You Might Be Eating Too Little
Feeling like you’re trying so hard to lose weight or get in shape, but no matter what, you’re not seeing results? Here’s a plot twist for you: you might be eating too little, not too much.
Many people subscribe to the calories in calories out philosophy, meaning to lose weight, the only thing you need to do is burn more calories than you consume. Positive net calories leads to weight gain, and negative net calories leads to weight loss. But, if it were as simple as that, wouldn’t it be easy for everyone to hit their exact goal?
While calories do matter and do play a role in weight management, they are NOT the only thing that comes into play, and it’s a lot more complicated than calories in calories out.
One of the big holes in this philosophy is your BMR (basal metabolic rate). This is the amount of energy your body needs survive completely at rest: it goes toward organ function, building compounds like hormones and blood cells, keeping muscles like your brain, lungs, & heart running, among other vital functions. Your BMR is actually the biggest bulk of your calorie usage — about 60-75% of calories burned. (Another plot twist: only about 10% go toward exercise, even if you’re someone who works out every day).
When you don’t give your body enough fuel, it signals to it that you’re in starvation mode. This is a backup mechanism from our primal days when food wasn’t always readily available, and it causes us to store more calories as fat for later use, and to drop our BMR to burn less calories every day. Since your BMR is the bulk of our calorie usage, it makes sense for our bodies to dip into that energy requirement to leave more over to store for later.
If I just told you your BMR only accounts for calories used in vital functions, how does your body cut down the amount of energy it needs to keep you alive? The answer is by not running those essential life functions quite as well as they should be. Dropping your BMR leaves you tired and fatigued, more prone to sickness and infection, more susceptible to injuries, with poor circulation, slowed reaction time and brain function, weak hair, skin & nails, loss of muscle, and in more severe cases of extreme caloric restriction, organ dysfunction and eventually failure.
Put simply, when your BMR drops, your body requires less calories to keep you alive. Since BMR is the bulk of your calorie usage, lowering your BMR by not eating enough can really throw a wrench in your weight goals (and definitely lead to you not feeling and functioning at your best).
For example, if you normally require 1600 calories for normal function, you can eat a fair amount more than that without gaining any weight. If you eat too little and your BMR drops, you now might only need 1200 calories for normal function, which means if you ate equally as much as you did before, you’d actually gain weight or plateau.
If you feel like you’ve hit a plateau and nothing you’re doing is getting you any progress, this might be a good time to evaluate if you’re eating enough. Slow and steady is always the best way to lose weight, and if you try to outsmart your body by jumping too low too fast, it’ll outsmart you!