The Weight Loss Debacle

People have talked to me about all sorts of weight loss plans; a cookie diet, the lemon juice/cayenne pepper/maple syrup concoction, the infamous low carb diet, and of course the general ‘don’t eat’ diet just to name a few. If people want to try these weight loss methods, it’s their choice. What angers me is when people ask me for my help and refuse to listen because they insist they’re way better than mine.

The public likes to complicate things. Eating should be easy, NOT complicated. Michael Pollen said it best, “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” See. It’s SIMPLE.

An adult male recently asked me how he could lose weight. I love counseling people so I asked him what he ate for breakfast. Here is a short dialogue of our conversation:

“I ate a strawberry scone.”

“Well, that is probably the beginning of your problems.”

“Why? What’s wrong with a strawberry scone?”

“Maybe because those are empty calories. MAYBE because a strawberry scone is made up of fat and sugar.”

“But isn’t that good?”

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?!? “How would that be good?”

“You don’t understand, that’s all I ate, and then I worked out.”

“But it does NOT benefit your body in anyway.”

“No you don’t understand; that’s all I’m going to eat ALL day.”

“No, YOU do not understand. Are you going to continually starve yourself everyday for the rest of your life? Could you live on one strawberry scone every day? NO. And once you start eating again, you are going to put on all the weight you lost.”

“No I won’t, because I’m exercising.”

“We need to stop talking about this. Enjoy starving yourself for the next couple of days.”

This conversation was going nowhere. People should not ask me for help when they already have their heart set on their own genius ideas. When wanting to get your weight under control, you need to be willing to look at the bigger picture.

There are two basic problems with starving yourself. The one people seem to be the most concerned with is the fact that it decreases your resting (or basal) metabolic rate (RMR). Your RMR represents the energy required to carry out normal functions such as breathing, blood flow, ion transport, and other automatic bodily functions (this does not include calories burnt from any physical activity). An adult male’s RMR is about 1800 calories and an adult female is about 1300 calories. RMR accounts for about 60% of your calories burned each day (Thanks Lippencott).

How does starving yourself lower your RMR? When you starve yourself, your body immediately begins to break down fat, protein, and glycogen (fuel stores). During the first few days of starving yourself, your muscle starts to break down so that it can use amino acids/proteins as a fuel source. Obviously, this break down of muscle leads to a decrease in muscle mass which consequently decreases your RMR. So you’re starving yourself for a week, muscle has broken down, you’re also burning some fat, but your cells are craving energy. This is when your body tells you that you are FAMISHED and you end up gaining all that weight back in straight up FAT. How attractive.

Moral of the story: Increase in lean body mass will lead to an increase in RMR which means you will burn more calories throughout the day just by living. When you starve yourself sporadically, you do break down some fat, but you are also losing muscle at the same time, decreasing the amount of calories you burn just from living.

NOT the moral of the story: Starve yourself and exercise to keep your lean body mass. LOL. It's sad how people think this way. But hopefully you do not.

The other reason starving yourself may hurt you is because you are not taking in an appropriate amount of vitamins, minerals, and macronutrients. Is this not the most OBVIOUS reason to eat? Starving yourself does not provide you with all the nutrients essential to live an optimal life, and I’m all about living an optimal life. Unfortunately, a lot of the time weight loss has nothing to do with health and a lot to do with social pressure. People don’t care how they lose weight as long as it’s fast and easy.

I am not an advocate of diets. People should have a healthy lifestyle, which will result in weight loss. Yes, this weight loss may be slow, but you will not gain it back. Not to mention it will also prevent diseases later on in life.

So here’s a quick fix for that young man that asked me for help. The scone was approximately 400 calories. If you wanted to eat a 400 calorie breakfast, you could eat an apple, 2 egg omelet (without cheese, I put veggies in my omelets), and a whole wheat English muffin (watch the calorie content of your bread as well as what you put on it). A high protein high fiber breakfast will keep you the most full throughout the day.