125: Five Problems with Counting Calories for Weight Loss
Hormones
Gut Bacteria
Sleep
Stress
Breath
Calorie counting has been the primary recommendation for weight management for many years, but if it was as simple as calories in / calories out, there wouldn’t be such an obesity epidemic. There are other factors to take into account, such as the way insulin blocks calories from “getting out,” or the way stress can lead to increased belly fat.
Calorie counting can be helpful, but it’s not everything. There’s so much more to consider and we’re talking about it in this week’s podcast!
EPISODE 125: Five Problems with Counting Calories For Weight Loss
SHOW NOTES
(0:00) Intro
Hello my friend! Welcome back to the club. How are you today?
Lesson from my carnivorish experiment
Body cues
(8:59) Calories are a measurement, a unit of energy.
Extra energy on your body is stored as fat.
You don’t want to be in an energy surplus. But, let’s be clear, your body is not counting calories.
It’s not as simple as exercise more and eat less or calories in, calories out, because guess what, a lot people can’t get their calories out - their cells won’t release fat. Even if they’re eating the “perfect” number of calories.
(8:59) #1. Hormones
One of the biggest calories-out blockers is insulin - which is known as our fat storage hormone. You can’t count calories without considering hormones.
In his book The Obesity Code, Dr Jason Fung says, “Everything about the human metabolism is hormonally regulated.” “Obesity is hormonal, not a caloric imbalance.”
You’ve probably heard by now that not all calories are created equally. And this is why. Your food choices, your calories, tell your hormones what to do.
A calorie of olive oil does not behave the same as a calorie of steak or broccoli or cookie in your body.
We’ve got our 3 macronutrients - proteins, fats and carbs, and the metabolic processing for each is a little different.
We need a nice balance of the macronutrients and counting calories doesn’t mean that you are.
Most people are getting too many carbohydrate calories and this makes insulin show up too often, too aggressively.
Insulin is not a bad guy, we need insulin, it shows up to put all of your calories, your food energy in the right place.
Insulin blocks fat burning. So if you’re eating too many carbs, insulin is showing up too often and keeping you in storage mode.
This is called being a sugar burner.
You can count your calories in - but if you have insulin regulation issues - your calories can’t get out because the insulin is preventing it.
The problem with diet drinks and artificial sweeteners
One study referenced in the Obesity book showed that both aspartame and stevia raised insulin levels higher than table sugar. You can’t fool the body my friend, and these sweeteners can be wolves in sheep’s clothing.
(14:51) #2. Gut bacteria
Our gut bacteria influences the way we use food energy or “calories.”
The more imbalanced your gut bacteria, the less efficient your body will metabolize food.
Bifido bacteria helps us digest carbs, protect against pathogens and helps us make B vitamins and antioxidants. It correlates with decreased inflammation and improved ability to use blood sugar for energy instead of storing it as fat. Akkermansia helps determine how food energy gets absorbed - apparently the more akkermansia in the gut, the fewer calories are absorbed.
Eating things like artificial sweeteners and other processed foods throw off the balance of your gut bacteria and make it more hospitable for the sugar loving, calorie-holding-onto bacteria to thrive instead of keeping a strong presence of bacteria that work in your favor like bifido and akkermasia.
The more of those sugar loving bacteria you have in your gut, the more you are going to crave sugar because those little suckers want to be fed.
This is where your body cues can get messed up. We are mostly made up of bacteria in our bodies, we have more bacteria than human cells so they have a large presence and large influence in how things go down, literally, the food, the poop, all of it.
(17:16) #3. Sleep + #4. Stress
I lump those together because when either of those are off your body produces more cortisol, which is another hormone that affects weight.
When we overproduce cortisol we accumulate more belly fat.
Increased cortisol leads to increased blood sugar and increased blood sugar leads to increased insulin.
More belly fat leads to the production of more estrogen and being estrogen dominant leads to more fat storage so there’s a whole lotta vicious cycling going on here.
The cortisol becomes a fat trap. Calories don’t account for this - you could be diligently counting calories, yet gaining weight due to lack of sleep and too much stress.
The Genesis Prescription for Sleep - When we don’t get enough sleep it throws off our hunger signaling hormones leptin and ghrelin.
(18:35) #5. Breath
Remember that we recently talked about how most of our lost weight comes out of our body through the breath? Is that still blowing your mind? Mine too.
Our lungs are the primary excretory organ when it comes to fat loss.
Carbon dioxide is an end product of the natural process of breaking down the fats and carbohydrates we eat. It is returned from the cells to the lungs and the excess is exhaled when we breathe.
If you are not breathing efficiently - if you’re breathing too fast or breathing through your mouth too much - it affects the way your body is able to offload your metabolic waste.
(20:00) Closing thoughts:
I’m not trying to dissuade you from counting calories I just want you to know there’s more to it than that.
If it was as simple as calories in, calories out, and that worked - we wouldn’t have the obesity problem that we have today, but it’s not that simple. It’s kind of shocking that it is still the primary way we think of when it comes to weight management.
Know that you don’t HAVE to count calories. The more you eat Real Food and your body gets what it needs and your hormones and hunger cues are stable, the more you can trust your body to guide you about your energy needs - how much food you need.
My goal with Feast to Fast is to get us less in our head about food, calories and weight and MORE in our head about God and how incredible our bodies are and the way we use them to do His work in the world.
If you want to learn the way to do this or even if you know how to do this but need a good reset and the accountability in the company of fellow Believers, then come join us for Feast 2 Fast. We start on August 16th.
Also, if you are a health professional who wants to teach others this freedom from counting calories and how to be metabolically flexible, F2F Coach Training is open and will be starting at the same time.
Alright my friends- Let’s get out of our heads and back to our bodies and the way that God made us.
(23:46) Outro & Disclaimer
Thanks for listening! Have a healthy and blessed week!