Calorie-Counting Is Bro-Science.
You are not a calorimeter. Don't act like one.
Hey friend!
Pop culture fitness advice annoys me to my core!
I’ve been obese twice in my life and each time, it has caused me immense frustration.
Go to your nearest gym, take a deep breath, and shout with your full lungs:
“Can someone tell me how to lose weight, bros?”
It is guaranteed that one of the gym bros will get back to you with this response like a punch on your face:
“Eat less and gym more, mate!”
Eat less and gym more? Eat less than what? Gym more than what?
Oh Calories?
I want to talk to you about calories in detail in this week’s newsletter (with the best scientific evidence available to date.)
Bro Science Advice № 1 : “Eat Mindfully & In Moderation”
This is one of the most popular but worthless pieces of advice ever.
This is because those obese/ overweight have structural changes in their brain that cause them difficulty controlling hunger.
This single-blinded, randomized, controlled, crossover study published in the Nature Metabolism journal tells just that.
It demonstrates that participants with obesity have severely impaired brain responses to the food that they eat.
In layman’s terms, a fat person does not experience the same level of satiety/ satisfaction on consuming food as compared to a lean person.
The study tells that these impairments are so severe that they are not reversed even after diet-induced weight loss.
This explains why most of them experience weight regain after successful weight loss.
Another study published by Cambridge scientists in the Neuroimage: Clinical journal looked at the MRI brain scans taken from 1,351 young adults.
The conclusion was that there are structural changes in the Hypothalamus of adults with a higher BMI. Note that this is the exact brain area that controls appetite and satiety in humans.
Therefore, telling someone fat to eat less to lose weight is like asking a person with a broken leg to squat more to build a bigger booty or telling a depressed person to be happier.
It doesn’t work (& and leads to further guilt eating).
Bro Science Advice № 2: “Calculate your RMR & Eat Less Than That. Don’t Blame Your Metabolism!”
The classic advice for weight loss is to calculate your daily energy expenditure/ resting metabolic rate (RMR) and eat less than that.
Let me show you this plot before moving forward.
It is published in the Science journal and looks at 6421 subjects of both genders from 29 different countries aged between 8 days to 95 years.
Look at how two people weighing 80 kg have massively different rates of calorie consumption due to their metabolic differences.
This shows how inaccurate the means to calculate basal calorie consumption are (unless you go to a clinical setting and use Indirect Calorimetry).
This person who is burning 5700 kcal/ day at ease will easily blame and gaslight the person just burning 1400 kcal/day that he is not cutting his calories enough.
Isn’t this a common scenario that people struggling to lose weight encounter every day?
For god’s sake, slow metabolism is real.
Also, the ways of calculating your body’s basal calorie consumption are drastically inaccurate.
Bro Science Advice № 3: “Count Calories & Eat Less Calories Than You Burn.”
As demonstrated previously, one cannot really find out how many calories they need to eat as per their body weight, in general.
Hence, the advice one eat less than that is absurd.
Fine, but we will try to follow this advice (mindlessly).
But is a calorie really a calorie inside the body?
A study published in BMC Nutrition Journal highlights that the body uses different amounts of energy to process different macronutrients (namely protein, fats, and carbohydrates).
In other words, assuming that protein, carbohydrate, and fat are energetically equivalent when metabolized in the body, is a false notion.
Next, a study published in the journal Nature Communications, suggests that our body reacts differently to calories ingested from high-fiber whole foods vs. ultra-processed junk foods.
Ultra-processed junk food is easily broken down and well absorbed in the upper part of our gastrointestinal tract.
This is not the case with a whole food fibre-rich diet which transits to the later part of the gastrointestinal tract that is home to billions of bacteria (gut microbiome) in our body.
These bacteria break down the consumed food and make it less readily absorbable.
In other words, a jug of milkshake will quickly get absorbed into the bloodstream as compared to a half-pound steak.
Calorie Restriction Leads To Fall In Resting Metabolic Rate
There’s another gross issue with telling people to eat less to lose weight.
Let’s say that one somehow starts watching all motivational content online (pump it bro!), and drinks a can of juice water twice a day.
Yes, they will start losing weight.
But in a few weeks, their body will decrease its Resting Metabolic Rate (the amount of energy that your body needs to function while at rest).
And they will get trapped in this loop where they will have to eat less and less every day to maintain that weight loss.
This is classically seen in the winners of The Biggest Loser TV show where they regained all the lost body weight (through calorie counting and exercise) in the next 6 years.
The Role Of Hormones That No One Talks About
You are not a calorimeter.
Food doesn’t just go into your body and is burned to heat like a furnace.
Your body is a pool of hormones and it reacts differently to different food items.
I have talked about this in detail in my article below.
A Simple Biochemistry Lesson That Helped Me Lose 50 Pounds In 6 Months Without Relying On…
Unsubscribe Your Favorite Popular Bodybuilding Youtuber & Learn The Real Science Behind Weight Lossmedium.com
The conclusion is that gym bro scientists completely ignore the role of hormones in weight loss (which somehow tells us that most fitness influencers read Fashion magazines rather than Biology.)
Bro Science Advice № 4: “Bro You Need To Be Man Enough.”
A lot of gym bro science starts and ends with gaslighting others for not having the motivation to lift heavy and eat less.
There’s a gross issue in this where they do not acknowledge the reasons why someone is eating more.
Maybe they have gone through childhood abuse, bullying, or have a dysfunctional family.
Maybe they suffer from depression and anxiety disorder which makes them addicted to hyper-palatable food.
The ideal way to address this should be through Therapy, and not shaming.
Telling someone that they are weak for not being motivated enough to be able to lose weight is a popular strategy but a disaster.
Are You Doomed To Stay Overweight/ Obese? — Not At All.
Despite being a medical doctor, I have been a subconscious student of the bro-science industry.
The reason being — it is everywhere.
Thankfully, last year, I quit listening to popular advice and started reading some science-backed advice on losing weight.
I lost 25 kgs (55 pounds) of body weight in about 8 months at ease by eating till satiety (without calorie counting) and barely going to the gym.
No motivation, no calorie counting apps, no gym trainers shouting around me to run more— what a bliss!
The secret was — a Ketogenic Diet.
Here are the major reasons why it worked so well (with attached scientific evidence).
Ketogenic diets solve the problem of appetite control and avoids relying on motivation to lose weight (the biggest factor for weight loss)
Based on the above, contrary to popular belief, a Ketogenic diet is amazingly sustainable for those overweight/ obese.
Here are some other weight loss-related articles that I wrote for you on my Medium.
I hope this helps you if you are struggling to lose weight.
See you soon next! Cheers!