How Many Calories Should I Eat To Lose Weight?

If you've been counting calories for years and you haven't had any results from doing it, I just want to ask, why are you still doing it? So often? I see people trying to count calories to lose weight and they've been in this endless cycle of doing it for years and years and they aren't seeing results, but they keep trying to double down on calorie counting where they're like, maybe I just don't have the right number of calories that I'm decreasing to, or maybe I need this extra calorie counting strategy. And I'm gonna tell you, if it hasn't worked for you, it's probably not going to work for you. If you're in fact, actually researchers have shown that it's not very effective long term to use a calorie counting method to lose weight. And when you think about it, if it had worked for a lot of people, it would have worked by now, right? But we have 70% of our country that struggles with being overweight or obese or some kind of issue with weight gain and isn't able to lose weight. The question is, why is everyone still trying? There was recently a 60 minute segment that I talk about in another video and they talk about the fact that obesity is a genetic disorder. Meaning like, like once you gain more weight, that it's because of your genetics. 50 to 85% of it is from genetics is what this obesity researcher said. They said diet and lifestyle often isn't enough, that you need drugs to help you maintain a weight that you feel comfortable with because eat less, move more doesn't work. So the only thing from that entire segment that I agree on is the fact that eat less, move more does not work. But that doesn't mean that you've exhausted all options when it comes to diet and nutrition your lifestyle. It means that the old adage that was pushed by the weight loss industry and the diet industry for the last few decades that so many companies profited off of and made so much confusion for individuals doesn't actually work. So what does work is the question. We're going to talk about other factors that impact your weight outside of just calories. But first, I want to talk about five reasons that calorie counting is ineffective. The first reason is that different foods have different metabolic effects. You could eat 100 calories of a donut and 100 calories of broccoli. They aren't the same. They have different metabolic effects on the body and impact your metabolism very differently. The old way of Saying, you know, like it's just 100 calories of whatever you want. It's not actually consistent with any science that we have to date. The second reason is because food labels can vary by up to 20% when it comes to the calories that these food companies report on the back of their package. This is actually even stated by the FDA that food companies are allowed to vary by up to 20% in the level of accuracy. If it were this equation for weight loss of calories in versus calories out, you need to have a very accurate level or knowledge of the calories going in. If there's a 20% discrepancy, that creates a pretty not precise equation. That makes it difficult to believe that this whole calories in, calories out thing actually works when that's all that you're relying on for the nutrition information that you're collecting. The third reason also has to do with level of accuracy. If you were to actually know how many calories you personally needed, you would need thousands of dollars of equipment and technology in order to actually know that. So there's some equations that you can use that tell you, generally speaking, the number of calories that you need. That's based on your age and your gender and your physical activity for the most part. Those are the three main factors and then it'll tell you how many calories. But there's a lot of other things that impact your caloric expenditure. That's going to include things like your genetics, stress, even history of yo yo dieting or restrictive diets in the past. Unfortunately, if you've done a lot of diets in the past where you've restricted your food intake or really tried to decrease your calories, that actually slows down your metabolism, both short term and long term. So let's say you've tried several times to decrease your calories from 1600 to 1200 with a 400 calorie deficit. Because you're trying to lose weight by creating that large caloric deficit, it actually decreases your caloric output. So it decreases your energy metabolism and creates a lower level of efficiency. Cause the body's like, oh, we're getting less fuel, let's slow down. We don't need to burn as much energy. The problem is that once you start eating food again, like say you increase your, your calories from those 1200 back slowly up to the 1600 that you previously were used to, just based on your hunger cues and what your body feels like it needs, you'll likely continue to gain weight while that happens. So it might be sustainable to eat the 1200 calorie diet for three months, and you may see results for three months, but then likely you'll regain the weight once you start to increase your calories again because your body and your metabolism doesn't recalibrate and as quickly. So that would be the third reason is really because of the individual layer that is required in order to know how many calories you personally need with the greatest level of accuracy. Another area of accuracy that comes in is with reason number four, why calorie counting is not as effective. And that's because if it truly were this equation that was so specific, you would essentially need to cook all of your food at home and never eat out and weigh every single food that goes into your mouth. So when you eat out, it's impossible to know how many calories you're eating. When you're not weighing your food and you're not measuring every single bite of food that's going into your mouth, it's also impossible to really know how much you're eating. I never want anyone to weigh every bite of food that they're eating. I think that that is not. It does not create a healthy relationship with food in any way at all. But if that actually, if calories in versus calories out were an equation that really worked, then that's essentially what you would have to. So again, my advice is not to count and weigh every single bite of food that you're eating, but just kind of goes to show that the equation may not be as specific as you think. The fifth reason that calorie counting is ineffective is because of your gut microbiome. So in the last 10 years, there's been tons and tons of research that's exploded in this field of the microbiome, helping us understand how your microbes that are living inside of you can impact your metabolism and your weight. So having more of certain microbes can actually improve your metabolism. Having fewer of other microbes can actually impact your metabolism as well. It's not just about the calories. It's also about the microbes that are living inside of you and what they're absorbing. So not just about how much you're eating, but how much your gut is absorbing. There's about a 2 to 9% variation per person on the digestive waste that's created from the foods that you're consuming, which will impact how many calories you hold onto, how many you absorb and how much weight you gain from any individual meal. One of my favorite animal studies took two Mice and they injected the stool from a lean mouse into an obese mouse. And without changing the diet or the physical activity of the obese mouse, the obese mouse actually lost weight. Then they did the opposite. They took stool from the obese mouse, they injected it into the lean mouse without changing the diet or the activity of that lean mouse. The lean mouse gained weight. So it just goes to show that the microbes, your microbial population that's living inside of you does determine or impact your metabolism. And you want to make sure that you have optimal gut health as well. So now I want to talk about other factors that impact your weight outside of calories. What you really don't want to do is put all of your eggs in the calorie counting basket, because as I've said, it's been proven to not be very beneficial long term. The first factor is blood sugar imbalances. Now if you have blood sugar imbalances on a regular basis, you don't have to have pre diabetes in order for this to be the case. It will impact your ability to lose weight and your actual metabolism. So blood sugar imbalances can lead to insulin resistance. When you have insulin resistance, it actually makes it very diffic difficult to lose weight, especially around your abdominal area, where people will tend to hold on to more weight because of the higher levels of insulin. Now, in order to bring the insulin levels down and increase insulin sensitivity, you really have to focus on balancing your blood sugar at each of your meals. The second thing is inflammation. So it's really hard to lose weight when you're inflamed. And a lot of times when we're working with people, just by changing out some of the inflammatory foods and increasing more of those anti inflammatory foods, weight loss becomes fairly effortless because they're no longer holding on to the levels of inflammation that is altering their metabolism and holding on to more of those larger fat cells. The third reason is gut health. So as I said, the gut microbiome is the epicenter of health. I'm obsessed with the microbiome because of the incredible research that's come out over the 10 years showing how much that it impacts metabolic health, autoimmune health, and so much more. So when you think about gut health, you want to make sure that you're focusing on optimizing the diversity of strains that are living inside of you. The fourth reason is hormonal imbalances. So hormonal imbalances are driven by other things like blood sugar imbalances and inflammation. They're more Of a downstream effect of blood sugar imbalances, inflammation, mitochondrial dysfunction. But hormonal imbalances can absolutely make it difficult for you to lose weight, Especially when you're going through certain phases of life. Postmenopausal phase is one of those that can make it especially difficult. The next aspect is stress. So if you have chronic levels of stress or you're even just incorporating so much stress into your life, like with a lot of fasted workouts and extended time periods of intermittent fasting, it can create HPA axis dysfunction. That's hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis dysfunction. That's the area of your body that's responsible for supporting lower levels of stress and better stress regulation and your hormonal production and your thyroid function. So having lower levels of stress and practicing stress reduction techniques on a regular basis is super important for helping to support your overall metabolism. Low levels of physical activity and being sedentary all day is another key aspect. Even though exercise only accounts for a small portion of the actual weight loss equation, it definitely is a factor. And when you have lower levels of physical activity, when you're very sedentary, it will decrease your energetic output. The next one is detoxification. The word detox is such a buzzword in the wellness space. And while the 21 day detox diets and the detox cleanses and smoothies and whatever don't actually work very well, the overall functionality of your detoxification system is important. So when we talk about that, I'm talking about the way that your genetics can largely impact your ability to detoxify things that you're exposed to environmentally through heavy metals and other pollutants. And you want to be able to excrete those things as optimally as possible. So in order to support optimal body composition, you need to have an optimal functioning detoxification system. And the last one that is so so key is your mitochondrial function. We talked about mitochondria in the energy video that you can go back to and watch if you're struggling with fatigue. But mitochondria are the powerhouse of your cells. They impact your blood sugar, they impact hormonal production, they impact your metabolic flexibility, they impact your metabolism greatly. So in order to achieve an optimal body composition, you want to have mitochondrial support and avoid mitochondrial dysfunction, which is sometimes hard to avoid. It's not like anyone intentionally is trying to create mitochondrial dysfunction. But there's lots of strategies that we'll talk about further that can help you to improve your mitochondria. Hopefully this helps with creating a larger summary of some of the blind spots that you might be missing in this approach, especially if you're feeling frustrated because you're like, I'm trying everything. I've decreased my calories, I'm doing cardio 60 minutes a day. And it's not that you aren't trying, it's that you don't have the right approach and you might be missing a lot of these layers that help you better understand how, how to make your body work as optimally as possible. The other thing that we really focus on in my programs like my Food is Health, my Signature program, and my VIP Next Level Nutrition program, where my dietitians work with individuals on a one on one basis to not only support metabolism, but also improve metabolic health, decrease inflammation. Using food as medicine is, we really come back to this idea of improving body composition, which means increasing your lean muscle mass. The more that you can improve your body composition and increase your lean muscle mass versus just focusing on losing weight and weighing yourself on the scale, the better it's gonna be for not only your metabolism, but also your metabolic health, your inflammation. And it also will help to support longevity. So you wanna think a little bit more holistically when it comes to supporting your optimal body composition so that not only do you you feel great in your clothes, but you also have incredible energy and vibrancy. You feel like your cognition is better, your labs are all improving, your symptoms are reducing, and all the pieces are coming together. So I hope that that helps. We'll talk more about how you can use food to really fuel health in the future. Tell me in the comments your greatest takeaway from this video.