If you have grown up with one belief system, it’s hard to leave it behind entirely when you open your mind to accept another. We’ve been told for so long, and believed for so long, that a fundamental requirement for weight loss is that we eat less that we’d like, and for weight maintenance that we eat in moderation, that it’s natural to assume the same is true when we
It’s true that people who restrict carbohydrates often eat less that they otherwise might. A common experience is to give up fattening carbohydrates and find that you’re not as hungry as you used to be, that mind–morning snacks are no longer necessary. Intrusive thoughts of food and the urge to satisfy them vanish. But that’s because you’re now burning your fat stores for fuel, which you didn’t do before. Your fat cells are now working properly as short-term energy buffers, not long-term lockups for the Calories they’ve sequestered. You have an internal supply of fuel that keeps you going throughout the day and night, as it should, and your appetite adjusts accordingly. If you’re not running short on fuel, you feel no need to restock every few hours. (If you’re losing two pounds a week, that’s seven thousand calories of your own fat that you’re burning for fuel every week–one thousand calories each day that you don’t have to eat.)
Another effect, though, of restricting carbohydrates is that your energy expenditure should increase. You’re no longer diverting fuel into your fat issue, where you can’t use it, and so you literally have more energy to burn. By avoiding the fattening carbohydrates, you remove the force that diverts calories into your fat cells. Your body should them find its own balance between energy consumed (appetite and hunger) and energy expended (Physical activity and metabolic rate). This process could take time, but it should happen without conscious thought.
Trying to rein in appetite consciously could lead to compensatory responses. You might have less energy to burn, so your energy expenditure won’t increase, or you hold on to fat that you’d otherwise burn. You might lose lean tissue (muscle) that you might otherwise maintain. And the conscious self-restraint might prompt an urge to binge. Physicians who prescribe carbohydrates restrictions in their clinics say that their patients get the best results when they’re reminded or urged to eat whenever they’re hungry and until they’re satisfied or even to schedule snacks every few hours and eat whether they are hungry or not.
The same argument holds for Exercise. There are very good reasons to be physically active, but weight loss, as I discussed earlier, does not appear to be one of them. Exercise will make you hungry, and it’s likely to reduce your energy expenditure during times when you’re not exercising. The goal is to avoid both of these responses. Trying to drive weight loss by increasing energy expenditure may be not only futile but also actively counterproductive. You tend to be sedentary when you’re overweight or obese because of the partitioning of fuel into your fat tissue that you could be burning for energy. You literally lack the energy to exercise, and so the impulse to do it. Once that problem is fixed–by avoiding the carbohydrates that made you and keep you fat–then you should have the energy to be physically active and with it the drive or impulse to do so.
The goal is to remove the cause of your excess adiposity–the fattening carbohydrates–and let your body find its own natural equilibrium between energy expenditure and consumption. So you should eat when you’re hungry and eat until you’re full. If you’re not eating carbohydrates-rich foods, you won’t get fat or fatter by doing so. Once you start burning your own fat for fuel, you should have the energy to be physically active as well.
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