Did you know that eating not enough calories for too long can actually mess up your metabolism?
Kind of a scary thought when you think about it, you’re putting in all this hard work to being lean and trim and then your body is like F You and stops you from losing it and on top of that your metabolism is slow as ever.
So let me explain this process to you, when you eat less calories than you burn every day you start to lose weight and usually fat as long as you eat enough protein and work out and thats all great! But after a while your body starts to think its not getting enough, especially if you have been in a deficit for a long time or in a major calories deficit like you need 3000 calories for maintenance and you only eat 1000 everyday, your body will slow your metabolism to meet the energy intake and will hold on to fat as a source of fuel to survive.
So when you have some success with cutting calories then you think well more cutting is better right? NO! At a certain point your body will not respond well and the process will start to reverse and you will feel horribly both mentally and physically because 1. you’re not losing fat and 2. You don’t have enough calories to feel good
So how do you do you make sure this doesn’t happen to you?
1. Make sure when you want to lose weight you know around where your BMR is, BMR is how much calories it takes for you to be alive without exercise and movement, then you factor in your workouts and how active you are just on a daily basis (desk job vs. Landscaper) From there we want you to be in around a 500 cal deficit every day to see fat being lost again with proper protein intake being key. Then we focus on the carb/fat variables based on how your body responds and we continue this process for 6-12 weeks. 95% of the time the results will be great (sometimes there are internal health/gut/hormone problems that can slow this process down).
After 6-12 weeks it’s time for a diet break and that doesn’t mean stuffing your face with crap it means eating enopugh calories and hopefully mostly healthy calories to be at least at maintenance which if between being alive, moving all day and your workout is 3000 calories then you eat at least 3000 cals every day probably a bit more just to be safe. Doing that for 1-2 weeks will boost your metabolism back up!
Then when you start your next cut/diet phase you are primed to lose more fat!!
If this all seems like to much for you to do on your own, I get it but that’s why I’m here! I do nutrition programming for people all over the GTA! With amazing results. My Client Troy went from 268 pounds and 25% BodyFat down to 234 pounds and 12% bodyfat following these principles, he is currently on a diet break before we make our move to 9%. If you’re interested email me at radixperformance@live.com for more information on how it works.
Coach Dan