I have good news!
The fitness industry just called you on your old school yellow phone to report that the solution to your seemingly incessant struggle to lose body fat is…
That you need to eat more?
But wait, is that really true? At best that sounds a bit counterintuitive, right? And at worst, downright ridiculous?
Well, let’s talk about this peculiar claim that "you need to eat more to lose weight."
I don’t mean to spoil the contents of the article too quickly, but I actually hate this phrase with a passion because it's one of those things that can technically be true but is mostly just extremely misleading.
It also annoys me because people usually use it to catch peoples' attention because let's be honest...
Who doesn't want to eat more and lose weight? Of course we'd all love to be able to eat the moon and look shredded 365 days a year.
In fact, it’s probably exactly why you clicked on this article in the first place.
The question is…
Is it possible? And is this buzzphrase legit? Or is it just a load of horse manure?
The 2 Technical Ways This Can Be True
JUNK FOOD VERSUS NUTRIENT-DENSE FOOD (THE VOLUME TRICK)
If you're eating a diet that's full of high-calorie junk food, people sometimes use this phrase to communicate the idea that you could eat "more food" in a volume sense (which is true) while consuming fewer overall calories. And to be clear, that's definitely true!
In fact, it's one of the biggest perks of committing to a whole food, plant-predominant diet in that you get to smash a ton of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, and lean proteins without eating in excess of your metabolic needs.
And this doesn’t mean you have to be vegetarian or vegan. It just means biasing more of your calories toward higher-volume, lower-calorie plant foods instead of consuming lower-volume, higher-calorie animal products like fatty beef and cheese.
In short, most people could lose weight without thinking too much about it just by picking more nutritionally dense foods over the pizzas, burgers, nachos, and beers they use to pick.
No brainer? For some people it is, but lots of well-intentioned people just don't understand this and plenty more simply aren’t willing to give up some of their favorite foods.
In fact, I wrote an entire article about the “one thing” a ton of people are getting wrong about the way they think about fat loss.
For example, if you're been snagging a McDonald's breakfast sandwich and a 600-calorie drink from Starbucks on your way into work each day for years, you can technically "eat more and lose weight" by choosing an enormous bowl of oatmeal and a protein shake instead.
See what I mean? The oatmeal is technically "more food" volume-wise than a tiny sandwich and a drink, but it's still fewer calories despite the increased volume.
You could literally eat enough oatmeal to poop your pants three times before noon for fewer calories than a McDonald’s breakfast platter or a classic burger and fries combo because you’re “in a hurry.”
But the trickiness here is that this isn't what people hear when you say "eat more and lose weight."
They think they need to get a second portion at the family BBQ to "boost their metabolism."
And that's why this is usually a harmful thing to tell people if you don't plan on explaining yourself.
You cannot eat more calories and lose weight acutely. That's very important.
Energy balance is absolutely the most important thing for fat loss. It’s not the only important thing, but it’s the most important thing.
YOUR METABOLISM SUCKS AND YOU might NEED TO REVERSE DIET strategically
This second one is a super stretch, but it's nonetheless a very real thing yet rarely explained.
Sometimes peoples' metabolisms are in such a bad place that you actually have to encourage them to eat more calories in the short-term in order to lose more fat in the long-term.
But rarely to never have I seen someone just start eating more calories and losing actual fat tissue at the same time.
That's a violation of the laws of thermodynamics and I can sense Layne Norton scrambling to make an angry YouTube video as I write this.
So to be clear, say some lady is eating 1200 calories and not losing weight even though she clearly has more fat to lose. Well, you can't just starve these people into oblivion.
So what happens is that you encourage them to eat more calories (in strategic increases) to help nurture their metabolism back to a better place.
But the reality is that they will most likely gain a bit of weight and body fat, which is the small price to be paid for having tossed your metabolism into the dumpster like a bag of potatoes you found leaking in your pantry.
But, once your metabolism is improved through a slow and strategic increase in calories matched with exercise and resistance training, you can then go back into a caloric deficit relative to your new metabolic needs and lose the fat you couldn't lose before.
In the fitness space, this is called reverse dieting and although it feels like wizardry, it's very much a thing. The problem is that it takes quite a bit of discipline to pull off, and a lot of people get too discouraged along the way and fail.
So in some long-term sense, it may be necessary to eat more to lose weight, but if you're trying to look cool at the pool in a month, you most certainly don't need to "eat more to lose weight."
Tricky, isn't it?
And that's all I've got for you. Just blasting confusing fitness lingo with the truth no one's telling you.
Summary
Eating more to lose weight is mostly hogwash, but it can be done in two technical senses.
The first is to eat more by maximizing food volume while still eating fewer calories than you baseline diet.
The second is to reverse diet strategically in order to potentially lose more fat later on due to an improved metabolic state.
I really enjoyed writing this short article, so if you found it helpful, do me a favor and send it to that person in your life who’s sipping that fitness tabloid tea like an outdated Kermit meme.
Until next time,
-Andrew
