no control over how many calories your body burns outside of exercise.
Therefore to lose weight you have to your restrict food intake and be more active.
The other side believes the only thing that matters is eating the “right foods”. Eating the right foods is important, but you can definitely have too much of a good thing.
The key is eating the right foods
in the right amount
at the right time
Introducing Gaintenance...
Gaintenance - Gradually increasing your caloric intake to ramp up your metabolism.
Don’t overlook the “gradual” part of this equation. If you eat too much too soon, you’ll end up looking like an Oompa Loompa.
Speaking from experience here...
This is where calories become useful.
Imagine training for a marathon and having no idea how far you're running each week.
"How far did you run today?"
"Not sure, just went as far as I felt like"
Look, calories aren't the be-all-end-all.
If you know which direction North is, you don't need a compass. But we're not trying to go to the North Pole, we have a destination in mind.
And I'd rather not get lost in the process, so I'll stick with Apple Maps.
Tracking provides you with both direction & magnitude. It allows you to see not only that you're eating more, but how much more you're eating.
This is the key.
You don’t want your body to store these extra calories as fat, you want it to utilize them. Burn them for energy.
To do this you must take it slow.
The “calories don’t matter” crowd doesn’t acknowledge that this process takes time & patience. Leading to many people shoveling “good foods” into their mouth and ending up rotund.
In contrast, the “eat less, move more” crowd doesn’t acknowledge that you can increase your metabolism at all.
Here's the deal:
Calories do matter.
You can increase your metabolism.
You do need to eat less and/or move more to lose fat.
If you spend the time to increase your metabolism to a healthy place your fat loss will be way faster AND IT WILL LAST.
Let's do some math real quick and compare 2 scenarios:
Karen 1 - who tried to cut at her current maintenance of 1600 calories
Versus
Karen 2 who built up her maintenance to 2500 calories.
Play the long game
Thread The Needle
Tyler