Weight Loss is Not an Exact Science

This week in Discovering Balance we’re discussing why Weight Loss is Not Exact Science.

Have you ever heard the advice that you need to burn 3,500 calories to lose one pound of fat?  Or that one pound of weight is equal to 3,500 calories?  The premise is that through reduction of energy (eating less food), and burning calories through exercise, one should easily be able to lose one pound per week, if they could maintain a deficit of 500 calories per day.  Example:  Cut out 250 calories of food from your current daily intake, and burn 250 calories through additional exercise and you have your 500 calorie deficit for the day.  Do this for 7 days and you have burned an extra 3,500 calories which will in turn mean you will lose one pound.  This calculation has become so popular that it has virtually become the “law” when discussing any type of weight loss advice.  It can be found everywhere in the dieting culture from government literature, to your physician and health care providers, and pretty much any layperson who has ever heard the word “diet.”

You would think that this calculation is backed by lots of scientific research because the advice is so popular.  The problem is that there hasn’t been a lot of research to back this claim and it is actually a myth.

When I was completing my thesis, I came across some interesting information by Zoe Harcombe, Ph.D. who challenges the 3,500 calorie calculation.  You can read about why the calculation is wrong here.  But the most interesting information I took away from her studies is this:  no one seems to know where this formula originated from.  Intrigued?  I was.

She contacted a number of reputable organizations who are considered experts in the dietetics and obesity field.  The National Health Services, Dieticians in Obesity Management, the British Dietetic Association, the Association for the Study of Obesity, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, the Department of Health, and the National Obesity Forum.  Dr. Harcombe wrote to each with the same request:  “I am doing some research on obesity and I would be most grateful if you could help me.  Please can you explain where the ‘One pound of fat contains 3,500 calories…’ comes from?”  All of the organizations were kind enough to respond, however not one was able to offer an explanation or the information she requested.  The most telling response came from the Dieticians in Obesity Management, who replied, “I guess a key to all of this is that weight loss doesn’t appear to be linear, any more than weight gain is.”

Wait, what?

READ:  “Experts” are admitting that weight loss is NOT clear cut.

But what about “Calories In/Calories Out”?

This is the sort of the same principle as above, but we can break it down a little more.  Calories In refers to what you eat, simple.  Calories Out is where things get a little gray.  Calories that are “burned” can come from different variables:

1. Your resting energy rate – this refers to how your body uses energy to function physiologically
2. Thermal effect of food – how your body uses energy to digest food and process nutrients
3. Active energy rate – how your body uses energy during any type of movement whether it is performing a daily task like lifting a child, performing an exercise, or natural body functions like yawning and sneezing

The principle of calories in/calories out, again similar to the “burn 3,500 calories theory”, is not clear cut either.  If it was, there would be no diet industry and all anyone would ever have to do is cut out some food and workout a little more.  This often works in the short term, however it does not work in the long term and it is also about the types of foods that we eat that affect how our bodies react:

1. When you restrict calories, your body goes into defense mode.  It lowers your resting energy rate (see #1 above), AND it reduces those natural body functions (see #3 above) like yawning, sneezing.  In order to continue to lose weight, one would have to continue to reduce food intake while battling the inner body’s function to continue to protect it.  It works, but it doesn’t continue to work.
2. Foods made with whole grains and foods that are high in protein take more energy to process than foods that are not; but again this depends on your own body’s expenditure and energy needs.  What my body processes will be different than what your body processes; it cannot be controlled by outside factors.

So HOW are these calculations so ingrained in diet advice?  And why are people being made to feel like failures because they aren’t able to do what their physicians and healthcare providers have told them to do?  If public health officials and “experts” in weight management don’t know the answer to weight loss, shouldn’t we be asking them why they continue to dole out this advice?

Set Point Theory

The set point theory states that our bodies have a control system that dictates the amount of fat we store based on what our individual needs are to physiologically function.  This set point is like a thermostat that we cannot consciously control; it functions as it should to maintain the necessary energy our bodies need to live.  Your set point is where your body prefers to be for efficiency and to maintain a stable, happy mood.  If one tries to turn the thermostat too low, depression and low energy set in in order to reserve the energy it needs to allow our bodily functions to work.  Scientists have found that on average, most people have a 10-20lb set weight range where it is comfortable.  That’s a pretty nice range…isn’t it interesting that it also seems to be the average weight that most people would say they want to lose?

The set point is very good at being a security guard for our fat stores and it cannot tell the difference between starvation and dieting, it just knows that it’s not getting the food it needs to function, so when it is deprived, the alarms go up and it goes into lockdown.  Just like a thermostat, it will fight to get back to your body’s correct temperature or in this case, your correct weight.  You can attempt to adjust it and lower your set point, however deprivation (e.g. dieting), and long-term deprivation at that (e.g. continuous dieting), causes our metabolism to slow down dramatically.  Have you ever experienced the dreaded plateau?  This is what is physiologically happening when you reach one.  So what do you do?  You reduce your calories even more and the process begins again.  Except that each time this biological response happens, your metabolism slows even more making it harder and harder each time to lose weight.  In essence, each time you “diet”, you’re attempting to malfunction your thermostat, except that it’s like a rogue robot, at some point it will override you.  This is a built-in mechanism designed to KEEP YOU ALIVE.

Wrap Up

The purpose of this post is simply to help you better understand why losing weight is just not that simple, and now you have some evidence of why.  The diet industry and so-called health professionals that continue to push weight loss would have you believe that lack of dedication or commitment is your road block.  This is clearly not true.  Your body has a place where it wants to be and that place is optimal for taking care of YOU.  Maybe try listening to it?

If you truly think about it, our bodies are pretty damn amazing!  Every single day it shows up to take care of you.  If it isn’t functioning properly (separate of chronic illness or disease), biologically it’s working hard to fix any issues to get you back to where you are supposed to be.  No matter what you do, your body is there for you.  You breathe without consciously doing it, your heart pumps blood to all of your parts without you telling it to, your digestive system works to get all of those nutrients into your system to keep you going.  Isn’t it time we started to appreciate the things that our bodies CAN do for us instead of trying to change them?