Calories In, Calories Out DOES NOT WORK (Do This Instead)

Kamilah Stevenson. So today I want to share a little bit about why I don't believe that the calorie in calorie out method is a good place to start when you are trying to embark upon a health journey and lose weight. And it is a very popular way to go about weight loss, which is I just watch my calories and I have calorie restriction. Well, it turns out our bodies are a little bit more complicated than that, and I wish it was as easy as calorie in, calorie out, but I wanna share a bit about why this approach is just not good at all. Now, before I move forward, please make sure that you like this video and make sure that you subscribe to my page because I will continue to get videos out and you will be notified when I do. All right, so calories in, calories out. Let me be restrictive of my calories. How many calories is this food item? How many calories is that? I'm watching my calories. We all hear those terms all the time, and those are terms that help people in their minds to make sure that they can lose weight. And of course, some people do see results from that, but I can honestly say that calories in, calories out is just not a long-term good game plan for weight loss. And there's so many reasons why. Now, we're going to just break this down and sound very simple and almost like common sense level, so you can think about it like this. Now, if it was just a smart way to approach losing weight with let me watch my calorie intake, then that would mean this. You have two people, just imagine both people want to lose, let's say, 50 pounds. They're 50 pounds overweight, same size, same life, you know, schedule, just kind of similar variables, okay? So they have the same approach, which is I am going to restrict myself just to just to be simple with numbers, to 1,000 calories a day, and I'm going to burn off more than 1,000 calories, so I'm going to lose weight. Now you tell me this. Let's say person A decides, I'm going to do 1,000 calories of salad, broccoli, and wild-caught salmon. And then person B says, well, since we're just counting calories, I'm gonna go ahead and do like all ice cream. Now, side note, I do know people who do all ice cream diets. They've done them plenty times and they've even advocated for them. But since we talking calories and it don't matter, let's just say ice cream and cookies. They're gonna do 1,000 calories a day of ice cream and cookies and they're not concerned about anything else because it's a calorie diet, right? Because if it's all the same and this is how you approach health and this is how you approach weight loss, then it shouldn't matter, right? Person A eats like that every day. Person B eats like that every day. For, let's say, 2 weeks straight. Except, okay, well, you might say nobody eats the same thing every day. So let's say on some days, Person A will do— they'll do another type of fatty fish, and they will do asparagus, and they will do, let's see, a little bit of juicing with that. Okay, so they might do some, like, fruit and like maybe pineapples and let's say spinach and parsley and ginger. They might do some smoothies on the side, but then they also are doing fatty fish or every once in a while they may do like grass-fed burger with no bun. Now that person is switching up some of their meats, some of their vegetables. The other person is switching up and they're like, you know what, I love potato chips. So I think on this day I'll do one of those big bags of potato chips and maybe some fries and maybe like a Coke or something because hey, it's all about calories. So, and I don't even, I think they'll be way above 1,000 calories with the fries alone sometimes. So anyway, this is how they're eating and they're swapping up. Who do you think has the better health results? Like, even if both of them lose weight, do you really feel like on a basic level those two diets are the same and will cause the same exact overall results? Because see, the calorie in calorie out method is a method where you're just saying like this one thing will produce the same results for everybody. But the reality is, is that our state of being inwardly is going to dictate a lot that's happening with us. For example, So somebody who have more muscles on their body will burn more calories sitting down doing nothing than someone who has a lot of fat around their body and their belly and they're overweight, right? So how do these two things work the same for two exact people when everybody has different biological makeup and different things happening within their body? If somebody is insulin resistant somebody's body don't produce insulin, then do you think that putting the same food in this person versus somebody's body who do produce insulin or who's not insulin resistant, do you think they're gonna have the same results? No. That's why this method does not work, because first of all, it's only approaching weight loss. It's only approaching you trying to lose some weight, whatever that looks like. Could be water weight, maybe it could be fat. Maybe it could be muscle, I don't know. But it's only got one real approach and it's not contributing all the complexities that happen within the body, like the metabolic rate, the hormones that's being released, how much fat is in the body, is the fat in— do they have fat in their organs? Are they insulin resistant? Do they have other problems? Are they leptin resistant? You know, there's a lot that goes on with a person. So when you're just telling everybody, just go on a restricted calorie diet and that is problems. It just don't work like that. Now, if you're in a lab and you're burning, you know, calories from different food, yeah, they all going to probably look the same. But the moment you put the food inside a particular body, your hormones are going to tell your body how to utilize that energy. So somebody else's body may say, utilize this energy this way, depending on what they put in it. Whereas somebody else's body might say, no, you put this in it, utilize it this way. What I really am trying to say is that the calories from sugar and carbs are not similar, and the body don't process them similar to the calories from, for example, fat. And that's basically what you're saying if you're saying you can go on like a calorie restriction, is it doesn't matter what you eat, just make sure you get this many calories and your body will do the same thing. Not so. Your body will not process 1,000 calories of healthy, nutrient-dense foods as your body would simple carbs that's full of sugar. Like, you can drink 1,000 calories worth of juice and pop within several hours, and you're saying that your body's going to do the same thing with that? Not so. And we also have to remember that fat and protein and carbs are just really different. You know, they do different things. And some people think that the body will process fat the same way it does carbs, but fat is not really like energy. It's a molecule, it's tissue. The body utilizes fat to build so many things in the body. And the same thing is true with protein. Protein is used to build so many things within the body, like muscle, for example. So you can't just say, you know, a gram of fat or a gram of protein equal this many calories because it's being utilized for so many other things. Like, a lot of people don't know that, you know, yeah, protein can be the building block for muscle, but the membrane of the cell from the muscle is made up of fat. So you need fat also to help build muscle, for example. And so it's just not the same. It's not equal to one another. Our bodies need enough healthy fat, okay? Like within the body, the body utilizes fat in a very healthy way. And so there's just a difference with all of it. Now, if we going back to food, this also means that 1,000 calories of ice cream will not have your body respond the same way as when you put in your body 1,000 calories worth of a ribeye steak, for example, or wild-caught salmon, or vegetables in any way. Okay, so this is not a good way to determine how to be healthy, which is to just look at calories. I mean, you need to look at what you putting in your body. You need to look at ingredients. You need to know what is in what I'm putting in my system. Because if you have an inflammatory response or you're putting something in your system that's causing insulin to go high, body's going to say don't burn fat. Therein Here's a hormone dictating how your body is going to utilize the energy. Insulin goes up, body says, store this fat. Where? Anywhere. Maybe in the liver, maybe around the belly, whatever. Store this fat. And so if your insulin is not activated because you eat something that does not spike insulin, body says, burn fat. Why? Because no insulin is present. And so our hormones are included with the equation. If our bodies are insulin resistant, then our bodies are not going to utilize, you know, carbs and sugar as fuel usually as a person's body who is insulin sensitive. So depending on— even if we put the same things in our body, our bodies will have a different response based upon us ourselves. And so that's why it is not a good approach to just tell somebody to restrict yourself from calories, because you don't know what what they're dealing with. You don't know if they're insulin resistant. You don't know if they have high levels of inflammation. You don't know if they have gut problems and belly issues. You don't know if they have mental disorders, because actually the brain and the gut have a connection. And if you are like dealing with trauma, and if you're dealing with stress and anxiety, and your sympathetic system is, you know, stuck into like, you know, levels of stress, then your body will not even digest food properly. Your body will not absorb nutrients properly because of the brain connection and maybe the hormones that's being released in the brain from being super stressed out. So there's so many different things that's happening. If a person did not get enough sleep the night before, or they're deprived of sleep and they're not fully rested and restored, their insulin levels are more likely to be high, especially if they're a diabetic. Their bodies will not burn as much fat for the day because they did not get enough rest. So there are so many different reasons why this direction and this approach do not work. And the main reason is because we have to fix our bodies from the root. And when we fix our bodies and we go to the core issues as to why our bodies are not functioning properly, like why you're not losing weight why you're not able to burn fat. Why is that? We have to fix the why, and then when we fix the why, our bodies will fall into place and everything else will start to happen and to function properly when we start to fix those things. Not being able to burn fat and maybe being overweight is a symptom of something else that's happening, and to me, calories in, calories out tries to aim at fixing the symptom and not fixing the reason why your body is not able to burn fat in the first place, or why your body has stored so much fat. And so that is the problem with this, and I think we need to tackle this from the root issue, and we need to fix it at the root level and to answer why, why is this happening. And just as a side note, I think a lot of doctors need to have this same direction. Because a lot of times when you go to the doctor, you have a problem and then they fix it with just dealing with the symptom. Like, you could go to the doctor and maybe your cholesterol is higher and they don't know why it's high. And maybe you just had some kind of trauma, maybe you're having grief, maybe you had an injury, you know, because cholesterol increases when there's a stress load to the body. Because cholesterol is there to fix certain problems, to reduce inflammation in the body. So let's say you did have an injury and you have more inflammation, your cholesterol levels are going to go higher, you know. So there's a lot of different reasons why things happen. And instead of wondering why is cholesterol high, or why is this, you know, marker happening like this, and trying to investigate the why, that is when you are really able to fix the real problem. And then the symptom will actually go away when you fix the real problem. If you just treat symptoms, then the problem don't really go away. You just mask and you masquerade and you push down and you suppress what's really happening to make you feel better. But it doesn't mean that your body is not still declining and you won't get some damage in the future that starts to like go into even other areas. For example, when you do have insulin problems and you don't fix them and you masquerade them with medicine and you keep having the same unhealthy habits, and then all of a sudden you start having heart problems or you start having kidney problems, or you start having gallbladder problems, and you know, that actually will put you in a worse predicament than what you were in in the first place. This is my reason again why that is not a good approach. And when you are at a place where you do want to burn fat and you want to lose weight and you want to, you know, basically get healthy— because I'm thinking that somebody would want to lose weight to get healthy I say, what does it take to get healthy? And you will lose the weight. And this is really a better approach. And you have to assess and you have to diagnose before you can really make the right changes and take the right approach to begin to heal and to get back on a health journey like you need to be. Okay, so I hope that that helped to explain some things as to why this method is just not the best method to use when you are trying to lose weight or when you're just trying to get on a right path. It is a very temporary fix. Some people may have some results from it, but it doesn't mean that your overall body is getting better or healthier, and it does not mean that the results will last, and it doesn't mean that your body is not even getting worse and you're not really messing up your metabolic rate even worse for the future. And it doesn't mean that you're going to be able to, you know, stick to this way of living. I think the approach for any diet or any regimen should be something that you can actually stick to and, uh, have longevity with so that you can really have some successful outcomes. And that does not mean that you don't need to do a, you know, quick, you know, diet restriction, like for example fasting or something, to really boost your, you know, health levels. But it just does mean that in the end you really need to find something that that you can sustain. Being healthy is a way of living. I'll say that. So be inspired to continue on your health journey. You are one step closer every time you pick up little pieces of information and you utilize it day by day. And make sure that you like this video and that you also subscribe to my page, and I'm going to make sure that you continue to be educated, empowered, and inspired to live a healthy and prosperous life. You will prosper as your soul prospers, and your body will follow along with the decisions and the mindset that you have created to live your healthiest life.