EAT LESS AND DO MORE

Does this "commonsense" advice for weight loss actually work?

Who hasn't heard this great weight loss advice - Eat Less and Do More?

"Weight loss is easy. Just eat less and do more!"

It's very common to hear people (usually thin people!) say: "It's obvious what you need to do to lose weight. You just need to eat less and do more". Your doctor may have even said something similarly helpful to you.

Another commonly quoted phrase is: "a calorie is a calorie is a calorie" i.e. it doesn't matter (from a weight loss point of view) whether your calories come from chocolate pudding or broccoli.

The presumption here is that our bodies are rather like a big bucket – you put calories in by eating, you take them out by exercising, and any left over ones get turned into fat.

Any other approach is sometimes said to "violate the laws of thermodynamics". This is usually said by people who have never studied thermodynamics, and have absolutely no intention of doing so. (I have studied it and wouldn't recommend it.)

Even exercise is belittled by being treated as simply a way to "burn off" a set number of calories (and some step counters even tell you the depressing truth about how few calories you've burned on your morning walk!) People think that they can wipe out a trip to the gym by having fish and chips afterwards (one of life's great pleasures!).

This is all nonsense!

A whole host of factors affect weight gain and weight loss.

Not everyone can lose weight by eating less and doing more, and it is not true that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie!

Our bodies are not like buckets. Whether or not we store excess fat is affected by incredibly complex metabolic and psychological factors. To pretend that we are like a bucket is facile and not borne out by the research.

Whether you store excess fat is affected by at least the following:

• How processed your food is, and whether it contains sugar (or high fructose corn syrup) and artificial sweeteners, which disrupt insulin levels.
• Your stress levels.
• Your beliefs. (Remember that the placebo effect can make people's hair fall out when they are taking an inactive pill, if they believe it is chemotherapy. Your mind is certainly capable of making you put on a few pounds!)
• Whether your calories come mainly from refined carbohydrates.
• How you breathe.
• Whether you enjoy your food.
• How fast you eat.
• Whether you drink enough water.
• Whether you enjoy your exercise.
• Whether you get enough sleep.
• Whether you eat when you're hungry or when you're not hungry.
• How much you think about food. (This affects insulin, which affects fat storage)
• What time of day you eat.
• Whether you focus fully on your food when you eat it.
• Whether you are eating enough (many overweight people aren't!)

The Good News

The good news is that if you start tweaking a few of the above things (as you will be doing on this programme), you can eat plenty of food (including really nice things!), never go hungry and still stay slim.

You CAN lose weight, WITHOUT dieting! For more information, sign up for our Free Email mini-course on how to lose weight without dieting.

And check out your own eating patterns with our Online assessments.