Diet and Metabolism

Diet and Metabolism

Some people would have you believe that losing fat just a simple matter of making your calories expended greater than your calories consumed. And at it's most basic level, that's exactly what losing fat requires. The problem is that our bodies are very adaptive to changes in diet and activity. So the same level of consumption and activity today that made calories expended greater than calories consumed might not work days or weeks down the road as you progress.

 

The key here is diet. And the keys to any diet are consistency and maintainability. Some diets work over the short term, some don't work at all and there are a lot of them that will make you down right miserable. Read on for my take on some of these diets and how they might affect you over the short term and over the longer term.

Adkins, Keto, etc... there's always some new diet that claims to be the nirvana of fat loss. The trouble is that none of them are. Let's get something straight right now. Fat loss, just like anything else worth having, doesn't have a magic bullet. There is no magic food that you can eat or eliminate from your diet that will magically make you burn more fat indefinitely. And any kind of extreme dieting will be accompanied by consequences. You have to determine your goals, your risk tolerance and the consequences associated with whatever diet you choose. I can only help you make a more informed decision.

Low Carb/No Carb Diets

Adkins and keto diets fall into this category of diet. Personally, I am not a huge fan of them. Yes, I have tried keto in the past and I can confirm that there can be substantial initial weight loss. And for a person with normal muscle size, most of the initial loss is water and fat so long as an appropriate amount of protein is consumed in order to maintain the muscle.

How Low Carb/No Carb Diets work

By severely restricting the carbohydrates in your diet, your body will quickly deplete itself of glycogen stores. When this happens and the body can no longer meet it's energy demands on carbohydrates alone, most people feel tired and a little spacey. That happened to me the week I had a Statistics test in college - not a good time for a keto diet. :)

After a short period of time (days or weeks), the body adapts and starts to use alternative energy sources to fuel its energy requirements. Normally, as humans, we are very bad at metabolizing fat. And the less fat we have, the worse we are at burning it. The initial switch to a keto diet kind of forces the body to become more efficient at burning stored fat. And that's the draw. People generally see an initial dramatic weight loss and they think it's the holy grail of diets - all they have to do just eat little to no carbs and they'll get the body of their dreams. Well, not exactly.

What Are The Pros & Cons of Low Carb/No Carb Diets

The obvious pros are rapid immediate weight loss in the form of fat & water (for most people). However, the con is potential metabolic damage after longer term low carb/no carb dieting. What does this mean? It means that the weight loss won't last forever; eventually you will plateau. And what do you change when you've already removed your body's primary energy source (carbohydrates) in order to lose more fat? It also means that when you are ready to return to eating habits that include the ingestion of a significant amount of carbohydrates, you will have to spend a significant amount of time (months, or in some cases years) slowly reintroducing carbohydrates back into your diet so that you don't gain back all of the weight you lost and then some.

Starvation Diets

Here is the obvious manifestation of the idea that calories in < calories out burns fat. I know several bodybuilders who have done this kind of diet and some who even preach it. I have actually done this before in preparation for my 2nd and 3rd bodybuilding competitions in my 20's. You basically (try to) survive for months on end eating a bare minimum in an attempt to sustain an extreme caloric deficit. 

What Are The Pros & Cons of Starvation Diets?

The pro is that you will lose weight, at least initially.  However, the cons are many. First off, it will be almost impossible for you to maintain your intensity level while lifting weights. That will translate into a loss in strength which will lead to muscle loss (something you certainly do not want).

The second con is that once again your metabolism will attempt to adjust to your decreased caloric consumption. Some people would have you believe that this is due to the decrease in bodyweight. And to them, I say "Bullshit!" There are many factors that affect metabolism. Bodyweight is only one of them. Food consumption is another such factor.

Eventually your weight loss will plateau. And what do you cut to break through the plateau when you are already eating around 1000 kcals per day? Certainly, if you got your calories low enough then you would lose weight. But the kind of weight loss you are achieving isn't healthy. It's more like calculated anorexia.

Another Approach

When you suddenly eliminate an entire category of nutrients (like with keto) or you dramatically cut your calories to dangerously low levels (like with starvation diets) you will see initial weight loss. And initially, it will probably be mostly in form of fat and water. But over time when your energy and intensity in the gym drop and you struggle lose weight then what next? And what happens when you are tired of severely restricting calories and/or nutrients from your diet? How do you recover?

To me, both of the above approaches have incredible similarities with eating disorders. If your goal is weight loss over a short period of time then like eating disorders, both of the above approaches are short term solutions that can have long term problems. What are these problems? Well, for one, how do you recover when you're done with your "diet" without the dreaded yo-yo effect of putting the weight right back on after you lost it? The other problem is that neither approach is long-term (I suppose you could do keto indefinitely, and in that case it would be more of a lifestyle instead of a diet). If it's not a strategy that you can maintain long-term then why do you want to do it in the first place? Your health and fitness should be lifestyle not a quick fix.

If you have read my articles A Better Way To Cut Fat and Reverse Dieting then you would know that I advocate small changes in diet. What's one thing the two diets above share? They both make dramatic diet changes and experience dramatic short term results followed by a plateau or a singificant reduction in results. Following the bred crumbs, you might assume that it's the changes in diet and exercise that make real results happen. And it turns out that this is very true, especially when you're talking about cutting fat.

Small methodic changes in diet and exercise over time end up getting big results. Our bodies adapt, that's what they do. If you eat less then your metabolism will adapt, your body will become more efficient and you will require less energy expenditure to do the same tasks. If you eat more then over time (and up to a point) your metabolism will increase and your body will come to expect (and utilize) the additional calories. These are the principles that I use and it always works. 

When I want to lose fat, I slowly walk my calories down as I plateau. When I want to gain muscle, I slowly walk my calories up as I plateau. It's not magic and it's something I can always do. I don't have to break my diet, because I have no diet. I have a lifestyle.

Posted by Clayton Long