“Good Nutrition creates health in all areas of our existance all parts are connected” T. Collin Cambell
Does this sound familiar?
“I go to classes six days a week and I can’t lose a pound!”
“I’m eating 1200 calories a day and I haven’t lost a pound
in months. I lost 15 pounds and I’ve been stuck ever since.”
“I’ve been doing personal training for two months and I’ve gained weight! My trainer said it’s muscle, but I don’t think I look any better.”
Conventional wisdom recommends creating a caloric deficit by eating less and moving more.
If your goal was to lose 10 pounds, how difficult would that be?
10 lbs of body fat = 35,000 calories
Maintain a Caloric Deficit of 100 cal (eg. 2000 Cal in, 2100 Cal out)
35,000 calories/ 100 cal/day = 350 days
It would take just under a year to lose just 10 lbs!!!
(If everything goes well)
This method fails to take into account that our bodies are incredibly complex machines, and each of us is unique. While the general idea is sound, here’s why the typical approach doesn’t always work.
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Measuring our intake based on calories is a good start, but can be misleading. Consuming 500 calories of protein would take 125 grams, while consuming 500 calories of fat would require around 56 grams. Either option would “fit” for somebody tracking only their calories, but obviously eating 56 grams of fat wouldn’t necessarily help them lose weight.
Additionally, our bodies have to work to digest and process our fuel. Different types of fuel require different levels of work to breakdown and absorb. This means that your “calories in” already impact your “calories out.” In our earlier example, if you eat 500 calories of protein, you will expend around 125 calories just to process it, leaving only 375 calories absorbed. Compare this to the 500 calories of fat, which would expend only 15 calories to process, for a total of 485 calories absorbed.
Lastly, because our bodies are so complex and unique, we all have different levels of hormones and neurotransmitters. These chemicals help our body regulate its baseline functions, including weight loss or weight gain. Not only do they affect our ability to gain or lose weight, but are also affected by our health habits and lifestyles. A “high stress” environment will cause our bodies to produce increased levels of Cortisol (the stress response hormone) which causes us to gain and hold body fat, specifically around the midsection. This also tends to leave us craving salty or sugary foods, which impact our Insulin levels, leading to unstable energy levels, mood swings, increased body fat around the midsection, and more cravings!
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Tracking the calories we burn during a workout is a great tool for managing our weight, but again provides an incomplete picture. According to Harvard Health, the average adult will burn around 252 calories during an hour of moderate intensity weightlifting, or around 504 calories with high intensity weightlifting. While this is a great start, it ignores the much bigger piece of the puzzle; the other 23 hours in the day.
When we eat with the idea of reducing our calories we may gain progress in the short-term, but it can be difficult to keep the weight off. More than anything, our bodies try to maintain homeostasis, which means that while we can lose weight when we restrict our calories, we often gain it back once we “stop dieting.”
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When selecting the foods to include in a meal plan, this “conventional wisdom” suggests that the content of our diet doesn’t matter as long as the calories in are lower than the calories out. Anyone who has attempted any form of dieting will know that this typically doesn’t work. With the increase of processed foods available today, there has been a corresponding trend of chronic inflammation. While there are numerous factors involved, it is common for certain types of foods to cause an inflammatory response in the body on a cellular level. These foods can range from ground meats to lettuce and peppers, but the most prevalent of these include dairy, wheat, corn, soy, sugar, alcohol, nut & seed oils.
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Instead of trying to create a temporary deficit in our calories, we teach our clients to use their food to support their metabolism. This means giving our bodies foods that fuel our activity, rebuild and repair our muscles and joints, and provide the essential micronutrients while limiting our intake of the common inflammatory foods.
We begin by establishing specific goals, and adapting the meal plan to fit the desired result. Rather than using calories as our primary method of tracking our intake, we focus on our macronutrients (Protein, Carbohydrates, Fats, and Fiber). This allows us to know what types of foods to eat and how much. It also allows us to target our nutrition and supplementation to further support the body towards our specific goals.
This also provides us a baseline that effectively removes the variable nature of nutrition. So, if we still seem unable to make progress, we can look at other areas such as clinical deficiencies, hormonal health, physical activity, etc. that affect our health and vitality.
Nutrition Protocol
Baseline Meal Plan
Calorie Calculator
Supplement recommendations
Multi-Vitamin
Omega-3s
Cal/Mag
Probiotic
Fiber
Additional recommendations based on goals