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How To Get Past and Fix A Weight Loss Plateau
I absolutely love this image.
Because in one fell swoop it has summed up this horrible term that the Fitness Industry has perpetuated over and over and over again as a negative happening.
The Weight Loss Plateau.
Just the word plateau is horrible to say - “plateauuuuuuuuu….”. And the connotations of what it means are even worse:
If you are in a Plateau - you probably think:
You are failing
You are never going to reach “your goal”
You need to try something new
You chose the wrong path
You can’t seem to “crack” it
That everyone else knows something you don’t.
And not one single one of those feelings is true.
I can promise you that.
In this article, I am going to take you through How To Get Past and Fix A Weight Loss Plateau - and I almost guarantee it isn’t going to be what you were expecting.
Which is exciting - but not as exciting as what I am about to offer you.
I want to be your friend.
As your friend - I will obviously stay in touch, send you things, some educational, some thoughtful, and probably some that are a bit near the mark - but hey ho - I think that is the hallmark of a beautiful friendship: balance.
If you would like to be my friend also then please send me a friend request right here:
TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR HOW TO GET PAST AND FIX A WEIGHT LOSS PLATEAU:
What is a weight loss plateau?
Why do weight loss plateaus occur?
How does scale weight actually work?
How to actually get past your weight loss plateau
What Is A Weight Loss Plateau?
If you’re in one…replace the word “fetch” with scale weight - and this GIF sums it up pretty well.
A weight-loss plateau (urgh) is when your body weight seems to have stopped going down on the scale - even though you have changed very little in your behaviour compared to when it was coming down.
It is normally regarded as a temporary stalling of scale weight.
There was a study done in 2021 called: Management Of Weight Loss Plateau [1].
In this study they define weight loss and a weight loss plateau thus:
“Studies comparing different diets have shown that a similar degree of weight loss can be achieved in an 8 to 12-week period, as long as a caloric deficit is achieved.[1] However, when looking at individuals in the longer-term, 24-weeks and beyond, only about 10 to 20% of those individuals successfully maintain their weight loss”
This doesn't mean they successfully maintain the weight they got to - this means the actual stats of the scale falling.
It also goes on to say:
“A misconception to beginners attempting to lose weight is that the process is linear. Therefore, one can expect that weight loss will occur more rapidly in the early stages. Still, then in the coming weeks, the weight may stay steady or even slightly increased despite maintaining the established calorie deficit”
This sets us up nicely for the rest of this article.
Why Do Weight Loss Plateaus Occur?
This is a very loaded question because as I always say “everybody is different” and every body is different.
And the solution to a weight loss plateau is likely not one sole thing for each person.
However, the most important point to this question is not a physical thing.
It’s not “your calories need to come down” or “you need to do more exercise”
It’s a psychological point that needs to be made - and it is so very important that I am putting it front and centre of this article.
Why do weight loss plateaus occur?
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You Have Been Conditioned To View Them Negatively
Let me be very clear here.
Maintaining your body weight is a true success.
Sadly, we live in a world where allowing you to actually be proud of what you have achieved thus far, and promoting the fact that the scale may not be going down - but by golly - it isn’t going up…that is a true success.
This is what you and the fitness industry has allowed you to view as a:
“Plateauuuuuuu”
As a negative happening in your life. When actually it is a true success.
I am sure you have heard the phrase: “80% of all diets fail”. The definition of successful weight loss maintenance is:
“Successful long-term weight loss maintenance is intentionally losing at least 10% of initial body weight and keeping it off for at least 1 year.” [3]
Therefore if you are currently in an active deficit, and you have lost 10% or more of your body weight and your weight loss has “plateaued” you are actually on the path of being in the top 20% of the world’s population when it comes to dieting.
“Research has shown that approximately 20% of overweight individuals are successful at long-term weight loss when defined as losing at least 10% of initial body weight and maintaining the loss for at least 1 year” [2]
Therefore you aren’t stalling, failing or just not good enough.
You are actually in an elitist group of people. A rare cohort of incredible success - and you have been told to see it as a failure.
That’s a damn fucking shame.
I am sorry that we have done this to you. I am truly sorry that you have been led to believe that it is possible to keep dieting down and down and down and if that process ever stops then you are simply not good enough.
This has led to many people getting frustrated, angry and feeling shame at their inability to see scale weight continuing to tumble and it has to stop. Right now. Right here. With this post.
How Does Scale Weight Actually Work?
Scale Weight is a very fickle thing. You may or may not be aware that scale weight when you are in an active calorie deficit and trying to lose weight, will fluctuate.
Wildly.
Up and down. It will be stubborn at times. One day you can weigh on things, and the very next 24 hours later you can weigh 5-7lbs more.
This is normal.
In fact let me show you some of my weight readings, when I was in a caloric deficit and weighed myself each and every day.
This is July into August of 2021 - I started at 85.4kg and then deficit down to 81.9kg.
It looks like the best rollercoaster you have ever been on.
But as you can see I was constantly trading peaks and troughs. This is actually a very normal graph of scale weight. If you ever see a graph that is more linear than this - that is indeed not giving you the full picture of someone’s body weight.
I have Coached many people through weight loss and every single one of them have had this experience.
These fluctuations mainly occur due to:
Hormones and Menstrual Cycle
Medications
Sleep
Types of food you consume
Digestion
Exercise
One of the most common reasons scale weight will fluctuate is because carbohydrates retain water. When you eat any Carbohydrate your body will absorb 3g-4g of Water to help store the glycogen from the food.
This is not body fat and is perfectly normal - and is a big reason you see a big reduction in scale weight when someone goes “low-carb”
There is just one other thing to say here and that is that when you are tracking scale weight as a marker of success or not when trying to lose weight, you must gather more data than weekly scale readngs.
This is another common reason that plateaus occur - you just aren’t getting enough data.
Looking at the same graph from my weight as before I have circled every seventh reading - to repllicate one a week weigh ins.
As you can see every other week my weight was up from the week before.
Looking at the last circle, which is seven days from the one previous if I was weighing in weekly, and weighed in on the 6th day I would have had a reading that was lower than the last reading 7 days previous as opposed to one that was higher.
This is when data can become your best friend - and the more you gather the more insightful you can be when it comes to analysing what is going on.
If you have Scale Anxiety then please read my article that has helped hundreds of people overcome gravitophobia:
How To Actually Get Past Your Weight Loss Plateau
I guarantee I could find someone on the internet telling you very opposing things in relation to this question. You will be told to:
Reduce Calories
Increase Calories
More Exercise
Less Exercise
More Water
Less Water
And each person is just confusing you more and more and more - adding to your frustration and not knowing where to turn.
In truth, each solution could be correct.
Reducing your calories may lead to a calorie deficit as you will be consuming less in the short term.
Increasing your calories may lead to a calorie deficit in the long term as you might be less likely to binge and more adherent to your calorie moderate calorie deficit as opposed to always reducing and cutting and restricting.
More exercise might lead to a calorie deficit in the shorter term by way of burning calories (but this is a very silly way to go about losing weight) but it might lead to more hunger.
Less exercise might lead to a calorie deficit due to less hunger from exercise - especially with things like HIIT.
And water might help reduce hunger, but it does have a weight to it, and that will show up on the scale.
But I understand none of this is overly helpful right now.
Therefore I propose these solutions to your weight loss plateau problem.
Reframe it as a Success
What is the opposite of weight loss not going down? It going up…
And if weight loss is your ultimate goal, but it is in a “plateau” then you are indeed doing a fantastic job as your weight is stable and you are learning to manage your new body and its new weight.
I do feel like I want to caveat the above statement.
A lot of people, women especially, but men too, do feel great shame when their weight increases. This is because they get so much praise when their weight is coming down. Praise from friends, family, coaches, and society at large. This leads them to feel like failures when their weight may increase again, even if it is only slightly. As I mentioned before learning to maintain weight loss is incredibly difficult, and there is no shame or failure attached to regaining weight - because what the scale doesn't show is how much you have learnt, how much more skill you have developed in the gym, how consistent you have been with your actions, how much better your mental health is as a result of working hard and trying, how much more energy you have and how much better you are sleeping.
Even if you learn to manage your new body at its new weight and it is slightly up from the lowest scale reading you have - you are still succeeding at so much more than you are giving yourself credit for.
Remember, 80% of people cant maintain their weight.
A plateau really isn’t a bad thing.
Trust Yourself
Look at it this way…you got to the point of which a plateau can actually occur. You must have done something right thus far.
So now you just need to trust yourself. Trust you know what you are doing, trust that your actions will lead to the result you are after. One of the hardest things for people who are trying to lose weight is this element of trust.
Usually, because they have been sent on a path of yoyo dieting and then been made to feel like they themselves are the thing that is broken - not the diet itself. And relearning to trust yourself is very hard
To get to the issues of a weight loss plateau, you have a process that has worked, you have a process that is sustainable for you and you have a process that you know you can trust - you’re at this point already - and now it’s just a case of making sure that you trust that process, and trust yourself.
Remain Consistent, Remain Patient
The more weight you lose the slower it will occur. This is because many people who want to lose weight probably want to because they view the body fat they now have as excess.
They are above their body’s settling point that they are used to for themselves.
This can happen for many reasons, mainly lifestyle factors like becoming parents or changing from an active job to a sedentary one.
At the beginning with a tiny bit of focus, and dialling up a few things in terms of their diet, increasing some steps, in fact living by my 5 Awesome Rules for Fat Loss Life (please excuse how cringy the video below is), they then manage to lose that “extra” body fat relatively quickly.
But the closer you get to the point upon which you’re near when you want to be - think the classic last 5lbs of stubborn fat - then it will take an awful lot longer to get there.
The curve will always level off.
There is more at play in terms of this as well - which I go into further down.
But generally - you will lose weight quickest in the beginning - and this is also why many people do 6-week challenges that are all about losing lots of weight in that time frame - it’s a safe and easy way for personal trainers to get all the glory without having to actually do the hard work for people - get them through the moments when it feels hardest for them.
It’s a huge reason I don’t do them. I’m a Coach and there is no glory in not supporting people properly.
I digress.
As the curve levels off (something you have been told to view as a plateau), the most important thing to do here is to be consistent. Is to not change anything drastic, and just keep ticking off the days and the process.
Begin to enjoy the process more, begin to appreciate that you are doing so much more good for yourself than necessarily losing weight.
And the more you focus on the process provided it has been set up correctly (preferably with the aid of a Coach - I know a good one wink, wink, nudge, nudge: head here) then the results will eventually take care of themselves.
Patience is a virtue - and I’m sorry but if your weight hasn’t decreased in two weeks you are not in a plateau. In fact, if your weight hasn't decreased in a month, you are not in a plateau. If you are executing the behaviours that constitute a calorie deficit and your weight hasn’t moved from month one to month six, and you have investigated the areas of your life that you think might be getting in the way, then we can look into the possibility that you are indeed in a plateau.
Without a doubt, one of the main ways to get past a weight loss plateau is be more patient with yourself and the process.
Realise there is so much more to celebrate
SO MUCH MORE!
I used to call my coaching program this - because the list of things you can celebrate and crucially should celebrate away from weight loss is so much more empowering than celebrating the reduction of your body.
Getting Stronger
Being Consistent with your own health
Better Sleep
Eating in a more balanced way
Having more energy
Improving your relationship with you
Improving your relationship with others
Being in nature more
Learning new skills and applying them
Improving your relationship with food
Improving your relationship with exercise - more on this here: How To Love Exercise Again
Building your confidence through keeping promises with yourself
Building your self-esteem
Improving your mental health
Burning more energy
Increasing your Metabolism
I’m sure there’s more - but I’m a little hungover today so let’s leave it there.
But look at that list.
It’s a bloody good one isn’t it?
Why would you want to give up all of those benefits simply because you aren’t losing weight? Or you have lost weight and it appears to have stalled.
If you are engaging in a health and fitness journey and you are not working on all of those things that I have listed - and only working on losing weight - you are setting yourself up for complete failure - because naturally, your weight loss will stop - and when that happens you will feel like you are failing.
I always say:
“Focus on production, not reduction”
I appreciate that list might look overwhelming, but many of it is the by-product of just engaging in physical movement and an active lifestyle appropriately - and only focussing on weight loss - that is not an appropriate way to engage with not just movement, but yourself too.
I understand and appreciate that weight loss might be a great tool for which people begin, get started and can discover all of this - but once you have got over that initial moment of engaging because of your body weight - you need to transfer your thoughts onto that list I have laid out.
Be proud of what you managed to lift and how you managed to lift it. Be proud of the fact that you are eating in a more structured way and that is having huge benefits on your relationship with food.
And if you aren’t doing those things and if you aren’t focussing on that list …it could be an indicator as to why your weight loss has plateaued.
Bodyweight Settling Points
Set Point theory is the premise that you have a predisposition to a certain body weight. This is due to a number of factors, but genetics and lifestyle are the two main ones.
It is only a theory, but it is backed by quite a lot of evidential studies. [3, 4, 5].
This doesn’t mean that you are predetermined to always be overweight if that is where your set point is. It means that changing it might be a lot harder than you ever thought possible. Having worked with thousands of people on weight loss over my career I have found this to be true as well. Very few people lose the 3 stone of weight that they were aiming to, and then also manage to stay there for the rest of their lives. Most people I have worked with, we are always trading around 5lbs here and 5lbs there - and those who do lose more, have to overhaul a lot in their lives both mentally and physically to manage it, and it takes a lot longer than you would ever believe.
Setpoint theory is also why we define successful weight loss as losing 10% of your body weight and keeping it off for at least a year. You may lose 17% initially - but that might be an amount too great for your body and therefore 10% is the marker of successful weight loss.
Because weight will come up and down.
You can change your set point - which is why I refer to it as a “settling point”. At different phases in our lives, we will probably have different bodyweights. Think of it like this - if I took you out of your environment right now and placed you on an island somewhere to live - it is likely that your bodyweight will change - as you have different access to different foods.
This happened to me - when I moved to Australia - trying to learn the nuances in the different foods here took a while - and it meant I stuck to things I knew a little more - which were obviously brands that generally pack their food with calories.
Added to that my activity levels were very different whilst I was trying to find a job, get used to being out of the sun for certain hours of the day and not having the money to be able to pay for a Gym whilst I was setting everything up.
Then once I got used to my environment, my body weight started to decline again back to where it nearly always sits at around 80kgs.
Therefore your body settles depending on its environment - and the more comfortable you are in an environment the more likely you are to hit a plateau.
Added to all of this, we also have mechanisms in our body that when it realises calories are being reduced, it changes your hormones to increase hunger to protect you. These hormones are affected by Adipose Tissue (Fat Cells) and the more of them you have the more the hormones will affect you making things just that little bit harder for you.
And as you can imagine, the closer to that point you get - the more your body will fight back - the more likely you are to be in a plateau.
This is exactly why you should focus a lot more on the list above than just the scale readings you are collecting.
Metabolic Apdation (check in with your numbers)
Metabolic Adaption [6] is the very simple fact of life that a smaller organism needs fewer calories to survive. As you lose weight, you will require fewer calories to maintain that weight.
Therefore if you have been losing weight, and that seems to have slowed down for a long enough period to quantify an actual plateau (at least a couple of months) depending on the amount of weight you have lost in that time, it could mean you need to check your calorie deficit numbers again.
The caloric maintenance of your body has literally changed - and it is quite common for someone to still be eating the same amount of calories that were designed for when they started their fitness journey as opposed to where they are now - as they have noticed a big slow down in weight loss.
So always check in with your maintenance numbers, which will then allow you to adjust your calorie numbers.
For more on Bodyweight Maintenance head here: How To Find Your Calorie Maintenance Level
And if you want a free Calorie Calculator then please head here: Free Fitness Goodies
Build More Muscle and Be More Active???
It would be remiss of me to write this whole article without touching on these points.
And I have put a question mark next to the points for very good reason. For this article, I have written it with the perspective that you probably already are being very active - and probably don’t have the privilege. to increase that part of your life too much.
If you are stuck, and you aren’t doing 2-3x strength sessions a week, you aren’t regularly hitting 8k steps a day at least, then yes - please do that.
By doing that I almost guarantee your weight will change again.
I also want to discuss the art of building muscle here.
Everyone is different - but building muscle takes time. It takes more time if you are female and it takes more time the more experienced you are at doing it.
For a woman, you are looking at about 1lb a month in the first year, then 0.5lb a month in the second year of training.
For a man, you are looking at about 2lbs a month in the first year, and then 1lb a month in the second year of training.
1lb of Muscle at rest burns 5kcal a day.
Therefore after your first year of training as a woman, you will have only added an extra 60kcals a day to your metabolism, and if you are a man, you can double that.
Yes, building muscle will help your metabolism because you will also burn calories as you exercise, and after you exercise. But in order to improve your metabolism enough to see it on the scale and to help break through a plateau you are going to have to be very dedicated to the cause of building muscle for a period of time a lot longer than you probably believed before you read this article.
Of course, I am an advocate of strength training for all people - I just wanted to bring to your attention that when people tell you to build muscle to improve your metabolism, it is true, but not in the manner you may interpret it, or the manner in which they believe it would help you also.
Just be aware, that building muscle probably isn’t the quick fix you are hoping for to break through a plateau - but it’s a blinking good thing to do for your health.
What’s Next?
I really hope you found this article useful, and that you feel a lot better about your struggles at the moment. Thank you so much for taking the time to read my work, it really does mean a lot to me to have you here.
If you would like a Free Calorie and Macro Calculator then just put your email in here:
References:
Sarwan G, Rehman A. Management Of Weight Loss Plateau. [Updated 2021 Oct 29]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2022 Jan-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK576400/
Wing RR, Phelan S. Long-term weight loss maintenance. Am J Clin Nutr. 2005 Jul;82(1 Suppl):222S-225S. doi: 10.1093/ajcn/82.1.222S. PMID: 16002825.
GEMA FRÜHBECK,, JAVIER GÓMEZ‐AMBROSI, Rationale for the existence of additional adipostatic hormones, The FASEB Journal, 10.1096/fj.00-0829hyp, 15, 11, (1996-2006), (2001).
Hoeger, W., Hoeger, S., Fawson, A., & Hoeger, C. (2019). Principles and labs for fitness and wellness. Cengage.
Liao, T., Zhang, S.-L., Yuan, X., Mo, W. Q., Wei, F., Zhao, S.N., Yang, W., Liu, H., & Rong, X. (2020). Liraglutide lowers body weight set point in DIO rats and its relationship with hypothalamic microglia activation. Obesity: A Research Journal, 28(1), 122-131. doi: 10.1002/oby.22666
Trexler, E.T., Smith-Ryan, A.E. & Norton, L.E. Metabolic adaptation to weight loss: implications for the athlete. J Int Soc Sports Nutr 11, 7 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1186/1550-2783-11-7
7 Practical Tips To Make Counting Calories Easier
One of the most frequent complaints I get from clients on the Strong & Confident Program is that they just don’t have the time to track their food.
Once they have cooked the dinner, eaten the dinner and then washed up after - its either their bedtime or their children’s bedtime…and the act of meticulously going through what they ate that day, and most importantly trying to remember everything they ate that day, is obviously going to be the last thing on their mind - whether they want to achieve their goals or not.
And I get it.
80% of my clients, throughout my career have been busy parents, and realistically you have to look at their lives and question whether tracking their calories is really going to add stress or take the stress away from their life.
And much of the time it will add stress - which will have far more negative repercussions on their fitness than whether they choose to track calories.
About a month ago, I did a Seminar here on the Gold Coast, Australia, all about Tracking your calories, and I wanted to share with you what we all went through on that day.
Table of contents for: 7 Practical Tips To Make Counting Calories Easier
Does Calorie Counting work?
Why should you track your food?
Informed Consent on tracking your calories
7 Tips to make Counting Calories Easier
How To Be In A Calorie Deficit Without Logging Your Food
There is a quick summary of my 7 Practical Tips on YouTube. But to understand the principles and the whys and wherefores behind counting calories - keep reading!
Does Calorie Counting work?
This is a very hotly debated topic.
There are people out there…on the internet…who will tell you that tracking your calories simply doesn’t work…simply because the calorie amounts on packages aren’t accurate.
This study [1] called ‘Food Label Accuracy of Common Snack Foods’ found that:
“Measured energy values exceeded label statements by 8% on average in pre-packaged convenience meals (12), which is slightly higher but consistent with the label disparity of 4.3% in packaged snack foods. Also consistent with this study, most products in our sample fell within the allowable limit of 20% over the label calories per Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations”
This is a shocking revelation, but it’s still only 8% out.
The last time I checked, 8% was a pretty small amount. Let me put it to you thus, if I gave you 92% success in your Goals…would you take it?
Exactly.
So let me ask again; Does Calorie Counting Work?
And it’s a resounding yes provided you have never had an Eating Disorder.
If you have ever had an Eating Disorder then please don’t engage in Calorie Counting. And if you need help with that please contact the Charity BEAT here [2].
There are issues relating to Calorie Counting, and I go into those later in the article. But the main answer to this question is the following:
Yes. Calorie Counting does work.
This study [3] took participants over one year, and depending on their consistency with dietary tracking, split them into three Groups.
Rare Trackers equalling <33% days tracked (114 days out of 343)
Inconsistent Trackers 33-66% days tracked
Consistent Trackers >66% days tracked (228 days out opf 343)
Please note that consistent trackers qualify at just two-thirds of the time available to them - not 100% of the time available to them.
All participants were asked to:
Maintain daily food journals and physical activity records;
Reduce portion sizes;
Reduce foods high in calories, fat, and simple sugar;
Increase consumption of fruits, vegetables, and low-fat dairy products;
and
Weigh themselves frequently and at least weekly (more on this here)
They each worked with a Health Coach, and attended interactive sessions designed to educate them on nutrition and exercise adherence.
The results were:
“Only consistent trackers had significant weight loss (-9.99 pounds), following a linear relationship with consistent loss throughout the year. In addition, the weight loss trend for the rare and inconsistent trackers followed a nonlinear path, with the holidays slowing weight loss and the onset of summer increasing weight loss. These results show the importance of frequent dietary tracking for consistent long-term weight loss success”
It also concluded the following:
“Early in the program weight change of consistent trackers did not differ from rare or inconsistent dietary trackers. However, rare or inconsistent trackers gained weight during the holidays but the consistent trackers' rate of weight loss did not change as they sustained their rate of weight loss from the first quarter. Hence, successful behavioural interventions should emphasize the benefits of consistent dietary tracking for participants, motivating individuals to track for at least 5 days of each week for sustained and clinically significant weight loss"
This study teaches us a lot about weight loss.
The first lesson is that consistency is what matters, and consistency doesn’t mean as much as you think it does. It is simply just two-thirds of your time.
The second lesson is that tracking is a behaviour that supports other behaviours like having a Coach, reducing portion sizes, and eating more fruits and vegetables.
The third lesson is that scientifically 10lbs is a significant amount of weight to lose in a year.
As a coach, my point here is you need to stop comparing yourself to people on Social Media. What you see on there, compared to what real world results truly look like vary greatly.
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Why Should You Track Your Food?
One of the most common occurrences in people who are trying to lose weight and getting frustrated with the outcomes in terms of weight loss is that they often overestimate the calories they are burning and underestimate the calories they are consuming.
As this study concludes:
“The failure of some obese subjects to lose weight while eating a diet they report as low in calories is due to an energy intake substantially higher than reported and an overestimation of physical activity, not to an abnormality in thermogenesis.”
This basically means that it comes down to your Calorie Deficit, rather than there being an issue in the way your body metabolises food.
The hypothesis has been tested in two other ways as well. This study pipped Dieticians against Non-Dieticians and found that even dieticians under-report their energy intake somewhere between 223 and 116 kcal/day, compared with the non-dieticians who underreported between 429 and 142kcal/day.
This just goes to show…that even those who are really well educated on food and nutrition still underestimate the calories they are consuming.
This doesn’t mean that learning about nutrition and your food isn’t worthwhile. The dieticians were still better with an average over-reporting of 169.5kcal/day compared to the non-dieticians which averaged 285.5kcal/day.
And finally,
This study actually paid people to be accurate. They were giving out $50 bonuses to be accurate with their diet recall on four occasions. One group had to be accurate the first two times, the second group accurate the second two times, and one group received no bonus at all.
And guess what happened:
“Energy intake did not differ within or between groups at any time, and the number of under reporters was not associated with group at any time. Overall, the incentive was ineffective.”
So by tracking your food, you reduce the risk of being inaccurate. In fact, tracking your food is the most accurate way to tell if you are or are not in a calorie deficit for that day. We have no other way of knowing this information, and if you want instant feedback about your weight loss day on day - then tracking your food is the best way to go about it.
In terms of overestimating the number of calories, you are burning this comes down to many things. The main one is that we trust our smartwatches to be accurate with this information when this study [5] demonstrates.
It found that Smartwatches at their most accurate, in terms of judging energy expenditure are off by between 27% and 93%.
The study also found that they are better at reading heart rates.
Personally, as a Coach, I don’t like clients on my Strong & Confident Program to focus on Calories burned from exercise - because that can destroy your relationship with exercise and create very extreme behaviour that will only lead to failure.
You should focus on eating to your deficit - and exercising to get strong enough to fight a bear in the woods.
Informed Consent when tracking your food
As I mentioned above, you should not track your food if you are recovering from any form of Eating Disorder.
But I also take my responsibility for your Mental Health very seriously so I want to let you know about the drawbacks of tracking your food, before I give you the 7 Practical Tips To Make Counting Calories Easier.
Then you can decide whether or not it is a behaviour you are safe to engage with.
This study [6] analysed 5.5k posts on Community Forums, like MyFitness Pal, and discovered what the practical difficulties are with tracking food.
Success is attributed to a “goal weight achievement”
Of 94 people, only 22 thought they were empowered enough to no longer need to track their food
Can be a tedious practice
Not knowing how much of a food to enter
Not being able to find foods in the database
How do you track restaurants and eating at a friends house?
When asked to rate difficulty by meal type, respondents rated packaged food (average: 6.5) and fast food (6.3) as significantly easier to journal than home-cooked meals (4.6), buffet meals (3.7), ethnic food (3.7), restaurant meals (3.6), foods served by friends (3.2), and foods consumed at parties (2.9)
I’d just like to highlight a few points here:
“Success is attributed to a “goal weight achievement” - this is always going to be an issue on an App like MyFitness Pal - because it keeps reminding you how much you will weigh in x amount of days, if you keep up the behaviour you set that day. Although some will find this motivating I am here to tell you that your success is not defined by hitting a weight on the scale. Your success is determined by engaging in behaviours over a consistent period of time. If you set these behaviours and execute you will gain confidence and strength - as a consequence of that you might lose weight.
I think I summed this up best when I said on Instagram:
“How do you track restaurants and eating at a friends house?” - there are two schools of thought here:
If you don’t eat out too often - mainly if it’s just a special occasion - then you shouldn’t be tracking in the first place, you should be enjoying the moment.
If you eat out more and are worried about the calories, do your best at figuring out what you had when you get home…then add 30% to account for factors of food that are out of your control - like the amount of oil used by the Chef.
The same study [6] then also analysed Mental Health outcomes relating to tracking food and it found:
Food journalers report feelings of shame, judgement, or obsession associated with current designs. P6 reported journaling “made me feel guilty sometimes”, while P27 noted a lack of positive feedback: “I always felt guilty when I ate too much, and there wasn't that much pride when I was under my goal.”
“Sometimes I feel like not logging things because I know it’s really unhealthy.
“It made me too focused and obsessive about what I was eating”
“It was more of an on the way to an eating disorder thing than anything else (tried to keep calories extremely low)”
“I think I was hesitant to do the logging if not alone”
“I had more of a problem with eating out at a friend’s house because I didn’t want to ask for ingredients or mention that I was logging calories”
You should never feel shame around a behaviour you are engaging in and if you are feeling that way then please do not operate in that behaviour.
If what you are doing is not making you feel strong and empowered - then why o why are you doing it?
You shouldn’t have to suffer - and I don’t want you to suffer at all.
In terms of going over your calories sometimes - and that leading to a feeling of failure - please remember that no matter what you do - you can’t fuck this up - because when you engage in a fitness journey - it shouldn’t be defined by an endpoint, it should be a move to building an active lifestyle and pulling yourself into balance.
Therefore, all you have to do is get back on track the very next day.
The human body doesn’t gain weight that quickly, so there really isn’t a need to panic when you go over.
1. Don’t try to be perfect in an imperfect system
The whole system around calories is flawed.
When we establish someone’s Basal Metabolic Rate which is the point upon which we begin to figure out their deficit calories we are making it our “best guess”. This guess is based on years and years of study across millions of people, but it is still a guess.
And the food industry does the same. In 1991 the Australian Food Standards Code used to state:
“That the value shown in a Nutrition Information Panel was deemed to comply if these values (of energy, carbohydrate, starch or fibre) did not vary by more than 20% from those values actually present and 10% variation was permitted for other nutrients”
And although these figures are no longer part of Law they are still regarded as acceptable folklore in the Food Industry.
The current Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code does not permit or mandate any limits on accuracy of the levels of nutrients expressed in Nutrition Information Panels but only requires that these values be ‘average’ values. Maximum and minimum quantities are required in regard to claims for polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fatty acid contents of food.
And in the US a study called “Food Label Accuracy of Common Snack Foods” [7] we have already seen that calories in published are not that reliable.
Being consistent with tracking your food, to get a best guess is good enough, and by doing that you still get results as you will be holding yourself accountable and over time will improve your choices to help you get to your goals.
2. It’s Not A Life Sentence; its a Period of Education
When you approach anything in life with the view of “What can I learn about this?” as opposed to “Can I pass or fail this?” you will automatically improve your relationship with that behaviour.
Tracking your food is no different. You should do it to learn about the energy in food, to learn about how your choices over a day impact your energy and ability to control your stress. Its a way of finding out if your weekends are destroying your progress and what eating in balance really looks like.
You get to decide when that period of education is over and when you feel empowered enough to move away from tracking your calories - because that is the goal here. The goal isn’t to be tied to MyFitness Pal for the rest of your life.
You should want to be educated enough about nutrition so that you never have to open an app ever again.
3. There is no right or wrong, just exploration
One of these days I’m going to get this printed on a t-shirt. It’s true of exercise, and it’s true of nutrition.
If you go over your calories, the only person judging you is you.
If you don’t hit your protein target, the only person judging you is you.
Every time something sub-optimal occurs the good news is that you have the opportunity to learn from it, grow from it, and ultimately succeed from those lessons.
You are only every investigating, course correcting and developing - you are not passing or failing.
4. If it’s in a packet: Track it!
This is so simple it hurts. MyFitness Pal and any other tracking app you might use will have what’s called a Barcode Scanner. It will literally take you a matter of seconds to get all of the nutritional information you need about that food by scanning the barcode.
Therefore if you eat something with a barcode. on the packet - which will be a fair 75% of the food you eat - just track it.
5 . Set Up generic value amounts for Fruits and Veggies
Let’s be very clear - no one ever gained weight from eating too many fruits and veggies. Even if you are a Vegetarian, I promise you fruits and vegetables in your diet are not the problem here.
And when it comes to tracking them, they can be really annoying to put into an app accurately.
Therefore you should just set up a generic value for Fruits and Vegetables, save that into your App and just use those every time you have your Veggies at dinner.
Personally I just scan a bag of frozen vegetables set it to 100g and use that every time I have dinner - irrespective of what the Vegetables actually are.
6. Eating Out? Add 30% to your meal
I alluded to this earlier in the article - but it’s a strategy that makes everything. more accurate for you when you are trying to track your food.
The best way to track your food when eating out would be the following:
1. See online if the restaurant publishes their calories
2. In the restaurant take a photo.
3. When at home, best guess the amounts.
4. Add 30% to every amount even if the restaurant does publish their calories
That way you have the bases covered.
And remember if you are out celebrating - celebrate. Don’t worry about the calories on special occasions - just worry about getting back on track the next day.
7. Cook Meals that are already Calorie Tracked
This is the one that perplexes me the most when it comes to people who are trying to lose weight and using calorie tracking as a solution to that.
It also perplexes me with clients on my Strong and Confident Program - who are tracking - as they have access to over 250 recipes all with calorie tracked barcodes including vegetarian and vegan options - yet they still say that tracking is too hard for them.
All the hard work has been done for you.
In fact, if you Google “MyFitness Pal Dinner Recipes” you get 688,000 results and the top one is all with the Macros and Calories already figured out for you.
So use that resource.
I guarantee you will be able to find a version of your favourite meal that is now Barcode Scannable or has all of the nutritional information figured out for you. Then you just have to copy and paste.
The brass tax is if you can’t be bothered to copy and paste some information or spend ten minutes finding the information on the internet to be able to track your calories - then engaging in a fitness journey will always be a slog for you.
How To Be In A Calorie Deficit Without Logging Your Food
There are other things you can do to keep your calories in check without necessarily logging your food.
But bear in mind, the only way to truly know if you are in a deficit each day - is to log your foods.
I have two strategies for this.
The first is a three meals, two snacks which I outline here:
This is very simple.
Each day you are allowed three meals.
Each meal must fit on one plate.
Between breakfast and lunch and lunch and dinner you can have a snack.
I have found applying this structure is incredibly effective.
The second strategy is called The Five Awesome Rules For Fat Loss Life.
This is a list of 5 things you need in order to lose weight:
Be in a Calorie Deficit
Three Litres of Water A Day
Protein and Veggies at every meal
8-10k Steps A Day
7-8 hours of sleep a night
And if you want help figuring this out then watch this:
Did You Find This Useful?
Across this website, I have other Articles all about Tracking your Calories and managing your Calorie Deficit:
Added to that it would be AMAZING if you wanted to become my friend.
As my friend, I will send you some amazing help, like a book called 27 Ways to Faster Fat Loss, workout plans for both the Gym and home workouts, and much more. Just put your email in below:
References:
Jumpertz R, Venti CA, Le DS, et al. Food label accuracy of common snack foods. Obesity (Silver Spring). 2013;21(1):164-169. doi:10.1002/oby.20185
Beat. 2021. The UK's Eating Disorder Charity - Beat. [online] Available at: <https://www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/> [Accessed 15 September 2021].
Ingels JS, Misra R, Stewart J, Lucke-Wold B, Shawley-Brzoska S. The Effect of Adherence to Dietary Tracking on Weight Loss: Using HLM to Model Weight Loss over Time. J Diabetes Res. 2017;2017:6951495. doi: 10.1155/2017/6951495. Epub 2017 Aug 9. PMID: 28852651; PMCID: PMC5568610.
Lichtman SW, Pisarska K, Berman ER, Pestone M, Dowling H, Offenbacher E, Weisel H, Heshka S, Matthews DE, Heymsfield SB. Discrepancy between self-reported and actual caloric intake and exercise in obese subjects. N Engl J Med. 1992 Dec 31;327(27):1893-8. doi: 10.1056/NEJM199212313272701. PMID: 1454084.
Shcherbina, A.; Mattsson, C.M.; Waggott, D.; Salisbury, H.; Christle, J.W.; Hastie, T.; Wheeler, M.T.; Ashley, E.A. Accuracy in Wrist-Worn, Sensor-Based Measurements of Heart Rate and Energy Expenditure in a Diverse Cohort. J. Pers. Med. 2017, 7, 3. https://doi.org/10.3390/jpm7020003
Cordeiro F, Epstein DA, Thomaz E, Bales E, Jagannathan AK, Abowd GD, Fogarty J. Barriers and Negative Nudges: Exploring Challenges in Food Journaling. Proc SIGCHI Conf Hum Factor Comput Syst. 2015 Apr;2015:1159-1162. doi: 10.1145/2702123.2702155. PMID: 26894233; PMCID: PMC4755274.
Jumpertz R, Venti CA, Le DS, Michaels J, Parrington S, Krakoff J, Votruba S. Food label accuracy of common snack foods. Obesity (Silver Spring). 2013 Jan;21(1):164-9. doi: 10.1002/oby.20185. PMID: 23505182; PMCID: PMC3605747.
Is A Calorie Deficit All That Matters For Weight Loss? | The Truth of Energy Balance
Without a doubt, I am known as a Calorie Deficit advocate, and I am proud to be one.
I am a believer in the fact that to either gain weight or lose weight you need to understand the principle of Calories In vs Calories Out.
Science is irrefutable on the topic. [1,2]
But what goes into the make up of Calories In vs Calories Out needs far more context.
There are many people out there that simply think “Calories In vs Calories Out” is causing the problem in terms of Weight Gain and Obesity.
The Health At Every Size (HAES) movement, the Body Positive Movement which are both movements I support, would argue against the constant bombardment of the rhetoric of losing weight equals results and that you can’t be healthy unless you are thin, and the problems that are perpetuating in our society, and they aren’t wrong.
Problems that are leading so many people into very dark places with regards to the relationship with the self. And that is simply not good enough.
But they also think that anyone who utters the words “calorie deficit” is a proponent of everything they stand against — and that the two cannot co-exist.
There are many people who think that if you are overweight, you are simply lazy and lack willpower, an opinion that should be abhorrent to anyone who hears it and comes from a place of complete ignorance for what “The Truth Of Energy Balance” really is, combined with a complete lack of empathy for peoples humanity.
Because: “Science innit.”
And here I am.
Someone who loves helping people; someone who is on the side of both people being positive about themselves, and allowing them to work on Goals that they want to achieve. Someone who believes in the Science and a Personal Trainer that feels he is being crushed from both sides. Someone who wants to very much empower people to take responsibility for their health, whilst disarming those who simply place blame on people having never walked a day in their shoes.
Some people think that my approach to educating people on a Calorie Deficit isn’t right or fair for people's mental health and physical wellbeing.
Science says that a Calorie Deficit is required for weight loss.
Science also says that looking at why people eat excess calories is equally important in being able to help people with their weight.
The fitness industry is divided between these two…and I believe in both.
There is a bridge to be built — and if you can understand this bridge when it comes to Energy Balance you too will begin to understand why you may have struggled in the past so much for your fitness success, or why others struggle with it too. I’m not saying that you don’t have to take responsibility for your health, of course, you do.
But when you start looking at the context of what goes into Calories In and Calories Out you can start to work with your environment to help create that change and achieve your goals.
Table of Contents for: Is A Calorie Deficit All That Matters To Lose Weight? The Truth of Energy Balance”
You can also watch a summary of this Blog Post right here:
Is A Calorie Deficit All That Matters For Weight Loss?
The Truth of Energy Balance
What Is The Truth Behind Energy Balance?
There is the science which I touched on above.
The simple fact that Calories are units of measure of energy in food.
In the same way, a Mile is a unit of measure for distance. A calorie is a unit of measure for energy, and if we consume more energy than our body needs it will be stored somewhere.
In the same way that if you travel four miles down the road, you are indeed four miles further on from your starting point.
To adjust this storage of energy your body can indeed work these calories away and if you do this often enough and in enough quantity, you will then reduce the mass of your body.
Hence the energy balance equation of:
Calories In vs Calories Out
Or
“Eat Less, Move More” a phrase that is dogged and plagued with ignorance.
For more information on why Eat Less, Move More is an unhelpful term head here: https://www.thegymstarter.com/blog/2020/7/28/why-eat-less-move-more-is-causing-the-problem-not-curing-it
The energy balance equation is very simple and straightforward, and like with all things simple and straightforward it is going to be fraught with problems.
And this is the truth behind Energy Balance.
Is A Calorie Deficit All That Matters For Weight Loss?
The Truth of Energy Balance
Calories In is not simply “how much you eat”
To view it thus is to oversimplify your human condition.
And Science supports us here too.
The factors that lend themselves to Calories In are the following:
Personal Economic Factors, Social Factors, Community Factors, Genetic Factors, Medical Factors, and Emotional Factors.
Personal Economic Factors
When the UK Government launched its new “Tackling Obesity: empowering adults and children to live healthier lives” plan there were many people on the telly box stating that:
“It's not more expensive to eat healthily”
Which is a falsehood.
In 2014 the University of East Anglia and the University of Cambridge teamed up with The British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Economic and Social Research Council, Medical Research Council, the National Institute for Health Research, and the Wellcome Trust and produced a paper which looked at the growing price gap between healthy and unhealthy foods in the UK.
They concluded:
“Since 2002, more healthy foods and beverages have been consistently more expensive than less healthy ones, with a growing gap between them. This trend is likely to make healthier diets less affordable over time, which may have implications for individual food security and population health, and it may exacerbate social inequalities in health.” [3]
and the results found:
“In 2012 the average price of more healthy foods was about three times higher — £7.49 for 1,000kcal compared to £2.50 for 1,000kcal of less healthy foods” [4]
There are limitations to this study, namely that foods were judged per 1000kcal, and healthier foods are generally less calorie-dense.
Aside from this, I am writing this article at the end of 2020, which has been a year of great economic unrest and at a time where the poverty gap in most western societies is widening also.
I’ve said this before and I will say it again;
“When someone doesn’t know where their next meal is coming from, they aren’t going to worry about the quality of that meal…they are just going to be thankful they got to eat today”
Is A Calorie Deficit All That Matters For Weight Loss?
The Truth of Energy Balance
Social Factors
This works both ways.
Having a very active social life can lead to a lack of control over your diet. I think we all find it hard to understand our calorie intake when we are eating out more and enjoying ourselves socially.
But the solution to that is simple in that you can choose to not go out as a way of balancing your caloric intake and the effect it might be having on your physical health.
There is however a flip side.
What if you don’t have the choice, to begin with? What if you never have the option to meet friends and go for dinner? What if you can’t afford dinner out? What if you don’t drive and don’t like getting public transport places? What if you have to stay home to look after the children? What if you are in a controlling domestic relationship and it's just not an option to enjoy yourself in that way because the consequences are too great?
Boredom is a key indicator as a cause of Obesity.
California State University (Edward E. Abramson et al, 1977) conducted a study where they took a group of Obese Individuals and people who are rated as “Normal” on the BMI scale. They were fed until satiated, then asked to complete an interesting and boring task…whilst the food was readily available to them. The results were:
“That the obese consumed significantly more food than normals, and that boredom markedly increases food consumption for both obese and normals” [5]
And then in 2012 another study titled: “Eating when bored: revision of the emotional eating scale with a focus on boredom” concluded the following:
“These results suggest that boredom is an important construct and that it should be considered a separate dimension of emotional eating” [6]
Is A Calorie Deficit All That Matters For Weight Loss?
The Truth of Energy Balance
Community Factors
In the UK 10.2million or about 1/6th of the population live in a Food Desert.
Defined as the following: “Areas which are poorly served by food stores”
A report by the Social Marker Foundation, funded by Kellogs (make of that what you will), looked at “What are the barriers to eating healthily in the UK?” [7] and it found the following:
For those living in poverty, 15% of all household expenditure is spent on food, compared to 10% of those not living in poverty.
Just under a fifth (17%) of households surveyed as part of this research said groceries put a strain on their finances. For individuals with a household income of £10,000 or less, about two fifths (39%) said groceries were a strain on finances, as did about a quarter (23%) of those with a household income of between £10,000 and £20,000.
Some survey respondents stated that high and unaffordable food prices have led to a range of behavioral responses. Across all households one in ten (10%) said that they had cut back on their own level of food consumption so that others in their family (such as children) can eat. This figure stands at 14% among households with an income of less than £10,000.
A quarter of individuals (25%) said that they felt that healthy and nutritious food was unaffordable in the UK.
Access to food may be a barrier for individuals living in “food deserts” — areas that are poorly served by food stores. In these areas, individuals without a car or with disabilities that hinder mobility may find it difficult to easily access a wide range of healthy, affordable food products
These are just a few of their findings.
The truth of the barriers to eating healthily in the UK is simply terrifying, and I would encourage you to read the rest of the study here.
But Community means a lot more than just your location and access to food.
What about your education? The availability of work? The availability of being able to attend a Gym?
A study in Seoul, South Korea found the following:
“Lower socioeconomic status increases obesity. This is due to the intake of high-calorie and low-nutrition foods or environments that limit time and access to regular physical activities”
and a 2008 study, Frank et al, which was looking at “Walkability in neighborhoods” found the following:
“Male residents of more walkable neighborhoods were less likely to be obese or overweight”
and
“walking was consistently higher for all groups in the more walkable neighborhoods” [8]
Now imagine that for a second; you are more likely to be Obese simply because you don’t feel safe walking in your neighborhood, or your neighborhood isn’t accessible for walking for whatever reason.
This is before we even begin to look at things like education availability, public transport options, healthcare options, and public funding for areas to help with many of these factors.
Quite simply, where you are born and raised, through no fault of your own, could have a huge impact on your susceptibility to Obesity.
Is A Calorie Deficit All That Matters For Weight Loss?
The Truth of Energy Balance
Genetic Factors
As it stands, you cannot be genetically obese.
Your risk factors towards obesity increase as you age if you have a high-risk variant of a gene called FTO. [9]
This gene exists in everyone, and there are some people in the population who have a high-risk version of the gene and the gene controls your impulsivity, and if you are a carrier of the high-risk version of FTO you might find high-fat food more enjoyable [9].
However, studies have also found that those with this variant of the FTO respond just as well to weight loss treatment as anyone else.
BUT (and its a big but) — carriers of this gene are more likely to store body fat because
“people with two copies of the variant weigh on average 3kg more and are 1.7 times more likely to be obese” [10]
So what does all this mean? Well, firstly it means that for some people, it just is harder to lose weight because the clock keeps ticking, and they are starting from a different place genetically.
But it doesn’t mean that you can’t necessarily take charge of your health and fitness — but aligning your goals to what the scale says might be a foolish way to go about it.
Of the people my cited research included just 20% of them had two copies of the FTO Gene, and 48% carried one copy. Therefore the likelihood of your genetic makeup affecting your bodyweight is the last place to look if you aren’t getting the results you desire.
It does however show that some people need more nuance in their understanding of why controlling calories in is so hard.
Is A Calorie Deficit All That Matters For Weight Loss?
The Truth of Energy Balance
Hormonal Issues
Then again, there are many other metabolic conditions that might affect your ability to sustain a calorie deficit and therefore lose weight.
Conditions such as PCOS, Thyroid Issues, Hashimoto’s Disease, and Diabetes to name a few.
Again, these conditions are not a life sentence to forever gaining weight, but they do blur the lines for you.
In all the research I have done on Hypothyroidism in relation to weight loss I have found this conclusion:
“In general, 5–10 pounds of body weight may be attributable to the thyroid, depending on the severity of the hypothyroidism. Finally, if weight gain is the only symptom of hypothyroidism that is present, it is less likely that the weight gain is solely due to the thyroid.” [11]
I have personally helped many people with PCOS lose and sustain weight loss, but it certainly requires a different skillset from the client. In relation to Hashimotos, I have never personally worked with someone who has this, however, I am aware of many success stories in this field, as well as those who have Diabetes.
Hormonal issues ontop of everything else might make your weight loss journey a little slower and it might make it a little harder. But it by no means that it is not possible for you.
Is A Calorie Deficit All That Matters For Weight Loss?
The Truth of Energy Balance
Medical Factors and Weight Stigmatisation in Society at Large
The sheer amount of medical conditions that might affect someone’s ability to stay in a Calorie Deficit is almost never-ending.
This also feeds into the other aspect of the energy balance equation which is Calories Out.
For example, someone who has Arthritis is far less likely to be able to engage in physical activity.
But the bigger issue in the field of Medical Factors is the constant Weight Stigmatisation that those with larger body mass face whenever they are seeing their Doctors.
The first two minutes of this TedTalk demonstrates this very powerfully.
Added to that in a 2015 study looked directly at this and they have stated the following:
“There is considerable evidence that such attitudes influence person-perceptions, judgment, interpersonal behavior, and decision-making. These attitudes may impact the care they provide. Experiences of or expectations for poor treatment may cause stress and avoidance of care, mistrust of doctors, and poor adherence among patients with obesity. Stigma can reduce the quality of care for patients with obesity despite the best intentions of healthcare providers to provide high-quality care.” [12]
The title of the study is: “Impact of weight bias and stigma on quality of care and outcomes for patients with obesity” [12]
In my opinion, that shouldn’t even have to exist as a study, but alas it does — I suppose Doctors are just human too.
You see this has an impact on the “Calories In” side of the equation because we know that when people are subjected to Weight Stigmatisation it leads to an increase in caloric consumption.
As the following Obesity Research Journal study found in 2011:
Overweight women who watched the stigmatizing video ate more than three times as many kilocalories as overweight women who watched the neutral video (302.82 vs. 89.00 kcal), and significantly more calories than the normal-weight individuals who watched either the stigmatizing or the neutral video
and
These findings suggest that among overweight women, exposure to weight stigmatizing material may lead to increased caloric consumption [16]
Weight sitgmatization happens everywhere. This particular study showed participants a video — and that was a contorlled environment. But it’s a lot harder to control this in the big wide world when you have no say in what you see on Billboards, TV ads, the Media Headlines, Social Media, and the sheer ignorant opinion of others who haven’t read an article like this and really looked at the Science beyond “Calories In vs Calories Out”.
That is a lot of exposure.
In a 2018 opinion article published on the BioMed Editorial Website, they looked at “How and why weight stigma drives the obesity ‘epidemic’ and harms health”
Researchers concluded the following:
“Weight stigma is likely to drive weight gain and poor health and thus should be eradicated. This effort can begin by training compassionate and knowledgeable healthcare providers who will deliver better care and ultimately lessen the negative effects of weight stigma.” [13]
Is A Calorie Deficit All That Matters For Weight Loss?
The Truth of Energy Balance
Emotional Factors and Disordered Eating
The direct link between Emotional Eating and weight gain is incredibly clear to see. The constant feed in our society of the binge and restrict cycle makes up the majority of my work and the sheer majority of my colleagues work in the Fitness Industry.
This is due to a problem that the Fitness Industry created for itself, in helping the media prioritize the “thin ideal” as a marker of health and we are now walking headfirst into issues such as Obesity as well as many Eating Disorders like Bulimia, Anorexia, and Binge Eating Disorders.
Combined with all of the factors that surround emotional eating and disordered eating you must also look at the past trauma of people who are obese.
For instance, some people use weight gain as a way of making themselves invisible and undesirable to the opposite sex as Justin Faden et al (2012) found that:
73% of patients undergoing psychiatric hospitalization following gastric bypass have a history of sexual abuse. [14]
Then let's look at Mental well-being in relation to Obesity.
A meta-analysis published in 2008 in the Journal of Health Psychology found that:
“Combining data from 16 studies the results confirmed that, after controlling for potential confounding variables, depressed compared to nondepressed people were at significantly higher risk for developing obesity. The risk among depressed people for later obesity was particularly high for adolescent females.” [15]
Which will then lead us to Social Media usage and the effect that can have on Calories In.
The International Journal of Eating Disorders published a study in 2019 and found that:
“A clear pattern of association was found between Social Media usage and Disordered Eating cognitions and behaviors with this exploratory study confirming that these relationships occur at younger‐age than previously investigated.[16]”
Is A Calorie Deficit All That Matters For Weight Loss?
The Truth of Energy Balance
The conclusion to “Calories In”
I think thus far this article has made it very, very clear that the depth to Calories In is so deep and so great that simply understanding the Energy Balance Equation as “In vs Out” just isn’t enough.
And the terrifying part? I have picked just a few examples. The world is littered with many other aspects of what makes Calories In so complex too. This isn’t the whole picture of the equation. It is merely a snapshot that I can comprehend.
Yes, Calories In will need to be reduced for a successful weight loss journey, but when you view the spider web of what really goes into Calories In you begin to see that there is a whole world of social science and physical science that needs to be understood as well.
This understanding leads to one thing: empathy.
Empathy for the person you are working with and therefore building a bridge to the Calories In, side of the energy balance equation.
Is A Calorie Deficit All That Matters For Weight Loss?
The Truth of Energy Balance
Calories Out is not simply “how much you burn”
On the other side of the Energy Balance equation, you have Calories Out.
And this is just as complex as Calories In.
The Factors that lead to Calories Out are the following:
Weight Sitgmatisaiton, Fat Phobic Attitudes, A Lack of Self Confidence, Inaccessible Gyms and Arresting Environments, Repeated Failure.
The age-old proverb of “you can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink” is the overriding theme here.
I have already explored the relationship between poverty and obesity in this article, so let us assume that said person has the finances to join a gym in the first place.
They have the “motivation” to be at the gym and they are there primarily to try and get their weight down and to help with their Obesity.
What kind of experience do you think this person will have? How many other people do you think they will see in the Gym that they can relate to?
Plus the mirrors. Wicklund and Duval in 1971, put together a study upon which they found:
Viewing oneself via mirrors has been shown to increase levels of objective SA (situational awarenss) via self-evaluation, leading to increased awareness of the discrepancy between an individual’s current self and his or her “ideal” self [17]
The mirrors literally stop people from being motivated to workout.
Then there are the machines. I personally find some of the seats uncomfortable on these machines, and I am 6ft 4in and weigh 80kgs.
Then the marketing of the Gym. Everywhere you look there is a poster of a very fit person telling you to simply “get in shape in 12 weeks”.
Like it is that easy.
Add to that the attitudes of people within the Gym. The personal trainer someone might talk to about their goals, and then the very basic nutrition plan you receive that has no preference for food you actually like. Combined with the fact that if you want some more education and someone to show you the ropes, well, that's going to cost you extra on top of your membership.
In researching this article I came across the following study: “Obese persons’ physical activity experiences and motivations across weight changes: a qualitative exploratory study” [18]
This study has stories from people who are obese and have tried to exercise to help with their weight loss.
“I’d been on [another trip] maybe 15 years ago where the hiking club actually left me on a mountain because I couldn’t keep up, and [they] said you can sit here and wait for us to come down and get you, or you can go down by yourself. But you’re not coming with us; we’re not waiting for you anymore.” [18]
This is an actual person who was left on the side of a mountain by a Hiking Group.
Just let that sink in a little bit.
If that was you…how would you feel?
I’m not sure if you have ever seen me lift weights and the faces I pull…but it's not exactly attractive. This is the closest GIF I could find:
Now imagine you are someone who is already extremely self-conscious.
“… It’s kind of intimidating … you’re doing something that’s making your body move in all sorts of ways that is not attractive, and you feel like everyone’s going to see this.” [18]
This is a barrier to “Calories Out” that is very real and very true.
In this study they concluded the following:
“Finding an environment in which participants felt safe and encouraged to be active was extremely important, and instances of such inclusion had major ramifications on social wellbeing” [18]
But I personally think this sums it up the most:
“While participants had pleasure-related reasons for engaging in physical activity, this enjoyment could be overshadowed by the grip of caloric fear or dread of a demobilized future; a need for performative achievement or a thinner body; or the need to be a conspicuous exception to potentially stigmatizing anti-obesity messaging. Focusing on their health and fitness achievements and behaviors may have helped participants cope with their sizes in a stigmatizing climate. However, participants could still be overwhelmed by pressures to always be healthier or more active, and many participants had histories of disordered eating and activity practices.” [18]
Is A Calorie Deficit All That Matters For Weight Loss?
The Truth of Energy Balance
The Conclusion to “Calories Out”
Simply saying “exercise more” is base and unfair to say to humans who have panic attacks when they walk into a gym because of how arresting that environment is.
Telling them to just go for a run, when they already feel very self-aware isn’t helpful either — aside from the fact that running is an extremely hard form of exercise on your joints.
And added to that…listen to this story from Latoya Shauntay Snell who was heckled at mile 22 of a marathon by a man on the sidelines who shouted:
“It's going to take your fat ass forever”
Even people who aren’t struggling with their weight find it incredibly hard to find the motivation to workout and exercise. To simply reduce someone who is struggling as someone who is “just too lazy” is being a complete hypocrite towards your own struggles with being able to maintain a level of physical activity.
Just Do It; Just Don’t Cut It
In Conclusion
Quite simply…you can lose weight without exercise, and if you find exercise extremely triggering there are things you can do to still achieve weight loss goals without exercise.
That being said…I advise against losing weight without exercise.
I also advise against making weight loss the sole reason you want to exercise.
Caloric Control is required when it comes to your Diet in order to control your weight, but giving yourself more understanding and empathy for the context of what that truly means can actually give you a release from the constant wheel house of failure you seem to find yourself on.
What is most interesting in the study “Obese persons’ physical activity experiences and motivations across weight changes: a qualitative exploratory study” is that they identify two other reasons these people want to exercise:
Maintenance of functioning and mobility;
Pleasure derived from activity.
A Calorie Deficit clearly isn’t all that matters when it comes to exercise. The preservation of the self and finding movement as a means of enjoyment can mean so much to a person, far above and beyond what a weight loss success will give them.
The more I look, the more data I find that suggests that learning to fall in love with the movement of your body will make you so much happier than just worrying about losing weight.
“Stop foccusing on Re-duction of the body and start focussing on Pro-duction”
And finally;
These findings imply that to encourage physical activity among individuals with diverse weight histories and attitudes, physical activity messaging and programming may benefit from moving beyond a weight loss focus. Many participants in the present study found physical activity rewarding in itself. Disappointment in weight loss aims could be a disincentive to physical activity. Furthermore, physical activity messaging should feature a variety of bodies and abilities, as should activity venues and classes…An inclusive model of physical activity for people of all sizes would focus on enjoyment, pleasurable accomplishment, and social belonging emergent during physical activity, rather than focusing on possibly unachievable or ultimately exclusionary endpoints.
Personally I quite like that.
An inclusive model of physical activity.
If you put that at the heart of what you do clearly a calorie deficit is unequivocally not “all that matters”.
What’s Next?
I have plenty more articles about weight loss for females throughout this website.
Here is a selection I think would make great further reading for you:
You are also invited to get a bundle of Fat Loss Goodies from me including:
Get yourself a free month of workouts (Home and Gym-based options)
Get yourself a free copy of my e-book ”27 Ways To Faster Fast Loss”
Get yourself a free customized Calorie Calculator
Straight to your Inbox
All you have to do is put your email address in below:
References:
Hall, K. D., Heymsfield, S. B., Kemnitz, J. W., Klein, S., Schoeller, D. A., & Speakman, J. R. (2012). Energy balance and its components: implications for body weight regulation. The American journal of clinical nutrition, 95(4), 989–994. https://doi.org/10.3945/ajcn.112.036350
Fleming, J.A., Kris-Etherton, P.M. Macronutrient Content of the Diet: What Do We Know About Energy Balance and Weight Maintenance?. Curr Obes Rep 5, 208–213 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13679-016-0209-8
Jones NRV, Conklin AI, Suhrcke M, Monsivais P (2014) The Growing Price Gap between More and Less Healthy Foods: Analysis of a Novel Longitudinal UK Dataset. PLoS ONE 9(10): e109343. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0109343
nhs.uk. 2020. ‘Healthy Foods Expensive’ Claim Is Unrealistic. [online] Available at: <https://www.nhs.uk/news/food-and-diet/healthy-foods-expensive-claim-is-unrealistic/> [Accessed 22 November 2020].
Abramson, Edwaed E., Stinson Shawn G., (1977).
Boredom and eating in obese and non-obese individuals,
Addictive Behaviors, Volume 2, Issue 4, 1977, Pages 181–185 https://doi.org/10.1016/0306-4603(77)90015-6.Moynihan AB, van Tilburg WA, Igou ER, Wisman A, Donnelly AE, Mulcaire JB. Eaten up by boredom: consuming food to escape awareness of the bored self. Front Psychol. 2015;6:369. Published 2015 Apr 1. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00369
Social Market Foundation. 2020. What Are The Barriers To Eating Healthily In The UK? — Social Market Foundation. [online] Available at: <https://www.smf.co.uk/publications/barriers-eating-healthily-uk/> [Accessed 23 November 2020].
Frank LD, Kerr J, Sallis JF, Miles R, Chapman J. A hierarchy of sociodemographic and environmental correlates of walking and obesity. Prev Med. 2008 Aug;47(2):172–8. doi: 10.1016/j.ypmed.2008.04.004. Epub 2008 Apr 22. PMID: 18565576.
nhs.uk. 2020. FTO ‘Fat Gene’ May Make People More Impulsive. [online] Available at: <https://www.nhs.uk/news/genetics-and-stem-cells/fto-fat-gene-may-make-people-more-impulsive/> [Accessed 23 November 2020].
nhs.uk. 2020. People With ‘Obesity Gene’ Can Still Lose Weight. [online] Available at: <https://www.nhs.uk/news/obesity/people-with-obesity-gene-can-still-lose-weight/> [Accessed 23 November 2020].
British Thyroid Foundation. 2020. Thyroid And Weight — The Science. [online] Available at: <https://www.btf-thyroid.org/thyroid-and-weight-the-science> [Accessed 25 June 2020].
Phelan SM, Burgess DJ, Yeazel MW, Hellerstedt WL, Griffin JM, van Ryn M. Impact of weight bias and stigma on quality of care and outcomes for patients with obesity. Obes Rev. 2015;16(4):319–326. doi:10.1111/obr.12266
Tomiyama, A., Carr, D., Granberg, E. et al. How and why weight stigma drives the obesity ‘epidemic’ and harms health. BMC Med 16, 123 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-018-1116-5
Faden, J., Leonard, D., O’Reardon, J., & Hanson, R. (2013). Obesity as a defense mechanism. International journal of surgery case reports, 4(1), 127–129. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijscr.2012.10.011
Blaine B. Does depression cause obesity?: A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies of depression and weight control. J Health Psychol. 2008 Nov;13(8):1190–7. doi: 10.1177/1359105308095977. PMID: 18987092.
Schvey NA, Puhl RM, Brownell KD. The impact of weight stigma on caloric consumption. Obesity (Silver Spring). 2011 Oct;19(10):1957–62. doi: 10.1038/oby.2011.204. Epub 2011 Jul 14. PMID: 21760636.
Wicklund, RA, Duval, S (1971) Opinion change and performance facilitation as a result of objective self-awareness. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 7: 319–342. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2055102915598088#bibr54-2055102915598088
Bombak AE. Obese persons’ physical activity experiences and motivations across weight changes: a qualitative exploratory study. BMC Public Health. 2015;15:1129. Published 2015 Nov 14. doi:10.1186/s12889–015–2456–0
Does Counting or Tracking Your Calories Help You Lose Weight?
There quite a few apps out there that can help you track your calories and therefore help you lose weight.
The most popular of these is MyFitness Pal and it is probably the most commonly used around the world.
These apps are helpful yes. But they can also be unhelpful in your pursuit of losing weight for a number of reasons.
This article will show you exactly how to set up MyFitness Pal for your success with weight loss, teaching you what to avoid and how to get around these common potholes that the app has which might hinder your ability to succeed.
MyFitness Pal (MYFP) is a wonderful tool for the vast majority of people and it is a phenomenal database of foods from all around the world to help you track your calories.
But…
Will it actually help you lose weight?
You have probably all seen all over the internet advocates of tracking your calories on My Fitness Pal. Followed by swathes of others who just don’t have success with it.
Like with anything in the Fitness Industry there are pros and cons and especially with My Fitness Pal, there are some potholes in there that they just hope you fall into, especially when it comes to weight loss.
Pros of MyFitness Pal (MYFP) are:
It has a Large Database of Food
The Barcode Scanning is quick and effective
Macro Breakdowns
Graphs for your weight, Macro Intake, and Calorie Intake over meals
You can Build Your Own Meals in a quick and easy manner
A lot of Take Out Food and restruants are in their database.
As you can see, there is a lot to like about MyFitness Pal and therefore it is worth figuring out how to make it work for you.
Cons of MyFitness Pal (MYFP):
It sets a vert aggressive calorie deficit.
It gives you back calories burned from exercise.
It can feel time-consuming when you start to use it.
Eating out in restaurants is hard to track,
It can appear that you are constantly failing,
The micro-messaging via the colors it uses in the App
It can get obsessive for some people.
As I mentioned above let’s work through this cons list and figure it all out to make sure that by the end of this article you will know exactly how to use MyFitness Pal to help you lose weight and make the Cons work a lot better for you and your success.
TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR “DOES COUNTING OR TRACKING CALORIES HELP YOU LOSE WEIGHT?”
Does Counting or Tracking Your Calories Help You Lose Weight?
My Fitness Pal Sets An Aggresive Calorie Deficit
When you log into MyFitness Pal (MYFP) and set yourself a goal.
It asks you a series of questions:
What is your Goal?
How Active Are You?
Personal Details
More Personal Details
What is your weekly goal? (with a recommendation to lose 0.5kgs per week)
Once you then go through some other legal selection boxes you are congratulated and it says:
You should lose: X kg by X Date
Alarm bells should now be ringing in your head.
This is now setting you up for failure…because in truth an App has no idea who you are, what your life looks like or your ability to actually lose weight.
Added to that…it has no idea if the Goal you have set yourself is actually possible for you.
At this point, I have worked with many many people who tell me that they have a lot more to lose than they really actually do.
In this world of Instagram and Social Media, people are being cheated and lied to, to a point where they will be very convinced that they need to lose a lot more weight than they actually need to or actually can.
When choosing a Goal Weight it is not a good idea to simply chose a number based on a friend or what you think you would like to weigh.
My best advice for this is to choose a weight that you have weighed before, maybe 5-10 years ago, and make sure it’s a weight you feel comfortable at. That being said, if you are a person who carries a lot more weight then you might be able to be a little more aggressive with your goal weight number. But please remember “carrying a lot more weight” is a term used in comparison to the whole of society…not your own personal opinion of yourself.
How Does My Fitness Pal Choose Your Calorie Deficit?
In a nutshell, it deducts 500kcal from your Maintenance Calories — no matter who you are but it is capped for Men at 1500kcal/day. and Females at 1200kcal/day.
In their words: “Our calculator uses the Mifflin-St. Jeor equations to estimate your BMR (Basal Metabolic Weight) which is believed to be more accurate than the more commonly used Harris-Benedict equation” [1]
This is a true statement based on being able to predict someone's RMR (Resting Metabolic Rate) not actually their BMR. [2]
The difference isn’t that crucial but it's good to note there is a difference between RMR and BMR.
Once the equation has your vital statistics it then asks you for your activity level and uses that as a multiplier to figure out your Calorie Deficit.
For example, you have:
BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) = 1300
Activity Level is Sedentary = multiplier effect of 1.2
Maintenance Calories = 1300 x 1.2 = 1560kcal
Then to chose your Deficit it appears that MYFP just deducts 500kcal from your Maintenance Calorie number which would leave you trying to eat 1060kcal a day in this example.
Which is far too low for 99% of the population.
But MYFP does have a “lower cap” due to Government restrictions in the USA.
Let's now take a real-world example of someone. Meet Jacquie.
Let us say that Jacquie is 40 years old, she currently weighs 74kgs and is 5ft 8in tall, and has a BMI of 25.1 putting her in the overweight category but she does weight training 2x a week and works in an office.
Her Goal weight is 70kgs as that lowers her BMI to 23.4.
Her BMR is calculated at about 1600kcal/day.
Then we add her multiplier of 1.2 for her Lightly Exercise Level to get her Maintenance Calories.
1600 (BMR) x 1.2 (Activity Multiplier) = 1920kcal/day or “Maintenance Calories”.
MYFP dictates that we deduct an arbitrary 500kcal which equals = 1420kcal/day.
I actually put Jacquie into MYFP and this is what came up:
As you can see, the way I believe MYFP is working is pretty accurate.
Putting a human being into a straight caloric deficit below her BMR, without any rests or diet breaks scheduled into her plan is in short setting her up for failure.
Personally, I don’t advise any of my friends that I work with online to go below their Basal Metabolic Rate when working on their deficit. Basal Metabolic Rate is defined thus:
“Basal Metabolic Rate is the number of calories required to keep your body functioning at rest”
Keep your body functioning at rest.
This is literally the minimum amount of calories you need for your body to be able to function daily without any movement.
So if you eat less than this for a prolonged period of time what do you think might happen? You will of course gradually get tired, irritable, your performance in the Gym will suffer and all of this leads to one thing.
Giving up.
Which then makes you feel like a failure.
Which then makes you give up on your goals.
My suggestion is to manipulate the App so that you get a Calorie Allowance number that set to either your BMR or your Goal Body Weight in LBS x 12.
To do this on the app, you need to click on the three dots in the bottom corner called More> Goals > Nutrition Goals > Calorie, Carbs, Protein, and Fat Goals > Calories
Then you can set your Customised Calories based on my suggestions above.
If you need help setting your Calorie Targets then you can grab a Free Customised Calorie and Macro Calculator from my website by clicking here: https://www.thegymstarter.com/free-fat-loss-giveaways
By doing this it will ensure that your Calories are set to a level that will create enough adherence for you so that you can be consistent, still enjoy your favorite foods, and still reach your goals.
I am suggesting taking your Calories up so that you don’t continue on the cycle of overly restricting yourself, then binging and forever treading water with your success.
To find out more about how to set your Calorie Deficit watch this:
Does Counting or Tracking Your Calories Help You Lose Weight?
Calories Burned From Exercise Equation
This is my single biggest bugbear of the whole app. This combined with other Fitness Pros encouraging people to share photos of “Calories Burned from Exercise” on Social Media.
This is a practice that just has to stop.
Period.
Calories Burned from exercise is a near-impossible thing to calculate, and an Iowa State University study found that activity trackers can be up to 60% inaccurate in calculating Calories Burned from exercise [3].
A study by Standford University and The Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences in 2017 took 60 participants and tested an Apple Watch, a Fitbit Surge, and a few other wearables.
The Apple watch was top of the class when it came to tracking Heart Rate during Exercise and all activity trackers were within the 5% error margin of acceptable.
However, when it came to energy expenditure or Calorie Burned the results were worryingly poor:
“In fact, the study claims that the Fitbit Surge was the most accurate with energy expenditure tracking, with an error rate of around 27 percent. The Microsoft Band came in at around 33 percent, while Apple Watch reported an error rate near 40 percent, though it was consistent” [4]
Added to all of that, the most inaccurate readings come out when Aerobic Exercise is performed — namely Cardio and HIIT workouts.
The one saving grace here is that they are consistently rubbish.
Why is this a problem in relation to MYFP?
MYFP tells you to basically “eat your calories burned from exercise back”.
It calculates the calories you have eaten.
It calculates the calories you have “burned from exercise”
and adds those back into how many calories you should be eating for the day.
So let’s say you can eat 1500kcal a day.
It’s now lunchtime and you have eaten 750kcal at this point giving you another 750kcal until you have hit your allowance for the rest of the day.
You then workout and “burn 350kcal”.
MYFP will then give you that 350kcal back…so you can now eat for the day a total of 1100kcal.
1500–750+350 = 1100kcal remaining for the day
This is what it looks like on the App using my numbers:
In truth, I don’t have 266kcal remaining. I have 261kcal remaining until I hit my target of 2860kcal.
You know that being in a Calorie Deficit is hard work combined with the fact that being able to eat to your Deficit Number or come in below that is hard as well.
You also know that exercise will help you get into your Calorie Deficit.
So why would you eat the calories back from the exercise you just performed?
This will just keep you spinning your wheels.
Personally, I am aware that exercise is more than a method to burn calories, and I would never promote someone going to the gym just to “earn their food”.
Exercise is worth so much more than just a tool to burn calories — it can build confidence, strength, and can give you so much more from life than you ever dreamt of.
But it does burn calories and that can’t be overlooked when trying to lose weight.
Unless you eat back the calories you have burned from exercise.
The other great failing in MYFP with this is that it also gives you calories back from all movement.
Including your Steps.
Now when it comes to a Calorie Deficit the second-biggest portion of your metabolism which will help you lose weight is called Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis or NEAT.
This is 15% of your Metabolism and other than calories in is the single greatest weapon in your toolbox to losing weight.
Unless you are on MYFP — because yes, MYFP gives you these Calories back as well.
You can fix this in two ways:
Just focus on your Goal Calories and your Food Calories when looking at the app and ignore everything else.
Disconnect MYFP from being able to read your Exercise Data. I only know how this works on IOS but you have to go to Health > Click on your Profile Photo opposite the word Summary >Privacy > Apps > MyFitnessPal
Then you can toggle what Data you want it to read and what data you don’t want it to read.
I recommend turning off Steps and Workouts.
Does Counting or Tracking Your Calories Help You Lose Weight?
MyFitness Pal Is Time Consuming
Tracking Calories is something that gets a lot easier over time and MYFP gets better and better at remembering what it is you eat so that it becomes more time-efficient for you to do it.
I can’t deny that inputting all the ingredients in your home-cooked meal into your phone doesn’t take up some time.
But it doesn’t take up A LOT of time either. Not really.
And scanning a Barcode does not take up any time at all.
When I cook and if I am tracking I will get the scales out, and just weigh as I go, and as I am doing that I am cooking and preparing the food.
MYFP becomes laborious when you try to reverse engineer the food that is on your plate.
MYFP also allows you to create Recipes which Bulk Imports your Ingredient List and then you just have to find the right measurement of your food (oz, grams, kilos, cups, ml, Large, Medium, Small) and then select the serving size and the number of servings.
My trick for this is to always try to find a food that is measured on the app in grams, choose a serving size of 1g and then the Number of Servings can equal how much the food actually weighs on the scale.
Stop trying to be perfect.
Your desire to make MYFP perfect is also draining your time.
If you are spending 10mins scrolling, trying to find the right selection of Carrot that you have in your house, you need to assess your priorities.
In truth, no one ever got fat from eating too many Fruits and Veggies so just pick a carrot, get the grams right and move on.
For my friends that I work with Online, they get access to over 250 recipes which all have MYFP Barcodes on them. So you literally just have to scan a barcode which takes less than 10 seconds.
If you have read this and you still feel like it takes up too much time you can adopt this policy with MYFP:
You must track anything you eat with a barcode on it by scanning it in at home or out and about.
You must track down the calories in restaurants you eat (or best guess them) and add 30% to that figure and track that.
Don’t track Home Cooked Meals as long as you have built your meal in this manner: Protein, then Veggies, and then Carbs.
Does Counting or Tracking Your Calories Help You Lose Weight?
Eating in Restaurants is hard to track
Yes. It is.
But that shouldn’t stop you trying.
Many popular chains actually do show up on MYFP, and if they don’t many restaurants publish their calories on their website.
So just head there, find out how many calories the meal you will have has in it, and then input it into MYFP.
If you still can’t find that information…you can only do the best you can do.
In truth, even a restaurant that has published its calories will still be a long way off depending mostly on the Chef they have on that day…and how much oil said Chef likes to use.
If you are eating out more than once a week…the simple reality is that your tracking will be inaccurate and your ability to adhere to a Calorie Deficit will be affected.
Throughout my career, I have come across people who I train that eat out most nights…and trying to get a result for them in terms of weight loss is very difficult, so we look elsewhere. We will work on performance-based goals, track their energy levels, try and improve their sleep and create habits throughout their day that will make them feel better, without them focusing on Weight Loss as a goal.
Does Counting or Tracking Your Calories Help You Lose Weight?
It Constantly Looks Like You Are Failing
MYFP has a lot of trackable stats.
Calories are one piece of the pie. When you look into your Macros you are given targets and a sliding bar of how close you are to hitting your target.
If you go over your target you get a big red minus number informing you that you failed.
These charts are literally impossible to get right.
But that's ok because you aren't trying to be perfect, you are trying to be consistent.
If you go over on your Macros…chill, because you will feel exactly the same about yourself if you go under on your Macros too: you literally can’t win.
So stop trying. Just do your best. And see it as a constant work in process.
When it comes to weight loss and building muscle these are your order of priority;
Calories In
Protein In
That is all you need to worry about. So if you want to play the “perfect” game then just try and do your best on those two markers.
Get as close you darn well can to your Calorie Allowance.
And if you go over by 50–100kcals — that's ok.
If you come in under by 50–100kcals — that's ok too.
Perfection is impossible with this App. I promise you.
The only day you fail at fitness is the day you give up. This isn’t a pass/fail situation. All you ever do in Fitness is learn and from that education, you develop and amend to move forward again.
In truth, we are all beginners.
Does Counting or Tracking Your Calories Help You Lose Weight?
The Apps Use of Colours
If you are “under” your calories MYFP makes the numbers Green.
For good.
If you are over your calories MYFP makes the numbers Red.
For bad.
I’m not sure who needs to hear this right now…but whatever happens with your nutrition it is neither Good nor Bad.
It's just fact.
And every day that passes you get a new opportunity to create a new fact.
But if you keep seeing Red on an App — you are going to believe you are failing. And that might be fine in isolation, but day in and day out it will slowly get to you and make you want to give up.
Added to that Green doesn’t mean good either.
As I laid out above your Calories are always the best guess and MYFP sets them really really low for someone. So for the App to then suggest that you are being Good for coming in under what is an already low number is going to equally lead you to a path of failure.
Because you can’t sustain a Calorie Deficit that aggressive and you will end up overeating pretty quickly.
There is no Good or Bad. And subliminal messaging to that degree is harmful to users of the App.
Try to ignore the colors and just understand that no matter what you log or what the App says you are always trying your best.
Does Counting or Tracking Your Calories Help You Lose Weight?
It Can Become Obsessive For Some People
A large argument I see against tracking your calories is that it can become obsessive for some.
But let me ask you this. Is checking your Bank Account obsessive? Is tracking your income and your outgoings obsessive? Is checking to see how much petrol you have in your car obsessive?
That is all Calorie Tracking should be for you.
It can become obsessive when you directly align it with the success or failure of your goal and don’t keep everything else that goes into a Calorie Deficit in perspective.
It feels like a good time to say this as well:
You don’t have to track your calories for the rest of your life…nor should you want to.
It’s a way of getting yourself educated on what you eat and how that impacts your weight. It's about spending some time understanding Energy Balance, the foods you eat, and how it impacts your life.
I recommend tracking for about 4–6 months.
That should give you enough data to be going on your merry way, and if you ever need to check in again with it in the future you will know exactly what to do and how to do it.
Tracking your calories is something you should use to empower you to be able to learn and manage your food intake no matter what your goals.
It’s not a life sentence. Nor should it be
Does Counting or Tracking Your Calories Help You Lose Weight?
Conclusion
MYFP has its uses and I truly believe it can help you lose weight. If you manage to use it in the manner I have laid out in the article.
MYFP is a business.
And it earns money from you logging in again, and again and again.
Therefore the further from your goals it keeps you the higher the chance it has of you continuing to use it.
The more money it makes.
Just remember the following when you use it:
Set your Calories to GBW in LBS x 12
Ignore Calories Burned from exercise
The more you do it the less time consuming it becomes
It will never be perfect nor should you want it to be
You aren’t failing despite the App trying to tell you that you are
Red doesn’t equal Bad and Green doesn’t equal Good
It’s not obsessive to want to learn more about something — just remember this isn’t a life sentence, this is an education to lead you to be more confident and empowered for the future.
And that’s it!
What’s Next?
I have plenty more articles about weight loss for females throughout this website.
Here is a selection I think would make great further reading for you:
You are also invited to get a bindle of Fat Loss Goodies from me including:
Get yourself a free month of workouts (Home and Gym-based options)
Get yourself a free copy of my e-book ”27 Ways To Faster Fast Loss”
Get yourself a free customized Calorie Calculator
Straight to your Inbox
All you have to do is put your email address in below:
References:
Myfitnesspal.com. 2020. BMR Calculator, Basal Metabolic Rate Calculator | Myfitnesspal.Com. [online] Available at: <https://www.myfitnesspal.com/tools/bmr-calculator#:~:text=Your%20BMR%20does%20not%20include,commonly%20used%20Harris%2DBenedict%20equation.> [Accessed 14 November 2020].
Amirkalali, B., Hosseini, S., Heshmat, R., & Larijani, B. (2008). Comparison of Harris-Benedict and Mifflin-ST Jeor equations with indirect calorimetry in evaluating resting energy expenditure. Indian journal of medical sciences, 62(7), 283–290. https://doi.org/10.4103/0019-5359.42024
News.iastate.edu. 2020. Activity Trackers Not As Accurate For Some Activities, ISU Study Finds • News Service • Iowa State University. [online] Available at: <https://www.news.iastate.edu/news/2015/08/19/activitytrackers> [Accessed 14 November 2020].
Shcherbina A, Mattsson CM, Waggott D, Salisbury H, Christle JW, Hastie T, Wheeler MT, Ashley EA. Accuracy in Wrist-Worn, Sensor-Based Measurements of Heart Rate and Energy Expenditure in a Diverse Cohort. Journal of Personalized Medicine. 2017; 7(2):3. <https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4426/7/2/3>
How Long Will It Take To Lose A Stone With Diet and Exercise?
In this article, I will tell you exactly how long it will take you to lose a stone with diet and exercise. It's a complex issue and I will hopefully take you through it in a very easy to follow and concise manner.
But before we get started I would like to invite you to become my friend by getting on my list.
I’ll email you things. Sometimes they will be educational, sometimes they will be inappropriate, sometimes I might just want to know how the hell you are; either way…it means we can be friends.
Oh, and I will also send you some free fitness goodies too, like a free calorie calculator, a month of in-home and in Gym Workouts and much more…but only when you send me your friend request:
Table of Contents for: “How Long Will It Take To Lose A Stone With Diet and Exercise?”
But first, I want to tell you a story.
Personal Trainers don’t know it all — and that’s ok
This question takes me back years. To a very dear friend of mine who I worked with on the Gym Floor in person.
I am actually Godson to her Nephew, and crucially she is the reason that I am about to marry the most wonderful person on the planet.
This is one of the greatest gifts of being a Coach, that no school or certification can ever tell you. The personal relationships that you build and the way these relationships can transform your life is incredible.
Back to Jess, one of the first friends I ever trained. She turned and looked at me when we were chatting, stressed as anything, and asked:
“How quickly will I lose this weight?”
Now, back then, I didn’t have the knowledge, the expertise, or crucially the confidence to stand back and say to her:
“As long as it takes. It will depend on far more factors than you can even fathom”
So I made the terrible mistake of running to the toilet, checking Google, and coming back saying:
“About 2lbs a week”
If I could have my time again.
It will come as no surprise to you that both Jess and I learned a lot over the course of working together.
And luckily we managed to get her losing weight and she achieved incredible things:
From left to right: Jess’ “Work in Progress Picture 2015–2017, Jess with my Godson on his Christening Day, and Jess on her Wedding Day to Matt (who is another dear friend of mine).
What I adore about all of these photos is Jess’s smile. She was also so full of life, and everything she does she puts her all into. Whether that is being a Teacher for little children, training with me, or now being a mother to her new family that she and Matt have. She is one of the most exuberant and fun people to be around, and looking at these photos makes me well up because being able to experience all of these memories with her as well means so much to me.
What I truly see in these photos is a woman full of confidence and life. And she deserves everything she worked so incredibly hard for, and for her to entrust me with getting her and her husband ready for their wedding was a true honor.
But I did let her down. If I knew then what I know now about how long it will take her to lose a stone my answer would be very different.
It would be what I am about to tell you right now.
So in a vow to never make that mistake again, I am writing this for you.
How to lose a stone with diet and exercise?
I am wholly encouraged that there is a new hashtag emerging on Instagram, and it is the following #caloriedeficitdiet
How To Lose A Stone With Diet
Whether you want Fat Loss or Weight Loss there is only one answer to the question of how you lose weight, and that is a “Calorie Deficit”.
This is the principle that energy in as calories must be lower than energy out, and this will create weight loss for you. You can create a Calorie Deficit in two ways:
Eat fewer Calories
Burn Calories through Exercise
In order to know how many calories is less than your body needs, therefore creating weight loss then use this equation for your “Upper-Calorie Window”
Goal Bodyweight in LBS x 12
For your “Lower-Calorie Window” you need to find out your Basal Metabolic Rate or BMR.
To do this you can download any number of Calorie Calculators from the Internet, but the one I think is the best one to use is available right here.
A couple of really quick strategies to help you manage a Calorie Deficit in terms of your Diet would be to do the following:
Eat Protein and Vegetables at every meal
Drink 3 liters of water a day
Snack on Fruit
Track your calories using MyFitness Pal or another tracking app
Avoid excess liquid calories from drinks like soda, alcohol, and very high-calorie smoothies.
Try to limit the number of times you eat out in a week, as when in restaurants you have very little control over the preparation and calorie content of your food.
These are quite general guidelines but they will stand you in good stead as you get started on how to lose a stone with your diet.
I’m not going into to it much more here as I have nearly 10 articles on it on my website, that explain a Calorie Deficit in great detail, what your expectations with it should be, and how to implement my system of a Calorie Window.
If you do need some extra help on it right now then watch this:
How To Lose A Stone With Exercise
Strictly speaking…you can’t. Calories In are what matter when it comes to adhering to your plan to lose weight.
Although, exercise does burn calories, but not as much as you think. In fact, a study [1] took 60 healthy adults and made them wear laboratory devices as well as activity trackers to see how accurate they were. The Fitbit Surge was the most accurate at calculating calories burned at an error rate of 25%.
Yup. It can be up to 25% inaccurate.
This is why you are driving yourself mad by checking your calories burned from exercise on your watch…and you aren’t seeing results.
This doesn’t mean that Exercise is a defunct part of the Energy Balance Equation. There will be some calories burned from exercise…so that’s good, and you are building some muscle on top of that…but again…not as much as you would think.
But exercising gives you so much more than a method with which to burn calories, and this is one of the reasons that weight loss takes so much time.
Lifting Weights, being in the Gym, doing something difficult is a very human thing to do because it keeps you being a productive person.
And a productive person is a person that burns calories. When you exercise regularly this gives you a feeling of wellbeing. It creates momentum for you, and that momentum will lead you to making better choices about yourself outside and inside the Gym.
You might walk more, you might be able to get an extra training session each week, you might just choose to stand on your commute as opposed to sit on the train, or take the stairs as opposed to the escalator.
When you start adding layers of exercise into your life, you will learn the positive effects that will have on your wellbeing…and that is very addictive my friends.
Added to the above, it will help your Calorie Deficit not just by calories burned from exercise, but by exercising more it will guide you into making nutritional choices more aligned with your goals each and every day.
The most important thing to remember when it comes to how to lose a stone with exercise is this one word: enjoyment.
Essentially it doesn’t matter what “mode” of exercise you do, if you aren’t enjoying it you will not stick to it. If you have loved running in the past…then go running. If you enjoy the Gym…then lift weights.
If you want to try something new and think that will be tons of fun…then go do that.
You don’t need permission from me to do any type of exercise, you only need to give yourself permission to focus on exercise that you enjoy.
My preference is weight training in the Gym for those I work with Online as it is more efficient but it is also more accessible. No matter what your ailments you will be able to lift weights to some degree or level. Every exercise can be adapted for your goals and your physiology.
Whereas running is just running. Cycling is just cycling. If you can’t do it…you can’t do it, and that is that.
Here are some Workouts you can do in the Gym which I took from the following article of mine: 4 Gym Based Workouts For Beginners both Male and Female
They are designed to help you burn fat and build muscle at the same time in order to facilitate the Weight Loss you are after.
They focus on what we call Compound Movements. Moving like this will be your best way to get the most out of your training as it will activate the most amount of muscle which will help your Calorie Deficit the most.
What if you are “Skinny Fat”?
Everyone I have worked with when we first started working together wanted to lose weight, and I think in truth this is because that is what you know.
Or rather, you didn’t know that losing weight and losing Body Fat were two different things.
Or, you didn’t think the difference mattered.
I do believe it is important to know the difference between these two things as many people who need to lose body fat, think they need to lose weight.
There are huge swathes of females out there who dislike the way look and feel. The best word I can think of to describe this feeling to you is “loose”. You just feel loose, and you want to feel tight and “toned”. And you believe the answer lies in losing weight.
If you feel like this, you need to decrease your Body Fat, not necessarily lose weight.
You are what we would call “Skinny Fat”.
Which is a term I really dislike, but it is the industry standard. So for you, today, reading this, as it does explain my point I will just go with it.
When you work on losing body fat, you might not necessarily lose weight.
Let me say that again: When you focus on losing body fat, you might not lose weight.
Weight Loss directly relates to the reduction of everything in your body:
Body Fat
Muscle Mass
Water
This is why you lose scale weight when you cut out carbohydrates because, for every gram of carbohydrate you eat, your body will hold 2–3 grams of water.
It’s doesn’t necessarily mean you are losing body fat.
If you aren’t activating and exercising your muscles you will lose muscle density and therefore you might lose scale weight.
When you focus solely on just a Caloric Deficit, without musclar activation then you will lose weight, but you will also lose strength and metabolic performance.
Which can lead you into a very trapped place in terms of your futurre caloric restriction and being able to sustain your Weight.
There is no easy way to directly know whether you are losing body fat or just weight overall. What I would say is this:
If you are feeling a lot better in your skin,
If you feel stronger,
If you feel more confident,
If you feel your clothes are fitting better,
If you feel like you have more energy
If you are finding your Calorie Deficit manageable and sustainable
Then what you are doing is working, don’t oveththink whats happening in terms of the scale and keep going.
If you think you are “Skinny Fat” then you need to focus on getting in the gym and building your body up, in terms of its muscular density is going to have the “weight loss” effect you desire, except the scale might not go down.
To conquer the “Skinny Fat” equation follow these steps:
Increase Calories to 110% of TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure)
Strength Train 3–4x a week following a Training Plan
Focus on Performance Goals not Scale Goals
Reduce Cardiovascular output
Look for these markers of progress in your journey:
Are clothes fitting better?
Is the scale not moving down or up too much?
Are you lifting more weight each session?
Are you seeing muscle?
Are you eating enough protein?
Are you having increased energy?
Has your posture improved?
Are you less tired?
Are you more confident?
Do you feel more powerful?
But I Don’t Want To Look Bulky!
You can feel strong and empowered….without looking bulky.
Women have about 15–20 times [2] less Testosterone in their bodies compared to men, but they do make up for this difference in other hormonal aspects of their physiology.
Other hormones that help with muscle building for women is Estrogen [3]. This is a growth hormone that is particularly dominant in the first two weeks of a female’s cycle.
Find out more by reading this: How Does Your Menstrual Cycle Affect Your Fitness And Weight Loss?
Estrogen is great at:
Stimulating Growth Hormone Production
Preventing Muscle Breakdown
Increases Metabolism
This will more or less balance out your inability to build muscle because of a lack of testosterone. The reason you don’t see women with the same muscle density in the Gym as men is because they begin with a much lower (nearly half as much) amount of muscle as men, and can’t gain as much.
The more muscle you build, the less bulky you will look. Muscle on the female body provides definition, shape, and tonality. Therefore the more of it you build, and the less body fat you have (about 20%) you will have that shape and tonality that you desire.
But the path to what you desire isn’t dieting. It is muscle building.
How Long Will It Take?
I have literally just received a DM on Instagram of someone losing 13lbs in 30 days.
This is not what you should expect.
Some of the friends I work with online have taken 2 months to lose 6lbs.
So where does the answer lie?
Whenever someone new applies to work with me via Online Coaching I always ask them this question:
Would you rather:
a) Make very fast progress that you know is not sustainable?
b) Make slower progress that you know is sustainable?
This gives me a guide on where to set their Calories, Training, and how they will need coaching into the future.
I know that most people will want fast progress that will be sustainable, but it doesn’t exist. There comes a point where taking the fast track will always come to a crashing halt, and this could create a very testing path into the future.
Firstly, when you get seduced by fast weight loss, despite knowing that it can’t continue at the Cerebral Level, your imagination will keep saying to you:
“I am different. Look at my results. I am different. I can keep this up”
Your imagination can be your best friend or your worst enemy.
And oftentimes, with people, I have worked with over the years and those who are low on self-confidence, their imagination can be their own worst enemy.
When it comes to losing weight, these two words are without a doubt the most important:
Reality and Perspective
You must always root yourself in the reality of what weight loss is, and the best way to do that is to make sure you have a very realistic perspective.
The reality of weight loss is something you aren’t going to hear, but you really seriously need to listen to this point.
0.5lbs a week is fast weight loss. 1lb a week is terribly fast weight loss.
2lbs a week is beyond epic.
But these numbers can only be seen in this context with hindsight. When you look back over a year you will see an average weight loss of between 0.5lbs and 1lbs a week.
When you are in the thick of it, there is no way that it will be that linear. You will have weeks, sometimes months, when your weight goes up and stays up for whatever reason. You will have moments when it just drops out of control and you will think you are walking on the stars.
Scale Weight by its very nature is erratic.
And with all things erratic we must always give it space and time with which to actually process the results and effect it has had.
1lb of fat is equal to 3500kcal
“A total of 3500 calories equals 1 pound of body weight. This means if you decrease (or increase) your intake by 500 calories daily, you will lose (or gain) 1 pound per week. (500 calories per day × 7 days = 3500 calories.)” [4]
Do this for 14 weeks…magically that is how you lose a stone. Cue eye roll.
This is a conventional stance by many people who are just poorly educated in the field of weight loss. Although I am not denying the science about how many Calories makeup 1lb of weight, what I am calling into question is the lack of understanding this principle has for the human condition and crucially metabolic adaptation [5].
Metabolic Adaptation is the method upon which as you reduce the size of your body, you will need fewer calories to maintain it.
As you lose mass, you don’t just lose Body Fat. You will lose muscle, which will affect your Basal Metabolic Rate, you will also burn fewer calories as you move each day, because you are moving something with less Mass which means you are using less energy with which to do that.
Added to that, sticking to a Caloric Restriction of 500kcals each day for 14 weeks, without any variation on that number is very hard.
Let's look at this in more real terms.
A 40-year-old female who:
Weighs: 182lbs (12st/82kgs)
Height: 176cm (5ft 8in)
Leads a Sedentary Lifestyle
Has a Caloric Need of 1871kcal to maintain her weight.
If you then restrict her to 1371kcal a day (1871–500) in order to achieve this weight loss of one stone you are restricting her to below her Basal Metabolic Rate of 1559kcal a day.
This can then become dangerous and more unsustainable as time goes on due to the fact that you are not eating enough to fuel the basic needs of your body. Your Organs for example.
Five Ways in which restricting your calories to below your BMR level could be harmful are [6]:
It can lower your Metabolism
It will cause Fatigue and Nutrient Deficiencies
It may reduce fertility
It can weaken your bones
It may lower your immunity
And one I will add:
6. It might trigger Disordered Eating habits and behaviors
I’m not in the business of scaremongering, therefore looking at that list, I personally think the most crucial point in terms of your ability to adhere to the Caloric Restriction is number 2.
Fatigue will create havoc in your ability to lose weight. When you are tired you become stressed, leading to a desire for higher-calorie foods [7]. Then you will notice that you aren’t losing weight…and then you will feel like a failure…and then you will be inclined to quit.
Number 6 is also extremely important, as the restrict/binge continuum is something that is more common than you might imagine, combined with the possible effects of this on your Mental Wellbeing also.
If you do experience any behaviors of Disordered Eating please seek specialist help. BEAT is a fantastic charity available here: https://www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/
If only you actually implemented a sustainable Deficit in the first place and realized my next point…
Worrying About Time Is Your Enemy
When you focus too much on “how long will it take to lose a stone” you will end up putting yourself in a prison.
What happens is that you focus so much on the weight coming off within this particular, made up out of thin air, time frame…when the scale doesn’t comply because of factors effecting you that you didn’t even dream of when you came up with this made-up time frame, you start to feel like you are failing.
And when you start feeling like you are failing, you will start to give up.
And when you give up…you will never achieve what you want.
When you are truly trying to calculate by what point you need to lose this weight. Ask yourself “why”.
If your answer to why is any of the following:
Because I want to look better
Because I need it now
Because it will make me happy
Because it will make me more attractive
Because Karen at work managed it so I should too
Then you need to understand that the answer to these points lies in taking a lot more slowly than it does achieving it quickly.
Without a shadow of a doubt, if you want to make your Weight Loss successful and sustainable then you need to take it a lot slower than you imagined.
Slower than a 500kcal a day deficit. Slower than 1lb a week. Slower than you might really want it.
Because the chasm between wanting it and achieving it is layered with far more traps and potholes than you ever thought when you first typed into Google: “How Long Will It Take To Lose A Stone With Diet and Exercise?”
I believe the truth lies here:
You don’t actually need to lose a stone or any amount of weight by any particular date in the future.
The stress that a time frame will cause, will undermine your ability to actually lose weight. It also won’t take into account the craziness of this world.
Even if you try to lose weight by 1lb a week…that is still 3.5 months.
A lot of things can happen in 3.5 months, a lot of things that are out of your control, and will wildly affect how quickly you are able to lose weight.
So please, give yourself more time to achieve the weight loss you desire…and ironically it will happen more quickly because you won’t go through cycles of restriction/binge or success/failure/quit.
You will just keep plugging away.
You will learn how to balance your fitness goals with your very busy life.
and
You will find it empowering because you will see progress over a longer period of time which means you will keep going for a lot longer, and get results upon which you never thought possible.
Did You Find This Useful?
I have plenty more articles about weight loss throughout this website.
Here is a selection I think would make great further reading for you:
Added to that it would be AMAZING if you wanted more help from me.
Just can send me that friend request we spoke about earlier…and I will send you lots of help straight away.
References:
Shcherbina, A. et al., 2017. Accuracy in Wrist-Worn, Sensor-Based Measurements of Heart Rate and Energy Expenditure in a Diverse Cohort. Journal of Personalized Medicine, 7(2), p.3. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jpm7020003.
Encyclopedia, M., 2020. Testosterone: Medlineplus Medical Encyclopedia. [online] Medlineplus.gov. Available at: <https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/003707.htm> [Accessed 25 September 2020].
Legion Athletics. 2020. The Ultimate Guide To Female Muscle Growth — Legion Athletics. [online] Available at: <https://legionathletics.com/female-muscle-growth/> [Accessed 25 September 2020].
Guth, E., 2020. Healthy Weight Loss. [online] Jama Network. Available at: <https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/1900513> [Accessed 26 September 2020].
Darcy L. Johannsen, Nicolas D. Knuth, Robert Huizenga, Jennifer C. Rood, Eric Ravussin, Kevin D. Hall, Metabolic Slowing with Massive Weight Loss despite Preservation of Fat-Free Mass, The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, Volume 97, Issue 7, 1 July 2012, Pages 2489–2496, https://doi.org/10.1210/jc.2012-1444
Healthline. 2020. 5 Ways Restricting Calories Can Be Harmful. [online] Available at: <https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/calorie-restriction-risks#:~:text=1.,8%20%2C%209%20%2C%2010%20).> [Accessed 26 September 2020].
Verywell Mind. 2020. How Stress Can Cause Weight Gain. [online] Available at: <https://www.verywellmind.com/how-stress-can-cause-weight-gain-3145088> [Accessed 26 September 2020].