What they won't tell you about losing weight..that it's actually pretty simple.

Mar 5, 2017
4 min read

Sometimes focusing on small things can deter us from what’s important, don’t miss the forest by looking at a single tree.

The first law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, this is something that seems to escape most fitness gurus when haphazardly giving out nutrition and fitness advice. Before we dive into this discussion, it is essential to understand that losing/gaining fat and losing/gaining muscle is something separate from health. Eating enough vegetables and fruits to fill your daily requirements of vitamins and minerals is great for the function of various bodily processes, however unless this function is directly related to the energy you exert throughout the day (think movement) then it won’t have a significant impact on your weightloss goals. So no, just because that shake from your gym's juice bar is infused with organic acai berry extract and packed with vitamin C doesn’t mean it will make you lose fat any faster. Any time something is being marketed to you to improve fat loss you need to ask yourself, is this reducing my energy intake and/or increasing the amount of energy I’m consuming throughout the day? If it’s doing neither then it likely will only have a placebo effect at best. Bodyfat, something most people aim to get rid of from the first day they walk into a gym. Almost every client I’ve ever worked with comes to me with the goal of reducing bodyfat, firstly let’s define what bodyfat is and why our bodies store it. Long ago, believe it or not, there wasn’t a McDonald’s and Walmart on every street corner. Our ancestors had to forage and hunt for food that supplied life sustaining energy and nutrients and food wasn’t always easily available. So, wouldn’t it make sense we developed some form of energy storage so we could survive in the event there was a famine? Any time our ancestors consumed more energy (calories) than they used for the day, the body would store the excess energy into adipocytes for later use. There is nothing inherently bad about bodyfat, it is our body’s savings account just in case we ever need to dip into our reserve in the event of a fuel shortage. The issue comes in when we eat past our energy output for the day, and that savings account keeps growing day after day, month after month, until we are left with more reserve than we’d like. In modern American society rarely will the average person have to go through a famine that would dwindle their bodyfat reserves. The result is an accumulation of bodyfat past our target range. To reverse this process, we must do the opposite, expend more energy than we intake everyday consistently until our goal weight is reached. Any diet, exercise, fat loss pill, or body wrap/lotion that doesn’t drive a caloric deficit will at best only result in dehydration and a loss of water not fat. Now before you go on the lowest calorie diet you can find, lets break this down a little further. Let’s say we have an individual whom goes to work, works out, and has errands to run throughout the day and would like to trim four pounds of fat off this month. Every action they do, along with the cost of keeping their organs running and alive (basal metabolic rate) will cost energy. For the sake of simplicity, we will quantify energy as calories. Let’s say that their basal metabolic rate plus all the activity they do throughout the day cost 2,000 calories. We can infer that their total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) is 2,000 calories, that’s their “maintenance.” Eating maintenance calories will not equal weight gain or loss, eating below maintenance (a deficit) will results in weight loss, and eating above maintenance (a surplus) will result in weight gain. This is where those laws of thermodynamics come into place. Knowing that one pound of fat is roughly 3,500 calories, if this person wanted to lose a pound per week for four weeks they would need to keep their calorie intake at 1,500 calories per day every single day for 28 days AND keep their activity level from dropping. Remember, if they move/ exercise less that means their TDEE goes down and 1,500 calories may no longer be a sufficient deficit to lose weight at the appropriate rate. Therefore, keeping activity levels high during a diet is paramount. There’s often the misconception that exercise alone will cause fat loss, however the calories burned during a workout will not be enough to put someone into a significant deficit consistently. Some would ask, why wouldn’t this individual eat as little calories as possible and lose weight faster? One thing we must keep in mind is sustainability of a diet and micronutrient requirements. Eating sub 1000 calories per day would undoubtedly cause a decrease in activity and thus a decrease in TDEE, having too little calories will not allow said person to get in enough volume of food to meet their daily requirements of minerals, vitamins, fiber, and protein to function normally and sustain their diet for an extended period. Very low calorie diets also tend to increase appetite, when food seeking behavior increases, the likelihood of diet adherence will decrease. For these reasons, I find it inappropriate to prescribe diets such as the HCG diet and the military diet. Lastly, I’d like to mention that this isn’t all there is to weightloss. Other factors come into play such as the thermic effect of protein, adaptive thermogenesis, and changes in non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT). However, this article does outline the most important factor; energy balance.