Lower the calories quicker the results?

What is One Day At A Time - Daily Wisdom?

Micro wisdom delivered to your ears every morning in voice notes ranging from 3 to 15 minutes long. Wisdom on how to live a healthier and more fulfilling life. Every podcast will ground you in the present moment to ensure you know what's important, the here and now.

Speaker 1: 00:00

Good morning, everybody. This podcast is going live on a Friday, so the weekend is coming. And it's important reminder, I think, that quick fix diets and quick fix approaches don't work, and I'm gonna explain to you why. I'm gonna share a study with you that proves it as well. So there was a recent diet experiment done by the University of Malaga in Spain.

Speaker 1: 00:25

Eight week study. They split 14 women, average age of 30, into two groups. One half was a severe energy restriction, so about 1,100 calories per day, which is low, and the others was a progressive energy restriction. So the goal was to end up in the same place at just over 1,100 calories a day, which is considered severe in the final two weeks, but they would get that in stages, rather than 800 calories from the start. So it's 1,100 versus, like, 1,900 to start with.

Speaker 1: 01:00

Right? Here's what happened. Severe energy restriction. Okay. So in the severe energy restriction group, their weight went down 3.5 pounds in eight weeks.

Speaker 1: 01:12

In the progressive one, so less calorie deficit, they lost 5.1 pounds, nearly double. Right? So how come the larger calorie deficit has caused more weight loss than a smaller calorie deficit? Does that mean the calories in calories out isn't true? Does it mean the science isn't hold up?

Speaker 1: 01:39

Right? What does it mean? Right. So you think, well, what's going on here? Now the problem here is that it's not so much that the science isn't right.

Speaker 1: 01:52

It's that where they the the severe calorie deficit group claimed they were hit in net calories, but they weren't. It's as simple as that. They just couldn't maintain that level of deficit, so they ate over their calorie targets, and then they ate more calories than the moderately moderate group, which meant they lost less weight. Right? So they weren't hitting the calorie targets.

Speaker 1: 02:20

So they it's not only that if you've got to think of this this way, it's not only that you don't it's not only that you're going from severe to maybe the same as the other group, you're actually going from you think you're gonna be hitting your targets quicker on the severe calorie deficit, not only do you eat, not eat that amount of calories, you don't even eat the the moderate calorie deficit group, you actually eat more calories than that group. So once you think you're starting off in a more in a quicker place, a better place, you're nowhere near it. This is the reality of the situation. We can plan, we can talk about this, we can say, yes, I wanna lose three pounds a week, four pounds a week. And people ask me, why in the app do you not allow a user to say how quick they wanna lose weight?

Speaker 1: 03:10

Like a user, yeah, I wanna lose weight. I wanna lose three or four pounds a week because I need to lose it by six weeks. Right? And there may be an option in the future where you can maybe slightly increase the rate of fat loss. The problem with it is is this, is that I'm not actually helping you more tall in a sense.

Speaker 1: 03:32

I'm actually making your journey longer. I'm actually making it worse by giving you false hope that you can lose this weight quicker by going into a severe deficit. Obviously, when you're motivated, you feel like you can take on the world. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 03:46

I'll do a plan. No problem. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 03:48

I'll eat 1,100 calories a day. No problem. Yeah. I'll hit 10,000 steps today. No problem.

Speaker 1: 03:55

You know, I'll do this. No problem. And really we mistake the map for the actual terrain and that's a really good quote, that I heard this year, know, don't mistake the map isn't the terrain or the map isn't the actual journey. So whilst you can lay a map on the table, and, you know, going from The UK to Spain, oh, look, you only go down the road there. It looks easy.

Speaker 1: 04:15

It's flat. It's got normal details to it. It's like, yeah, you go from A to B. Happy days. But you actually go on that path.

Speaker 1: 04:21

There's a lot there's a lot more stumbling blocks along the way. There's a lot more problems along the way. It's a lot harder than it first seems. And staying in a moderate deficit is hard enough over time to manage our emotional eating, to manage our stress eating, you know, to get our steps in when it's raining outside all the time. To not fall into board meeting in the night, to try and limit those things.

Speaker 1: 04:50

That's really where we we struggle with. Right? And, you know, you you you're making those things way harder by trying to go more aggressive. There's this is one study of many that comes to the same conclusion. You know?

Speaker 1: 05:04

It is hard to stick to a deficit even on a moderate deficit. It is still a hard thing to do. And that's why sometimes it's okay to have a day of maintenance. You know, these terms might be new to some of you, you might be confused by what these mean. But, you know, what you're doing is over a week, you're building up a deficit.

Speaker 1: 05:26

You're building up a energy hole in a sense. You're saying to your body, hey, I know you need, say, 20,000 this is example. I know you need 20,000 calories a week to do everything you need to do. I'm gonna give you, 16,500. Okay?

Speaker 1: 05:48

And the body goes, that's not enough. Okay. I know. I know. I'm gonna give you 16,500 for the week.

Speaker 1: 05:53

You'll have to get the rest from somewhere else. And the body goes, well, I've got some stored energy around my body. I'll have to use that for now then. But I'm not ideal, mate. I prefer if you just give me what I needed.

Speaker 1: 06:05

So each week, you are reluctant you know, the body is reluctantly saying, okay, I'll accept this short changed trade for now. I'm telling you, I'm gonna make it harder for you over time. I'm gonna make it harder for you to stick to this agreement. I'm gonna need more. I'm gonna need more from you.

Speaker 1: 06:27

And that's the body's way. It pushes it pushes back over time. You know, your hunger levels go up a bit, you know. Your satiety for meals sometimes goes down. You wanna move less, less less, you got less energy.

Speaker 1: 06:40

You feel a bit more sluggish sometimes. You feel a bit flat on the deficit, and, you know, you get into week four, five, six, and you're like, oof. It's getting difficult. It's getting difficult. That's a normal place to be.

Speaker 1: 06:53

And that's why we say, do know what? Maybe it's time to give the body what it needs for a few days, maybe a week. You know, in the literature, they call these, like, diet breaks. And the term diet, obviously, is a means two things, your actual diet of food and a diet. What it just means is a break from your deficit.

Speaker 1: 07:12

Right? Deficit break. You give your body what it needs for a few days or or up to a week, and it goes, oh, thanks. That's amazing. Thanks.

Speaker 1: 07:20

Let's go. And you go, you go again then. You go, do you mind if I give you a bit less calories this week again? Go on then. And then it'll start getting week four, five, six, and they'll annoyed again.

Speaker 1: 07:30

You know, it really is kind of that simple how we look how how you can look at it. So don't worry if you don't hit your calorie targets every day. If you go over your target by 500 calories a shit, you know, you've just gone to maintenance, and sometimes that's what you need. Okay? That's sometimes what you need.

Speaker 1: 07:46

The body will tell you it needs more energy, especially if you've been training hard. You will notice a huge spike in your hunger levels, and you'll be like, wow, my body is really screaming out right now. I'm not craving, chocolate or whatever. I just I just need water. I need some carbs.

Speaker 1: 08:02

I need something. So you'll you'll notice notice a big difference between that and craving for like a pizza. Right? Because you're not really craving a pizza when you are hungry post, intense exercise. It's a different type of feeling.

Speaker 1: 08:22

So, you know, you gotta be in tune with your hunger and craving cues as well. You know, the difference between hunger and craving. We often don't think about this. I've spoke about it a few times on the podcast. But, you know, hunger is a genuine bodily reaction, essentially.

Speaker 1: 08:37

Your body saying, hey, you need some in, you need some energy, and you feel our hunger, it's like deep. It's like, oh, yeah. And craving is just a desire. Craving has got nothing to do with the food itself, it's the pleasure from the food. You know, you can satisfy your craving in many different ways.

Speaker 1: 08:57

Food is one of those things that we use to satisfy cravings a lot because it's easy, because food is very very nice, and it's something we do daily. So it's kind of our first thing we think about to satisfy a craving. And a craving really is filling a gap. You know, you could be bored. Let me fill that gap with feeling, pleasure.

Speaker 1: 09:19

And what's the best way to do that? Well, food's a great option. Let's do food. You know? There's there's many ways we go about this.

Speaker 1: 09:25

You know, we we don't like to be disturbed emotionally, and we like to fill that gap or plug that gap with food. Some people use food more than others in this regard. Some people don't use food sometimes for cravings, and it's obviously easier for them to handle their food, intake if you don't use food for craving. But you have to question yourself in these moments, know, is me eating this full tub of Ben and Jerry's, even though it's lovely, is that really satisfying what I need right now? Am I just bored?

Speaker 1: 09:58

Have I just been given some bad news? Do I just feel emotional right now? And how come this is gonna help me? It's gonna give me a few minutes of pleasure, then what? What does it tell me after that?

Speaker 1: 10:13

Well, I'll be annoyed because I consumed a thousand calories and I didn't really need it. How will I feel afterwards? I'll I'll feel a bit annoyed about that. You know, you need to start thinking of second order effects, and this takes kind of mindfulness basically. You know, there's a lot of talk about mindfulness and stillness and all this stuff.

Speaker 1: 10:30

It's really what it is. It's being able to see these things in the moment they happen and take a deep breath and observe what's going on and then react or in more accurate terms, respond and respond to these things that happen. Because often we just we kinda go into autopilot. You know, we just jump in from one thing to another. We are just reacting.

Speaker 1: 10:51

We are we are one reaction to another, like a chain reaction. We don't see it. We think we've got control of our lives, but really we are just hitting chain reaction, chain reaction, chain reaction, with this, this, this, this, that, so your days are run. You know, there's really good corporal Jim Rohn, he says, either the day either you run the day or the day runs you. And what he really means by that is you either get run by this chain reaction starting from when you wake up, or you actually decide to respond today in how you want to.

Speaker 1: 11:21

You know, your people wake up, they go on their phone, read a bad email, your day's gone. Okay? You get up. You were gonna do a morning routine. You were gonna do this and that.

Speaker 1: 11:31

Instead, you go straight on computer. You hit reply. You get flustered, you get frustrated, and you know your morning routine's gone. Or you plan to go to work, you plan to go on a walk but you wake up and it's raining, and that raining sets off a chain reaction of, I'm not gonna bother now. Now I'm just gonna go in there, get another cup of tea, a few biscuits, and all that.

Speaker 1: 11:54

And that's not a bad thing. I'm not saying eating biscuits is a bad thing. It's just that that thing that's outside your control, the rain, has caused the reaction and it just keeps going. And can you stop the chain reaction mid chain? Of course you can.

Speaker 1: 12:09

But it is difficult because, you know, like, when you try and put a key into a lock and you can't open the door, right, we often try and use more strength. We try and ram it in and then we keep going. You know, we're doing something there that's not working, and we're doing something again, and it's it's not working. It's not working. It's not working.

Speaker 1: 12:27

More strength, more power doesn't help our situation. You should stop, chill out. Key key is probably in the wrong way. You know, you put in slowly and it opens. It's kind of the same lesson here.

Speaker 1: 12:36

You know, like, if you let these reactions just build up over the day, it's just it gets build up, build up, build up. And what we need to do is a reset. It's a big reset. But we often don't get the chance to do this reset depending on your job and stuff, I can't cover everyone's job titles here. There'll be some people working in healthcare that's very difficult because you really are in the middle of a chain reaction in healthcare and it's one thing after another and you have you have you have to be able to give yourself those moments of mindfulness amongst the chaos, and it's something you have to try and work in yourself somehow.

Speaker 1: 13:08

If it's on your lunch break or whatever, it's about removing yourself from the situation a bit. But it's quite hard to do so. You know, teachers, you got they got a lot a lot of different jobs. But it's really how we handle our emotions, how we handle our reaction to the emotions, and how we handle not just the reactions, but really how we want to respond as our character really, isn't it? Like how do I want to respond to these daily emotional challenges I face?

Speaker 1: 13:36

You know, write down how you'd love to respond to these maybe, that's a task for today. When I'm stressed, I'd love to be able to just take 10 deep breaths, write down what I'm stressed about, reply to that comment as if I am my best friend, giving myself advice, and then revisit it. You know, I'd love to do that each time. Okay? If you love to do that each time, you know, write it down and try it and start today.

Speaker 1: 13:57

You know? That's how it starts. So, yeah, this all links up. But coming back to the first part, you know, going more severe, going quicker actually makes you go doesn't actually speed up fat loss. I just wanna keep reminding you of this because it's just true.

Speaker 1: 14:11

It just doesn't happen. Okay? You're making things harder for yourself. It's hard enough as it is. Okay?

Speaker 1: 14:16

Most of you are gonna struggle to stay in a deficit for a few weeks. That's not a bad thing. That's nothing against you. It's just how it is. It's just how we are, and it's fine, we accept the reality and we work with reality, and we work it in our favor.

Speaker 1: 14:29

So make sure you're not putting yourself in a worse physical, mentally and emotional place by going, trying to go too fast. And if your weight loss is slowed down or you have plateaued for a week or two or even three weeks, that's also part of the game. The plateau is a part of the process. It doesn't mean you're not making progress. You can look at other places.

Speaker 1: 14:48

You know, some people will say, Scott, I must wait in two weeks. I feel like I'm not making any progress. And I'll say, well, what have been doing the last two weeks? And so I began my steps in every day, then a few workouts, hit my protein target, I'm eating better foods, doing this now. I'm like, fuck.

Speaker 1: 15:05

Those are amazing things. All amazing things. Regardless of what your weight is, those are big wins. If anything, they're more powerful over a long time than folks on on a weight. You know, you're doing really good healthy behaviors.

Speaker 1: 15:17

You know, why are we dis dismissing all of those for the for the weight and the scales? We know weight will trend with us. Weight will follow your lifestyle over time. Sometimes it's delayed, sometimes it's not. Depends on the person.

Speaker 1: 15:29

Okay? But if you build this lifestyle, right, a solid healthy lifestyle, it's inevitable that the side effect of that is a healthier body. Right? It will follow suit. So don't worry.

Speaker 1: 15:44

If you're worrying about the weight all the time, and you're saying you're doing all these lifestyle based things that are that you and you're tracking honestly this, then you don't have to worry. But maybe you are worrying because you know perhaps you're not doing the core stuff. So you've gotta be honest with yourself. Am I is my weight going up, but it's not working? Or actually, am I getting my steps in?

Speaker 1: 16:04

Am I tracking honestly? Am I hitting my protein target? Am I doing this honestly, frequently? Am I looking at my weekends in the same way? If I'm doing those things, I don't need to worry about my weight right now if it's not coming down.

Speaker 1: 16:16

I'm doing those things. You know, I'm honest. Happy days. I'm not worried. But if you're not doing those things, maybe the weight becomes a bigger factor for you because it's all about the weight and you're not doing you know what I mean?

Speaker 1: 16:27

It starts becoming a clash. So be honest with yourself. If you're doing those things, do not worry. Weight will come down in time. There's no need to rush it.

Speaker 1: 16:36

Rushing has never helped. But have a good day. Have a good weekend. You know, remember to track if you can. If not, just be mindful when you're eating and try and be present doing those things.

Speaker 1: 16:47

And, give that, task a go today. Write down how you'd love to respond to the emotional challenges day to day. Speak soon.