For years, we were told that losing weight was a simple math equation – burn more calories than you take in. It sounds so easy! But those of us who have tried (and that is almost all of us) know that simply cutting calories doesn’t help you lose weight. It’s time to put that myth to bed once and for all. Stop cutting calories!
I have been on diets, trying to lose weight, for as long as I can remember. One of my first memories is a friend of mine giving me a pair of jeans she didn’t want anymore. She was about half my size and I realized suddenly that I was a lot bigger than her even though I was younger than her. I think I was about 6. The idea of calories in / calories out is especially harmful to those of us who have had their weight yo-yo for years.
We have destroyed our metabolism because, well, it’s tired of us trying to jump start it and make it work overtime. And yet, we have been told over and over again that gaining weight is our fault because the formula is so simple. Except that it’s not.
Calories & Our Body
We eat food to take in calories. And because it tastes good, but that’s another topic. Dr. Leona in her December 2, 2019 article blogs about what calories do in our bodies, and the list is significant. Calories are used to:
- Build new muscle
- Build bone
- Regulate our heart rate
- Produce heat
- Exert ourselves physically
- Breathe
- Digest
- Excrete
- Help our liver and kidneys function
- Think.
Those are some pretty important things calories are doing there. It might make sense to keep those coming in at a pretty good rate. So when we switch to low calories foods, we aren’t getting the calories we need for our body to function properly.
Now I’m not saying that most of us don’t take in more calories than we need on a regular basis. Even on keto, I know sometimes I overdo it with the calories I’m eating. But when we make a conscious decision to lower our calories to under the amount we need in an attempt to lose weight, we are depriving ourselves of all those important things listed above.
So, what do our bodies do? They slow our metabolism to try to conserve energy so the calories we do take in go to things like breathing. This is when our bodies go into starvation mode and in order to survive, they try to save every last calorie in the form of fat. We end up fighting against ourselves.
Another myth is that a calorie is just a calorie. How many people have saved up their calories or “points” by eating nothing all day in order to eat a slice of pizza and a piece of cake at the end of the day? That’s not healthy and it’s not sustainable. That slice of pizza and cake is not giving you the nutrients you need and it’s not going to give you the energy you need to function throughout the day.
Your body burns calories based on the type of food you are eating. It burns 100 calories of cauliflower more effectively than 100 calories of cake. It also burns more effectively when your metabolism is at a healthy level, rather than trying to keep you from starving.
Stop Cutting Calories
Harvard, in their October 1, 2020 article called “Stop Counting Calories” also points out that your body adjusts to the lower amount of calories as your new normal. It thinks that this is what you are able to find or hunt at the moment, so it balances everything out so it can survive on that. It does this by reducing your metabolism. So then, when you increase the calories you are taking in, your metabolism is still slow and you end up gaining back all your weight and then some.
When Bill and I started keto, we did keep track of our calories. This was because we had been eating so many calories for so long, we had no idea of how many we were taking in. Side note – it would have been a scary number! While this worked for us, we didn’t obsess over keeping them at a certain rate. For us, we just wanted to stay in a healthy range for us. We don’t track anymore. We are at a point where we can just listen to our bodies and know when we need more calories. Our metabolisms are humming along at a healthy rate.
Don’t get caught up in the myth of cutting calories to lose weight. Calories are there for a reason. Be more mindful of where the calories are coming from and how your body is using them. Don’t put your body into a panic by cutting calories. Instead, keep your body in a healthy balance.
Wendy
