Health Alert 19
Some people just eat way too much. We saw in Health Alert 16 the tremendous load of calories served at fast food restaurants. If you are trying to lose fat such over consumption will obviously get in your way. But for most people trying to lose weight that’s not the problem. And for that majority of people I tell them – If you want to lose fat and keep it off, forget about calories.
You may have been surprised to read that. It may sound like a contradiction. Let me explain why I don’t believe counting calories is necessary or even very helpful in losing fat. I will tell you in the same way I learned – from a patient’s story.
The point is one I was slow to learn. I had to be beat over the head with it for years before it sunk in.
*A Case In Point*
A young woman came to my clinic about 12 years ago. We’ll call her LS. She was 5 foot 2 and weighed 170 pounds. She had been trying to lose weight for two years but “No matter how little I eat, my weight just keeps going up.”
When I asked her about exercise, she insisted, “I work as a waitress and I’m on the run for 10 hours a day. And I’m up to working out for 90 minutes 5 times a week”.
I told her to cut her calories to 1600 and see me in 2 weeks. She did this diligently and brought me a complete record. Her weight went up by 4 pounds. I told her to decrease her food to 1400 calories per day. The result? She gained four more pounds.
I cut her to 1200 then 1000 calories and again she gained weight. Now she lacked energy, couldn’t make herself go to the gym anymore, and was feeling depressed.
She still wanted to lose weight. So … I told her to cut her calories to 800 and see me again in 2 weeks. I never saw her again and she didn’t return my office’s calls. If I could, I would apologize to her and tell her what we did wrong.
*The Wrong Tool for the Job*
You have probably heard that conventional diets don’t work. History has shown that 5 out of 6 people who try to lose weight fail. Of those few who do succeed in losing weight, more than 90% gain all the weight back within 2 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 so hard because you have the wrong tool for the job. If you under consume and go hungry, to force your body to lose weight, your body will fight you in this effort. It reacts as if you are starving and will do everything it can to preserve your fat. And when you lose weight through starving yourself, you lose important muscle, bone, fluids and even vital organ mass.
Your body has mechanisms for setting your weight at where it wants it to be. It is similar to the way you set your house temperature with your thermostat.
So the right tool for the job is one that changes your set point. The good news is that you can change these controls through diet and exercise. But they’re not the diet and exercise that we used to think. They involve eating differently – not eating less.
In the next installment, you will read about the patient who inadvertently taught me how you can reset your body’s desired weight.
Al Sears, MD