Trying to eat less to lose weight doesn’t work…

And is likely what is tripping you up!

The common advice is that you need to eat less to lose weight…And while this is not entirely untrue, this rarely works…And if it does work for a period, you then end up putting the weight back on.

Sound familiar?

That is because WHAT you eat matters.

I’m sure that you’ve heard that you can eat whatever you want within your calories and lose weight. And this is true…In theory! But not so much in practice.

When you think about it, it completely ignores hunger, satiety and human behaviour.

When people say, “you don’t need to eat less, you just need to eat better”, they aren’t (completely) wrong.

To lose fat and keep it off you need to consider what you are eating.

A really cool study showed that people tend to consume the same weight of food regardless of energy density.

When subjects were given a diet that contained 20, 40 or 60% of calories from fat, they consumed a very similar weight in food. 

Needless to say, the diets with a higher fat% were higher in calories.

An important point to make here is that the participants in this study at ad libitum (aka ate as much as they liked).

This makes the study as applicable to real life as possible.

It is unsurprising (and has been shown in numerous studies) that consuming foods higher in calories results in greater weight gain.

Consider this: 250g of chocolate contains 1,330 calories, and 250g of carrots contains 103 calories.

So, what do you do with this information?…

You can ‘hack’ your diet and hunger response by being clever with your food choices.

Adding vegetables to your meals has been shown to be an effective way of reducing calories without impacting satiety or feelings of restriction.

One study even showed that having a salad for your first course reduced the number of calories you consumed from your main meal by 7-12%!

Who would have thought? Eating MORE resulted in reduced calorie consumption.

Eating the same weight in food but making those foods contain less calories is a simple and effective way to lose weight. Not enough people talk about this with the emphasis being so calorie focused at the expense of food choices.

Take away:

Eat more fruit and vegetables! (High volume foods)

Have a pre-meal salad (make sure it is low in fat I.e., don’t add high calorie cheese and dressing. Order this on the side if you’re eating out)

Remember this info and that you can ‘trick’ your body into consuming less calories without increasing hunger…And all by changing food choices

As always, if you need some extra help, you know where to find me. Coach Gab