It is not as simple as calories in, calories out.

You’ve heard it before, and it’s even deceptively intuitive — “eat less than you expend” and you’ll keep trim! But, it’s just not true…

Millions of humans are disappointed every year when this approach doesn’t work out. And sadly, we know the science does not support this “intuition” either. Let’s break down two important things that happen when you restrict calories:

1. Your body will naturally decrease total body output. This is tricky because it will happen in mechanisms that we often don’t think about like heart rate, blood pressure, detoxification — but, overall your energy expenditure will lower.
2. Because your poor body thinks it’s being deprived, the hormone that is secreted which manages hunger (Ghrelin) will ratchet up.

And there’s even more DECEPTION! Initially you may in fact experience a period of weight loss when you calorie restrict, but as soon as your body recognizes the calorie reduction is long term — the two mechanisms above shift into gear and you will still be in a CALORIE PLUS state. Not to mention: you’ll be SUPER HUNGRY all the time! But given we are so desperate for results, we think that MORE starving will be better, especially if we see an initial small improvement early on (ay, us humans…)

The How To Unravel this is less simple but my first goal with this post is to dispel the tenet that it is not as simple as calories in, calories out.

Who’s experienced this? Would you share what you’ve noticed?

As I said, the unraveling is complicated…but don’t despair! I’ll explore it in my future posts. (Hint: Blood Sugar is involved!)

Read more about Blood Sugar Dysregulation.