Originally published on patch.com
Weight loss is a big deal. Today, the internet is chock-full of dieting tips and techniques that promise impeccable results in almost no time. When it comes to dieting, the most logical step is to eat less while burning more calories, but it's not always that straightforward. Here, David Reagan, Atlanta certified personal trainer, reveals what diet planning is sustainable for weight loss.
Cutting Too Many Calories Might Be Counterproductive
While it might sound bizarre, cutting back too much on your caloric intake might interfere with weight loss. This phenomenon is significantly more common in women in their midlife years. Often, ladies in this age bracket experience less shift in their weight even with stricter diets. Why?
Repeated moderated diets affect leptin and ghrelin production, two hormones responsible for stimulating satiety and hunger, respectively. After finishing a crash diet, naturally, your body's fat levels will decrease. In the long term, this cycle lowers levels of leptin, making you more likely to overeat.
What's the Best Approach?
According to Lisa Young, a New York University professor of nutrition, too much caloric restriction is almost always a bad idea. Your body needs calories to burn off calories. To make weight loss possible, you need to eat enough caloric heat in the form of food to then utilize caloric fat as an energy source.
Here's the best way to explain it. Think of your food intake as a sort of kindling that ignites your metabolism, which then facilitates weight loss. When your caloric energy stores are sufficient, your body first uses these stores, then turns to fat. Enough caloric intake ensures your body utilizes calories from the food, then taps into the fat stores it's holding on to.
Crash dieting leads to excessive caloric restriction, creating deficits that cause your body to go into starvation mode. This phenomenon leads to an onset of muscle tissue breakdown that can slow down metabolism, ultimately making it harder to lose weight.
How Much Should You Eat Then?
There's no definitive answer to this question, as it relies on many factors, including age, sex, height, activity level, and weight loss goals. As you consider your caloric intake each day, remember that incorporating macronutrients' right ratio is vital. The three macros include carbs, proteins, and fats and should be combined based on your weight loss goals and total daily energy expenditure (TDEE).
Here's a case in point - Say you're a 5-foot 6-inch, 30-year-old woman, weighing 150 pounds with a moderate activity level, who wants to lose some weight. As per the Healthy Eater flexible dieting calculator, your daily caloric intake should be roughly 1,784 calories with 188g of carbs, 124g of protein, and 59g of fat. Contrast that with a 6-foot 2-inch, 30-year-old man, weighing 220 pounds with an extreme activity level, who also wants to lose weight. Such an individual would need to consume about 2,801 calories daily, incorporating 309g of carbs, 181g of protein, and 93g of fat.
In Conclusion
Dieting for weight loss is hardly ever a straightforward process. With hundreds of dieting self-help books on shelves these days, it can confuse finding an approach that works. Sustainable diet planning is a more modern dieting approach that debunks the age-old misconceptions around cutting back on your food intake while trying to lose weight. With this approach, it's all down to attaining the correct caloric intake to minimize muscle mass loss while the body burns excess fat reserves. So, try it out today. You have nothing to lose, that is, apart from some weight.