How do you know if you’re eating too little to lose weight

YouTube, what is going on? Welcome back to the channel. Welcome to the video. In this video, we are going to be covering how do you know if and when you are eating too few calories, which would cause you to not lose weight. We're going to talk about— first things first, we're going to talk about what's really going on, and then we're going to talk about this thing you may have heard called metabolic adaptation, which just talks about possibly slowing down your metabolism. That's why you wouldn't lose weight, so on and so forth, right? So we're gonna cover it all in this video. First and foremost, what I want to tell you is eating too few calories and not losing weight is not a real thing. I know, probably just like most people probably just clicked out of the video right now. Most people are not gonna continue watching 'cause they're either gonna say, this guy's a quack, he doesn't know what he's talking about. Yeah, right. I'm only eating one meal a day. I'm only eating 500 calories a day and I'm not losing weight. I swear my sister Cheryl is eating 200 calories a day and not losing weight. What the hell? Give me a second. Let me explain what I mean. Number one, I wanna ask you a few things just to think about in your head, and you can answer them as we kinda go along here. Think about the people from the Holocaust, the victims of the Holocaust who were getting fed nothing. Were any of those people overweight? Not that I recall, no. Now, let's think about whether it's kids in Africa or just third world countries who were much less fortunate than you and I Filming this YouTube video and watching this YouTube video right now. Much less fortunate than us. Are any of those people morbidly obese? Because those people are actually starving. They're actually eating too few calories. They're starving. They don't have food like you and I do. Are any of those people overweight? Not to my knowledge, no. Let me ask you this. Let's say all you ate the entire day for weeks on end was one apple. That's it. That's all you ate. That would probably be considered eating too few calories. Would you agree? Yes, probably so. Do you really think that you would not lose weight if all you ate all day was 1 apple? That's it. Nothing else. Do you really think you wouldn't lose weight? I'm pretty sure you know the answer. And so, What I'm getting at here is eating too few calories and not losing weight is not a real thing because if you are in a calorie deficit, you will lose body fat. They actually did a study. I'll put a picture of it here above and I'll put the link here below. They did a research study where people voluntarily for this study, for whatever reason, I'm not doing it, but they voluntarily offered to go into a starvation diet where literally They were starving. They were not feeding them adequate food. They were eating too few calories. And now, no, I am not telling you to go do this. That is the dumbest thing in the world. Don't go and do that. I had— I made a post about this on TikTok one day and people went— lost their mind. They were like, oh my God, Eric, you are telling people to starve themselves? I thought you were a healthy weight loss coach. This is insane. And I'm like, Cheryl, Calm down, that's not what I said at all. I'm just proving a point. The wig hair is in my nose. I'm proving a point that eating too few calories is not a real thing. You saw those people above. They were not overweight. They were skin and bones. They were actually eating too few calories. They were literally starving. And they lost tons of weight. They became nothing but skin and bones. So eating too few calories and not losing weight is not a real thing. Now, again, in the rest of this video, we're going to talk about what's really going on. We're going to talk about metabolism slowing down. We're going to cover all that here. But first and foremost, I need you to understand, if you are in a calorie deficit, you are going to lose weight. It is an energy balance equation. Calories in, calories out. Energy in, energy out. If you are in a negative energy balance equation, a calorie deficit, you're intaking less calories than what your body burns, you are going to lose weight. That is the final word on that. Now, yes, hormones play a role and those things play a role. I'm not a hormone doctor, nor is your neuropathic coach. So go to a doctor if you think your hormones are somewhat wrong. But that being said, if Even if that was the case, you would still lose body fat if you're in a calorie deficit because that is the only way to lose weight is for you to be in a negative energy balance equation. Now, moving along here. Now that we know that eating too few calories is not a real thing, starvation mode is not a real thing, what's really going on then? Because you're probably up and down eating healthy, barely eating at all. What's going on? Let's talk about it. Number 1, the first thing that might be going on is the binge and restrict cycle. What I mean by this is you very well could be eating 1,000 calories, 1,200 calories, whatever it is, for, let's call it, 3 days, 4 days. You very well could be doing that. I'm not saying you're not. But what's probably happening is you're eating 1,000 calories for 4 days. And again, I am not advocating you eating 1,000 calories. That is very stupid. You're probably eating 1,000 calories 4 days and then eating 4,000 calories on Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Because what you've effectively done is you've over-restricted yourself by cutting out all your food groups, cutting out all your carbohydrates, cutting out sugar, over-restricting your foods, eating 1,000, 1,200 calories for 3 or 4 days. And what happens is you get incredibly hungry, you get incredible cravings, you get super tired, super low energy, you hate your life, you have all these cravings for foods that you're not allowed to have when you're eating 1,000 calories, and then Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, because you're insanely hungry, because you've over-restricted yourself, you go off and you binge. And this is why you're not losing weight. This would be why you're eating too few calories and not losing weight. Not because that if you kept eating 1,200 calories, you would lose tons of body fat. Not saying you should do that because I just said it's not sustainable and you should not do that. Did I say you shouldn't do that? Again, the cycle is going on: restrict, binge, restrict, binge. So. You're going down and back up, down and back up, down and back up. So over time, you never make any progress. You never lose any weight because you're always restricting, eating 1,000 calories and then 4,000 calories, 1,000 calories, 4,000 calories. This would be a sign that you're eating too few calories and not losing weight. What I mean is most people think they need to starve themselves in order to lose body fat. That is Beyond stupid and could not be farther from the truth. As opposed to you eating 1,200 calories every single day like you're trying to do right now, eat 1,600, 1,700, 1,800 calories more consistently throughout the week. You'll be able to be more consistent with it. You'll stick to it better. You'll be able to sustain it better, and you'll see better results because each week you'll eat 1,600, 1,700, 1,800 calories. And slowly but surely your body weight will go down. It might not be as drastic as eating 1,000 calories and you drop weight super quickly, but then because you can't sustain that, you jump back up super quickly and you do this. This is what the yo-yo dieting cycle is. You lose and gain and lose and gain. So it's not going to be as fast as you want, but you will consistently eat more calories to be more consistent with that calorie intake, which will allow you to stay in a calorie deficit, which will allow you to lose body weight that way. That's why you might be eating too few calories. It's not because your body's in starvation mode or you wouldn't lose weight. It's because you're restricting and then binging. So increasing your calories is going to lead to more consistency, which is going to lead to you being in a calorie deficit more consistently, which is going to lead to you seeing more body fat loss progress. Does that make sense? So that's number one. Number 2, possibly what could be going on is, and I'm not going to go too in-depth here, but you are probably tracking your calories inaccurately. I've had so many people come to me and tell me, Eric, I'm eating 1,000 calories, 800 calories, 500 calories, and I'm not losing weight. And I'm like, if you ate 500 calories a day, you would be skin and bones. There's no other way around it. You wouldn't even want to get out of bed. That is so few calories. There's just no way you can eat that much. I mean, again, you might be able to eat that much, but that's not the point. It's fucking stupid. Don't do it. So what I'm going to tell you is I did an entire video here on YouTube on how to accurately count calories. I'll put it right here above. Go watch that video. Even if you think you're doing everything right when it comes to counting calories, go watch that video after you watch this video. 'Cause that is going to tell you exactly how to count calories. It's the same video I send to my one-on-one coaching clients when they pay me hundreds of dollars a month to sign up. Go watch it. I guarantee it is going to help you. In the short of things, if you are not weighing your food on a food scale in grams, you are not tracking calories accurately. So you just scanning the barcode on MyFitnessPal and guessing how many— it looks like 4 ounces, This looks like a tablespoon. No. Number two, if you're using cups and tablespoons and ounces and all those kind of things, that is not tracking calories accurately. You need to be weighing your food on a food scale in grams. That is how you can make sure you are tracking calories accurately. So please go watch that video. I'm not going to go any more in depth because I already went in depth on that. So that is number two. Now number three, you are. 69. You're not being consistent enough. And again, when it comes to eating too few calories and not losing weight, we just talked about the main one, which is you're eating too few calories during the week and then on the weekends you're binging, right? So that cycle could be going on. So if you increase your calories, you can be more consistent. But more so, point being, oftentimes people who think they're eating too few calories and not losing weight, here's what's going on. And you might— this might be you. You might have heard this before or this might be you. Eric, I've been dieting forever. I've been dieting for years, Eric. Eric, I've been on a diet since I was 8 years old. Eric, Eric, the past 15 years I've been trying to diet and lose weight. I can't get it to happen. You haven't been on a diet the past 5 years, 10 years, 12 months, whatever it's been. You've been in a dieting mindset for the past 15 years or since you were 8 years old. All you ever think about is losing weight. All you ever think about is the number on the scale. All you ever think about is the food choices you're making. All you ever think about is good and bad foods. That's all you ever think about. You've been in a dieting mindset for years. You haven't been in a calorie deficit for years 'cause if you were, You would be skin and bones. There would be no body fat on your body. You would dwindle down to nothing. Okay? I need you to understand this. You've been in a dieting mindset. All you think about is, oh my God, this week I better lose weight this week. Oh my God, I'm going out to dinner. I better make sure I eat something healthy. Oh my God. Like it's all on your mind 24/7. So not maliciously, but you forget about the Tuesday night where you went out to eat with your spouse or your family. And you didn't really track calories. You forget about the weekend where it was Friday, Saturday, Sunday, 3 days in a row. You didn't really track your dinner very accurately. You forget about, you know, the weekend out with your girlfriends where you guys had some margaritas and you forgot to track that. Like, I'm not saying you're doing it intentionally, but this is what's happening. 'Cause all in your mind, all you can think about is this overwhelming feeling and emotion of just dieting 24/7. But when you actually go back and look at your consistency, and I'll challenge you right now, if you're somebody who's watching this video still and you think you're eating too few calories and not losing weight, number one, I would talk about— I would look at these 2 things first, how you're tracking calories and the restrict-binge cycle. But that kind of leads into this. Go back and look at the last 31 days. How many days have you hit your calories, assuming you're tracking calories accurately, How many days have you hit your calories? How many days have you either not hit your calories, not tracked your calories, or not tracked your calories accurately? Any one of those 3 things. I guarantee if you do the math, you're only— you're gonna— it's gonna come out to only 69% consistent. For example, you know, you can go back and look at the last 31 days, and let's say you've Hit your calories 20 days, and you have either not hit your calories, not tracked, or not tracked accurately 11 days. If that's the case, nothing's wrong. You're not eating too few calories. You're just not being consistent enough to your plan in order to see progress. For you to see progress, you need to be at least 80% consistent with your nutrition, with hitting your calories. That would mean roughly about 25, 26 days out of the month. If you are not hitting your calories at least 25 or 26 days out of the month, you don't need to do anything differently. You just need to be more consistent. And again, this might very well come back to increasing your calories to be more consistent. That might be what it comes back to. I've done that tons of times with my clients where they come to me trying to eat such Low calories, we increase calories, they can be more consistent and they see better results. So it might be that, but either way it comes down to you not being consistent enough. Not the fact of starvation mode, not the fact that you're eating too few calories and not losing weight. If you were eating too few calories, you would be losing weight because the only way to lose weight is to be in a calorie deficit. So that is the last one right there. Make sure you're being at least 80% consistent with your nutrition. Given that you're tracking calories accurately, that's at least 25/26 days out of the month. Okay? And by the way, just very quickly, if you need to know how many calories to eat to lose weight, I'm gonna link a totally free— it's here on YouTube— my totally free calorie calculator. Go check that out if you want to know how many calories to eat in order to lose weight. 'Cause again, if you're watching this still right now, you might be trying to eat too few calories. So go check out how many calories you should be eating in order to lose body fat. Now, covering that, we're gonna now talk about metabolic adaptation and slowing down your metabolism. A lot of people, especially recently, are going to try to scare you into thinking that eating too few calories is going to ruin your metabolism, you're going to damage your metabolism, you're gonna be able to not lose weight again because you've already ruined your metabolism. All right. All that shit is false. It's not true. And when I say it's not true, this is what I mean. Can you eat too few calories and mess up, quote unquote, mess up your metabolism? Yeah, you would slow down your metabolism to the point where, for example, if you're a female, if you lose your period, your metabolism is too low. You've either gotten to too low of a body fat percentage or you're eating too few calories. And this happens very often with mostly bikini competitors, figure competitors, females who are dieting for a bodybuilding show or a bikini competition, and they get their body fat levels so low, so low, so low, which means they have to eat so few, so few, so few calories. Those individuals are going to have a slowed-down metabolism to the point where that's not good. That's not healthy. You don't want to do that, right? But for the average, like if you have 75 pounds to lose, metabolic adaptation is not something you should be concerning yourself with. Because again, looking at the landscape of the entire world and seeing the obesity epidemic that we have in the entire world, we don't have a problem eating too few calories. We clearly have a problem eating too many calories, and that's why we have such an epidemic in America, and that's why so many people are overweight. It's not because they're eating too few calories, it's because they're eating too many calories. So getting back to it, is metabolic adaptation a real thing? Yes, for sure. By the way, your metabolism has to adapt and slow down when you lose body fat. That's the only way you are going to lose weight. Your metabolism has to slow down in order for you to lose weight. So, it's not a bad thing. When you go into a calorie deficit, you're going to lose— you're going to slow down your metabolism. That's a part of losing weight. Somebody who's 300 pounds is going to have a higher metabolism than somebody who's 150 pounds. Doesn't mean it's a good thing. So you slowing down your metabolism, number one, is not a bad thing. Number two, unless you're getting to a very low body fat percentage, I wouldn't concern yourself with it much. And number three, let's say that you did get to the point where you lost your period, you're very low in body fat percentage, whatever the case may be, you have no sex drive, whatever it is, you do know that the way to fix your metabolism is just to Eat more calories. Because in the same way your body slows down its metabolism from eating too few calories and getting too low of a body fat percentage, when you increase calories, your metabolism adapts the same way. So when you eat less calories, your metabolism slows down, and when you eat more calories, your metabolism speeds up. That's how your metabolism works. Most people don't even know what their metabolism is. By the way, your metabolism is not just the mechanism for you to lose weight or gain weight. Your metabolism controls your entire body, every function in your body. That's why when you have lost your period, that's a sign your metabolism is not doing what it should be doing. That's a sign your body is saying, hey, you know what? You're not giving me adequate nutrients, adequate fuel, adequate calories. So this function over here of the reproductive system, yeah, we're not going to do that because we don't have enough calories coming in. And that's why females lose their period when they get too low in body fat percentage or eat too few calories, is because they don't have enough calories coming in to sustain that. Because their body says, well, I got to keep this person alive. I don't care about their reproductive system. They're not giving me enough fuel, so I'm gonna just go do these things over here. Again, it's not starvation mode, not a real thing, because you would still be losing body fat, but that's what happens. And so don't be scared of Metabolic adaptation or slowing down your metabolism for many reasons. Like I said, number one, your metabolism has to slow down in order for you to lose body fat. That's not a bad thing. Number 2, you can always eat more calories and reverse your metabolism back up if you do end up getting to that point. And again, number 3, most people will not have to worry about this unless you are getting to a very low body fat percentage where you're at the step-on-a-bodybuilding stage Or something along those lines. Those are the people who suffer from a severe case of metabolic adaptation, but just because your metabolism slowed down when you lose weight, that's what happens. And so I would not be scared of it. I wouldn't concern yourself with it too much. If you're eating in a calorie deficit, you will lose body fat, you will lose body weight, I promise. Okay? One final note on metabolic adaptation. Let's say you have been in a calorie deficit for 9 months straight. Let's just say that. And you've, if you've been in a calorie deficit for 9 months straight, you have then since dropped a significant amount of body fat. One of the people that come to mind for me is one of my online coaching clients, Carson. She dropped a significant amount of body fat and I believe like a 9 months, a 6 or a 9 month span. And Carson is the most consistent person I've ever met. And so she was actually in a calorie deficit for a long period of time. Her metabolism did have some metabolic adaptation going on, but I can clearly tell she lost like 50 pounds, 60 pounds. So I know she was in a deficit for a while. I know she was consistent for a while because her progress showed because she lost body weight. So for her, what we've done recently is she was getting to the point where she was reaching about her goal body weight. And so we said, hey, let's go into a muscle definition phase now. So we increased her calories. She feels better. She has more energy. Her workouts are better. She's sleeping better. Everything's getting better because we increased her calories. That is a sign of eating too few calories and a negative metabolic adaptation. But again, she lost a significant amount of body weight along the way. So that's where you can think about metabolic adaptation going on and when you would increase calories is she got down to a point where she was pretty, you know, She got to around her goal body weight and she lost a significant amount of weight because she was in a calorie deficit for a significant amount of time. That someone like that, if that's you, yeah, you might need to increase calories and do reverse dieting, which by the way, if you want a video on reverse dieting, I'll put a video here above on reverse dieting. But again, point being that individual lost a lot of body weight. It's not like she was, she was, she was, you know, 75 pounds overweight saying, I can't lose weight because I'm eating too few calories. No, if you're in a calorie deficit, you will lose body fat, okay? So I hope this video helped you. If you have any questions, please feel free to drop below. If you hate me after this video, I'm sorry, I wish you all the best. Again, just remember, if you're in a calorie deficit, you will lose weight. Sometimes it's very hard to be very honest with yourself, very objective of yourself, and truly look at how many days you've hit your calories, how many days have you not hit your calories, how many calories are you eating. You know, are you in this restrict and binge cycle? Like, it's very hard sometimes, I understand that. But the more honest and the more objective you can be with yourself, the more results you're going to see, I promise you. So again, any questions, drop below and we will talk soon, okay? Bye.