Why Calories Don't Count
It seems like since the beginning of time that weight loss has been associated with calories and that all calories are equal. Weight loss has been simplified to this equation of eat less and exercise more because it makes sense on paper. Form the outside looking in, it makes perfect sense, that if I eat less calories that I consume, then I’ll lose weight. Perfect, done! Then why are so many people still fat? The answer is very simple and the answer is sugar. Your bodies ability to store fat or burn fat is controlled by hormones. If you elevate hormones that tell your body to store fat, then you will get fat and vise versa. The hormone that tells your body to store fat is insulin. If insulin levels are low, then you do not store fat, if they are high, you store fat. Insulin is raised when you eat carbohydrate foods. You can eat as few calories as you want, even as low as 800cal per day and still remain overweight or even gain more weight if those calories raise insulin levels. Most low calorie diets are low in calories but all the calories come from carbohydrate based foods to make the person feel full but on the back end, it is just sending insulin through the roof and actually making you fatter. How many people do you know that have had to “go on weight watchers again” or “start that diet over”? I want you to have your last first time and here is the answer.
This idea that calories make a person overweight come from the second law of thermodynamics that was founded in 1828. This law was refereeing to heat and for example, the law refers to the fact that if you open the door to a room and the room feels colder, it is because hot air is leaving (cold air is not entering). This law was then applied to weight loss and the thought was that if you have less energy (calories) then you will lose weight. This is a nice idea but what bout children? If you believe that calories are the reason for a person being over weight and if you believe that weight loss is about calorie in vs calories out, then you believe that in a situation where there is an underweight child with an overweight mother, that the mother is starving her child so she can eat and continue to be overweight. If you believe that weight loss is about calories then you believe that people are lazy sloths that sit around and eat all day with no physical activity and want to be fat. Let's look at the organization of WIC (Women Infants and Children) and there calorie consumption. The average person on WIC consumes 1560cal per day and the average American consumes 2,400cal per day. The average person on WIC weighs 34lb more than the average American. Yes, re-read that statement. The average person on WIC weighs on average 34lbs more than someone not on WIC but they consume nearly 900cal less per day. The average person on WIC consumes 36lbs of sugar per person, per year, while the average American not on WIC consumes 24.6lb of sugar per person, per year. Both of those numbers are astonishingly high compared to places such as Africa that consume less than 1/2 than number but nonetheless, they are the numbers we are comparing (I am also not here today to discuss someones financial situation so please keep that in mind as we are only discussing weight loss).
Now, we have seen that individuals on WIC consume less calories but more sugar, we now need to know what that means. Sugar is the only thing that spikes insulin. Weather that be grains, cane sugar, a lolly pop, ice cream, a muffin, vegetables, fruit, or anything else that is a carbohydrate. The more starchy carbohydrates or sugar that are in something, the more the insulin will spike. For example, you can eat your body weight in lettuce and your insulin wont go very high because although it is a carbohydrate source, there is not a lot of sugar in it. If you ate your body weight in muffins, then you may have type two diabetes when you’re done haha. To make that analogy a little more relative and easier to understand, if you ate a salad loaded with vegetables, it would only raises your insulin about 1-3points. If you ate a sandwich with two slices of bread (two slices of bread contain the same sugar amount as 4tbl spoons of sugar) you would spike your insulin about 15 points. Basically, the more sugar you take in, the more insulin you have. The more insulin you have the more fat you store (not to mention chances of diabetes, death, stroke, and much more). In order to lose weight, you do not need to be worried about calories, you need to be worried about insulin. Nuts, seeds, and animal proteins will not raise insulin for example so I do not care how much you eat of those items. If you’re eating a wrap and two bagels per day then we are going to have a different discussion.
Getting back to WIC, there is a massive difference for people on WIC that consume sugar/soft drinks and people not on WIC that consume them. Dr. Robert Lustig has done amazing research on this and here is a link to one of his articles (http://www.inquisitr.com/214109/is-sugar-toxic-dr-robert-lustig-thinks-so/). The question is not how many calories a person eats in a day, it is weather those calories affect insulin or not. Like I said in the last paragraph, meats, nuts, seeds, vegetables, and other “real” foods do not have an big affect on insulin. Candy, grains, milk, and most “fake” foods spike insulin very high. I never ask a client “how many calories was in that?” or how many calories they ate that day or even how many calories they burned in the workout. None of that matters if they are not eating foods that make them fat.
We are aiming for a no stress environment and I do not want to worried about how many calories you eat or how many calories you burn. I just want you eating real foods that you can find in nature. These foods wont make you fat because there is not any sugar in them and they will not spike insulin levels. Millions and millions of people count calories are are still overweight. If you’re wondering if this concept of eating high amounts of proteins, fats, and vegetables with minimal sugars works, just try it because clearly the current prescription is not working. For more information, read “Why We Get Fat” from this link below as Gary Taubes does and excellent job of portraying this concept.
Why Calories Don't CountMitchel Black, CPT, NC
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