As a long-time student of my own physiology, it really gets under my skin when marketing scams try to tell me how my body works (and how I will react to it). Yesterday I got a spam email that started out like this:
Standard restriction diets, the type that most people commit to for their New Year’s resolutions, have one major drawback: almost no one sticks with them.
Restriction diets have more than that “one” drawback. What diet programs fail to tell you (on purpose), is how adaptable the human body is. There are hundreds of fad diets, shakes, pills, and hoaxes out there that claim to burn fat without “diets” or exercise, all of which is complete bunk. Why? Because of how the human body works. A lot of people will try to complicate things by saying their product will “speed your metabolism” or “target belly fat,” but none of that is true. If you ask for evidence or studies to back their claims, they might be able to provide a handful of small sample, biased studies, if that.
The only way to reduce body fat is to burn off more calories than you take in. There are some things to consider when thinking about this. Like I said before, the human body is adaptable, so if a person reduces their calorie intake over a long span of time, their body is likely to adapt, lower their metabolism to conserve energy, and make it even harder to lose weight. That’s why many athletes follow a cut-bulk cycle. During the bulk part of the cycle, a person raises their calorie intake to a surplus and uses a max rep style of lifting, which is lifting the highest weight you can lift for an allotted number of reps. (For example, the most weight I can curl for five reps is 15 pounds. That is my max rep for curls.) During the cut part of the cycle, a person reduces their calorie intake to a deficit without going too low, and switches to a high rep style of lifting, which is lowering the weight lifted to increase the number of reps. 1
Cutting and bulking is one method used by athletes to reduce body fat and build muscle. Not everyone wants big, bulky muscles. The important thing to focus on is the cycle. The most effective cutting cycles last 8-12 weeks. Bolt warns in that blog not to cut calories too drastically because it might affect your basal metabolism rate 3. For me, that warning comes too little too late, and I have a feeling that some of my readers are in the same boat.
This is a summarized version of my story with weight struggles:
After being diagnosed with epilepsy at 21 years old, I was prescribed different medications to try to control the seizures. None of them worked, but they all caused weight gain. My doctor seemed completely unconcerned with the weight gain until it caused hypertension. At that point, everyone on my “healthcare team” blamed me and accused me of not taking care of myself. The infuriated me, so I did my own research to find seizure medication that did not cause weight gain. I found one, but my neurologist refused to switch me, so I fired him. With no other neurologists in close proximity, I went to primary and asked him to prescribe the medication. He did, but I was still extremely overweight. I lost all of the weight I had gained in about two years, but years later I started gaining weight and had a really hard time losing it.
After doing some research, I realized what had happened. I had lowered my basal metabolism rate. During the epilepsy ordeal, I had decreased my calorie intake to roughly 1300 (I’m almost 5’8″). I lost the weight so quickly because my calorie intake was low, my activity level was high, and my new medication had given me a boost to help lose the weight. When I never increased my calorie intake, my bmr fell. (That’s why I feel so cold all of the time.) Right now, I am trying to reset my bmr by gradually increasing my calorie intake to my normal 1700 per day, while engaging in a rigorous exercise program six days a week. Hopefully this will put my body back on track.
The basics of the human body are by no means simple, but if we stop to understand that the the primary goal for every living thing is to survive, things become a little clearer. I deprived my body of food because I thought the food was causing a problem. My body responded by storing what food I ate as fat. Now I have to repair the damage I did. Hopefully my plan will work.
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