By Debra Atkinson –
If you are over the age of 50 you have been brainwashed to count calories your entire life. It will be a hard habit to lose in exchange for one that serves you well.
How well has it worked for you thus far? If you are, after five decades, continuing to take the same approach to a problem that hasn’t budged do you agree that a new approach is a reasonable suggestion?
A calorie is a calorie is a calorie. That’s what I was taught in school.
However, when it comes to weight management, weight loss, performance, and health this is not the whole story.
The more you or any client, customer participant I’ve worked with in the past focuses on calories and makes calorie choices over quality content the fatter we become. When you eat fruit for instance alone- lower fat than adding nuts or cheese – it includes a high sugar content. As soon as you ingest sugar, insulin circulates in your body, stopping fat metabolism. If you offset that high sugar-in-the-bloodstream effect with a higher fat, protein and fiber content the glycemic index (term you may at this point have heard) is lower and the insulin response does not factor in.
If you eat a higher (healthy) fat diet you will very likely consume a higher amount of calories.
If you choose a 300 calorie breakfast with 11 grams of protein – typical cereal and milk combination (only if dairy or soy milk) vs. a 500 calorie breakfast with 30 grams of protein you may lose weight.
You WILL also lower your metabolism, and reduce the amount of lean muscle tissue that you have, reducing your metabolism even further over the course of months and years that you do this.
The mistake you are making is thinking that a higher calorie, higher protein content meal will make you fat. Not unless you eat more than the moderate serving size of any food and overall take in more calories than you need. I challenge you to consider how many calories you THINK you need. Further, where did that NUMBER come from?
Subjects who ate (a very low calorie diet I am not recommending!) consisting of 1400 calories per day were divided into two groups.
Subjects who ate 700 of those calories at breakfast, 500 at lunch and 200 at dinner lost more weight than those who ate 1400 calories per day in reverse, 200 at breakfast, 500 at lunch and 700 at dinner. This was true even when the 700 calorie breakfast included chocolate cake.
Timing does count.
Subjects who ate more overall protein- hovering at the 35% RDA in their diet lost more weight than those who ate same amount of calories with lower protein levels.
Again, starting with high protein breakfast also had a significant effect on weight loss over those who skipped or had a low protein breakfast.
All of the studies above come from Obesity journal and were published online in late 2012 or in 2013.
Strictly counting calories will impact your decisions to enjoy nuts, nut butters, avocado, salmon, flax, all heart healthy fats AND quality protein sources (eggs, fish, lean meats including poultry and lean beef, whey protein, yogurt) as these typically have more “calories” than fruits and vegetables, or simple carbohydrates.
Satiety – or your desire to eat again – is heavily influence by the amount of protein taken in during the prior meal. That is, another strong persuasive argument for starting your day with a high protein breakfast. You will tend to eat less at your mid morning snack and lunch consequently. You will eat HIGH QUALITY foods because you are not ravenous or feeling deprived. Find that you are most likely to overindulge mid afternoon? Look to your lunch and increase the protein content of it and you may find you no longer have the “slump.”
Remember that as you age, you are losing muscle or fighting those losses. If you are eating too few calories of high quality you will encourage that loss.
Observe people around you and the way they look, their body composition. You will find almost always from an informal survey that the lean people eat more than the fat people. Lean people tend to eat more fat. Lean people tend to eat more protein.
Hormones, activity, body composition, quality content, digestive energy (that is higher for protein, higher complex carbohydrate foods, nuts, for example), all add up to an integrated caloric intake and use by our bodies.
If you’re reading that for “someone your age” you should take in X amount of calories….that is for an AVERAGE U.S. adult. Are you more active? Are you different in body composition?
The fight between trying to elevate metabolism with exercise and lifting weights to create more lean muscle tissue AND cutting calories which SLOWS metabolism will keep you stuck….or eventually sliding backwards: the body will win. You are going one step forward and two steps back.
Next week we’ll publish an ebook (pdf) with five of each breakfast, lunch, and dinner options that have 30 grams of protein in each. We’ll focus on protein and high quality food in moderate serving sizes. Caloric count will not be included. CHANGE the WAY you AGE. In order to do that, you MUST change the way you THINK.
And yes, it’s hard to change your thoughts and to keep up but science AND results that stick don’t lie. Otherwise we as Americans who have learned to count calories and eat “low fat” over the last 25 years….would not be experiencing the obesity epidemic that we are.
Originally published at www.voiceforfitness.com/