Nutrition News

Sometimes Less = More

By Rick Kattouf II, CEO, TeamKattouf, Inc.

If you’ve ever tried to lose weight while training for a race, your plan may have followed this pattern: you start to cut calories and eat salads. As time goes on, you may notice a little weight loss, but it is short lived. Once you stop seeing results, there is only one option, right? The next logical step is to also work out even more/harder. As time goes on, your frustration grows, as does your weight!

What in the world is going on here? It’s all about calories in versus calories out, right? Not so fast my friend, it’s not that simple.Let’s examine a few ‘stressors’ that many individuals engage in while trying to lose weight:

Under Eating: You try to limit your total daily calories and you may skip your early meals in the day or eat minimal between breakfast and lunch. Eating too few calories, especially early in the day, will lead to binge eating (see below).

Over Eating: At each meal and snack, you tend to eat far too many calories. This can tend to keep you full for a long time, thereby leaving too many hours to transpire in between feedings. Instead of eating 5-6 times per day, over eating at each meal may cause us to eat only three times per day.

Binge Eating: You try to really control your food intake early in the day and through lunch time; you would evaluate your eating performance as ‘good.’ Now, later in the day, ravenous hunger strikes and it is Game-On! Your eating frenzy never seems to stop. After dinner, you are snacking on pretzels, chocolate, cookies, ice cream (or maybe yogurt… it is fat free, so that’s good, right?), etc.

Make-Up Eating: Ugh! After the binge eating last night, it is time to ‘Make up.’ In order to make up for last night’s Hall of Fame eating extravaganza, you try to limit your calories early in the day (see under eating), and as a result, guess what happens next? You guessed it: more Binge eating occurs later in the day and the vicious cycle continues.

Training Too Often: You are taking spin class after spin class, perspiring like never before, heart rate is jacked, and the weight is not coming off, why? Training at too high a heart rate too often causes the body to burn glycogen and not fat. This does not mean you train easy – rather, train smart.

Each of these stressors causes a stress reaction by the body. When these occur, the body will increase its levels of insulin and cortisol. This signals the body to hold on to body weight, body fat, and slow the metabolism. How do we eliminate the aforementioned stressors and get on the right track to lose body fat and weight?

1. Train smart. Effort is important, but you cannot assume that by simply doing more, you will lose weight and increase performance.

2. “Drip it in.” In order to eliminate over eating, eat 5-6times per day.

3. Eat breakfast, eat breakfast, eat breakfast! Don’t skip this critical meal, and it will help eliminate under eating, binge eating, and make-up eating. Keep in mind that your body burns more calories through midday,and then it slows, so feed the fire early and often!

Okay my friend, have a successful winter of body fat loss; eat well, train well and live well!