Most nutritionists would have you believe that counting calories is the best way to lose fat. Here's their theory, in a nutshell:
• Calories in vs. calories out determines your weight.
• Consume more calories than you burn and the rest turns to fat.
• To lose weight, you either consume fewer calories or burn more with aerobic exercise.
But have you ever noticed that the people who frantically count calories are forever overweight?
Here's the problem: Your body is not a simple machine. It's a living, sentient system with its own "intelligence." It decides how to use the calories you consume. In fact, over the long run, what your body decides to do with calories appears to be more consequential than how many you consume.
Of course, some people just eat way too much. But for people making a serious attempt to lose weight, excess calories is not their problem (although most are made to believe it is). Let me explain how I learned this from my patients.
Bad Advice Only Caused More Weight Gain...
When I first started my practice, a young woman came to my clinic wanting to lose weight. "HP" was 5 foot 2 and weighed 170 pounds. She had been trying to lose weight for two years, but no matter how little she ate, her weight kept going up. What's more, she exercised aerobically for about an hour five times a week and worked as a waitress.
I told her to cut her calories to 1,600 and see me every two weeks. She counted her calories diligently... and her weight went up by two pounds. I told her to lower her calories to 1,400 per day. The result? She gained four more pounds. I cut her to 1,200 and then 1,000 calories. Again, she gained fat. Now she lacked energy, couldn't make herself go to the gym, and was feeling depressed. She still wanted to lose weight, so I told her to cut her calories to 800 and see me in two weeks... but I never saw her again. I can't blame her. And if I could help her now, I would give her very different advice.
The Failed Strategy for Weight Loss
Conventional diets just don't work. Five out of six people who try to lose weight fail. And more than 90 percent of those who do succeed in losing weight gain all the weight back within two years.
When you consider the flawed strategy these diets use, this is no surprise. You can't achieve and maintain your ideal weight by starving yourself thin. Even if you could, it would be bad for your health.
Losing weight has been hard because you have the wrong tool for the job. If you drop your calories and go hungry - forcing your body to lose weight - your body will fight back.
This is your body's built in "intelligence." It reacts as if you are starving and will do everything it can to preserve your fat. And when you lose weight by starving yourself, you lose important muscle, bone, fluids, and even vital organ mass.
Your body has mechanisms for setting your weight where it wants it to be. It is similar to the way you set the temperature of your house with a thermostat. So the right tool for the job of losing weight is one that changes your body's set point. Said another way, you need to change your metabolism.
Changing your metabolism is the key to long-term weight-loss success - NOT counting calories.
The good news is that you can change your metabolism with food or exercise or both. But not with the kind of diet and exercise you're used to. It involves eating differently, not less - and exercising differently, not more. Let me illustrate what I mean with another patient's story.
5,000 Calories a Day and Still Losing Weight...
During the time I was seeing HP, I was becoming more and more perplexed by why my patients were not losing weight on a low-calorie diet. Then I encountered TS, a patient with the opposite problem: He wanted to gain weight.
TS weighed 170 pounds, and wanted to put on muscle. So his trainer told him to stop aerobic training and eat lots of protein. When that didn't work, he ate even more protein. By the time he came to see me, he was eating protein six times a day but couldn't gain a pound. When I looked at his food log, I could hardly believe it. He ate a dozen egg whites a day. He ate 24 ounces of steak at a time, sometimes twice a day. He drank a 40-ounce protein shake twice a day. And between meals, he would scarf down protein bars and cans of tuna as snacks. When I totaled his calories, he had eaten between 4,500 and 5,000 calories a day for the previous 12 weeks. And he'd lost 6 pounds.
TS had accidentally discovered the two most important principles of healthy fat loss: You must (1) over-consume protein and (2) train your body to store energy, not fat.
..to be continued
Dr. Sears, a practicing physician and the author of PACE: Rediscover Your Native Fitness, is a leading authority on longevity, physical fitness, nutrition, and heart health. Find Dr. Sears' practical solutions and get immediate access to more than 450 of his articles by visiting: www.alsearsmd.com or Dr Sears on Amazon.com
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