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Eating more to lose weight: why undereating stalls fat loss · No Forking Nonsense - The Nutritionist UK

• 0:00
  @paulthenutritionist: Hello, and welcome to another Friday episode. It's Friday, weekends here. Hurrah. So this episode here is a rewind for very first episode I did, and it got a lot of listens. And it is about you not eating enough but still not losing weight.
• 0:21
  Which is a real common problem and I wanted to highlight why it's so important that you need to probably eat more to get to where you want to get to. So I'll break down that. Again, it's ten minutes long, so I hope you find it useful. If you would like to download my Supermarkets Hacklist where I go through all the high protein, high fibre items in the supermarket, click the top link in the description. But as for this week's learn why you need to eat more in this week's episode.
• 0:49
  Let's go. In this episode I would like to talk about something which always blows people's minds and it is the concept that you are not losing weight because you are not eating enough. I know it's going to make your head explode. So let me tell you why this is and it's something that I get a lot. So I work with a lot of clients whether they are fat loss, whether they want to gain weight, whether they're athletes, whether they have gut problems, you name it.
• 1:15
  I've worked with a male, female, pensioners, I've worked with young children. As a paediatric nutritionist I've done a lot of work within the children's sector. Specialised in obesity, I'm the Vice Chairman for the British Obesity Society, but I've contributed to many white papers and nice guidance and you name it, have done it with regards to the world of obesity and nutrition. So I feel like I'm very qualified at the moment. I'm working, my client book is at 25, 26, and I have worked with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people across the years in terms of their nutrition and helped them all.
• 1:52
  Often when individuals come to me they will say the following and if this is you I'd like you to raise your eyebrows and go So they will come to me and they say Paul I have tried everything I have been on every diet you can imagine I've moved around more I'm eating less but I just can't lose weight. I did lose weight and it was working and now I just can't lose weight anymore and I need help. And when I say to them, I can almost guarantee that within the next two weeks you will have lost a little bit more weight. They are baffled and I think they probably think how is that possible? And then when I say to them one of the things that we're going to be doing is increasing your calories, again their minds explode.
• 2:36
  And the reason for that is because the theory is that we need to eat less and less and less and less and what people will often do is just keep reducing your calories lower and lower and lower until until what until there's nothing left so I'm going to explain to you why actually eating more food and consuming more calories is actually going to help you in the long term lose weight. So we're going have a bit of a conversation about basal metabolic rate, total daily energy expenditure and the balance calories and also something which a lot of people don't realise which is pretty significant and it is definitely going to help you on your journey. So we have a thing called our basal metabolic rate. Without going into the biology of it, what it basically is is known as the coma state. So if you just lie in bed today, all day long without moving, you're in a coma, you need a certain amount of calories just to function because your body is always obviously moving to some extent, your heart's racing, racing, your heart's beating, your organs are functioning, your brain's working and all of those things require energy, Primarily glucose but it requires energy so your body is always burning some form of calories imagine yourself as a car right so if you've got the engine on although it's not loads and loads of fuel it's still burning fuel.
• 3:49
  So it's the same thing for you. Now we have to give ourselves enough calories to function. And then you add on top of that what's called your total daily energy expenditure. So your total daily energy expenditure is if you live a very sedate life. So moment I haven't done a lot, I have kind of potted around, it's the morning, so I've had my breakfast, done some reading whatever and now I'm stood at my stand up desk and I've probably, in fact I could tell you I've done four ninety three steps currently and it's 07:30 in the morning.
• 4:16
  However, if I was to just do no more and just continue pottering about as I have done, there is still some form of energy needed even if that is walking downstairs to make myself a cup of coffee, coming back upstairs, I don't know, walking around the house, going to the toilet, coming back, making myself drink, all of that stuff is on top of my basal bullet rate. So there's an additional amount of energy that is required for that. And then we add into the factor that I am going to go to the gym, and then when I'm in the gym there is an additional amount of energy that's required and then we add on top of that what's called the thermogenic effect of eating so when we eat food your body again has to process that as well and that requires energy, that requires calories in where we get our energy from. So what we have to do is we have to consider all of these points before we decide what type of calorie deficit we're in. Now where people make a big mistake is not understanding what those numbers are and they will put themselves in too much of a calorie deficit.
• 5:16
  So I've got clients who are who have come to me and they are I don't know one hundred something kilograms and they're telling me I'm eating 1,600 calories a day. That is like not even stroking their basal metabolic rate. So it's super important that we understand that because what happens if you are eating under what your total daily energy expenditure is, you're in too much of a calorie deficit, then inevitably what happens is for the first maybe week or two you find quite comfortable in terms of your calorie deficit, you can ride it out and you feel good, you can churn through it, you know, I'm finding this okay, it's manageable, but eventually at some point your body's going to remember, it's going to catch up, and then what you find is that suddenly it becomes a little bit more taxing, your sleep begins to be impacted, therefore your energy becomes to be impacted, you start to slow down, you start to look at those types of food and you start to those types of food you're trying to avoid and then you start to maybe have a few cravings, maybe you go do you know what, I've had a good two weeks and I've done well but it's a weekend, I'll tell you what I'm gonna let myself go a little bit and before you know it you've eaten four or 5,000 calories over a weekend because your body literally thought it was starving itself and the fallout of that is it then begins to just gobble up as many calories as you like.
• 6:32
  Now there are many many occasions and people who I have worked with who have told me they can go on a diet for three to four weeks and then it just doesn't stay off. And the reason why it doesn't stay off, and this is why a lot of people don't tell you, is that your body is very good at remembering. So what I mean by that is that you might have two or three weeks of complete adherence, including at the weekends, which again is quite rare. And what happens is that when you've had two to three weeks of dieting and putting yourself in a very severe calorie deficit, your body at some point will potentially slow its metabolism down but there's too much onus on people saying oh my metabolism has slowed down' That can happen but what's more likely to happen is your body just decides I'm not having this anymore' and the moment it is faced with a certain amount of calories perhaps some hyper palatable food, crisp chocolate, McDonald's, those cakes, those foods which are really calorie dense, what happens is that your body will, when it's given an opportunity to, it will just absolutely scoff those and then before you know it you think you failed because you've fallen off the wagon.
• 7:37
  That there is the diet cycle and that there is what happens to many many people who feel that they just can't lose weight because they have complete adherence to their own destructive, hardcore calorie deficit and then off the back of it eventually they fall off. So what do we do about this? How do we offset this? How do I fix people in this situation? So what I will do always and what I always say is that the aim for you is to eat as much food as possible while still losing weight.
• 8:12
  What we should be able to do and what I will always guide clients to do is to put you in a calorie deficit where we are just in a calorie deficit but we're making sure that you're eating the right types of foods you should never be hungry if you've got your calorie deficit right you should never be hungry you should always feel fuelled you should feel like it isn't effort and you should never be hungry Every craving has a reason and we'll go into that maybe in another episode but every single craving has a reason where that craving came from. So if you're someone who's craving a lot of foods what we have to do is identify where that came from and we have to identify why that is. And sometimes that's because we've perhaps gone a little bit too aggressive, perhaps your energy output is a lot more than we anticipated and it is like a science experiment. So when I check-in my clients I'm asking them how's your energy been, how's your sleep been, how's your mood been, how's your training output been? All of these things are really important so I can consider whether we are adhering or not It's not just about weight because what I need to do is no good me showing you how to lose 10 kilograms in two weeks, peacepiss But the adherence won't be there and it's very likely as well that we're just going be losing a lot of water weight and not enough fat.
• 9:16
  What we want do is we want to guide your body to feel that it's in a calorie deficit where we know it's fat just because your body doesn't quite feel the negative implications, your energy is there and your body feels quite comfortable being in this calorie deficit. So that is why what we will do is try and teach your body to eat as much food as possible, the right foods, but as much food as possible whilst just being in a calorie deficit. And in doing that, the adherence to losing weight over at least a twelve week period is absolutely 100% adherence throughout the twelve weeks. And that isn't to say that people are going to lose weight every single week, that's just not realistic. But we looked at a graph from week one to week twelve.
• 9:57
  I can guarantee you, because it isn't hard, you're not in an aggressive deficit, your energy levels are stable, I can guarantee that the weight will come off and you will find that you are very comfortable in the calorie deficit and it hasn't felt like effort. That there is the answer as to why eating more food will guide you to losing weight. It's about this adherence, it's about the energy, consistent energy, it's about you not feeling like you're being punished, like we're cutting all of these foods out and that you're hungry. And that is how we eat as much food as possible to lose as much weight as possible.