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Lose weight withtout counting calories
Overview & goals
Have you struggled to lose weight and keep it off? If so, then you’re not alone. If fact, millions of people in the United States have fallen victim to weight gain after following a caloric restricted diet.
The problem with caloric restriction is how our bodies adjust to caloric restriction. We consume much less calories and change our diets to healthier foods, but once we get off our diet, then all the weight comes back or more. Without getting into “is a calorie a calorie,” meaning, is a calorie from broccoli the same a calorie from chocolate? In short, the answer is yes and no. In terms of calories, then yes, but its metabolic impact is different. In other words, how our bodies utilize energy and stores energy is very different depending on the rate of breakdown and utilization.
Before we lose you with the boring science stuff, let’s investigate different weight loss strategies that we could use to lose weight. We have other articles relating to why diets fail, but in short, we know caloric restrictions changes your baseline for how many calories your body utilizes a day. Our bodies will lose weight to accommodate the lower caloric intake until we reach an equilibrium. Once the weight loss to caloric requirements ration is balance, then we experience a plateau.
We could change the foods we eat, but this is more of a lifestyle approach than a temporary diet. If our diet consists of mostly fast foods, then we can switch to whole food sources, which consist of healthy lean meats, fruits, and vegetables primarily with occasional bad meals.
However, over the last decade, more and more studies about intermittent fasting are being published as a method of weight loss and balanced diets.
Why is this significant?
People don’t have to track calories or restrict foods. For the first time, a strategy consists of a way for people to enjoy foods without focusing too much on diet. You might’ve heard about short-term fasting, intermittent fasting, or alternate day fasting, but we’re going to dive into why so many people are having success on this diet.
Time Restrictive Eating
When it comes to fasting, we’ve been taught that it’s not healthy to not eat for a while, but what if short-term fasting prevented against cardiovascular disease and even some cancers? What’s the difference between fasting diets? Intermittent fasting is only eating within a window or timeframe. For example, 11am – 7pm is the time of consumption. Short-term fasting is not eating for 24 hours once a week or everyone other week, or there’s alternate day fasting where you eat less than 500 calories every other day or a few days a week. At Science Based Fitness, we refer to these diets as metabolic flexibility diets since these diets allow for more variance in the foods people consume.
The science
More benefits than just weight loss
When it comes to different variations of fasting, health benefits include more than just weight loss. From the studies we’ve reviewed, benefits include enhance cognition, reduced inflammation, decrease resting heart rate, increase insulin sensitivity, enhanced autophagy, fatty acid mobilization.
Science Based Fitness recommendation: Many of us practice intermittent fasting and short-term fasting for many benefits. We recommend that you consult with your primary care physician and give it a try.
F;, E. S. M. (n.d.). The effects of modified alternate-day fasting diet on weight loss and CAD risk factors in overweight and obese women. Journal of diabetes and metabolic disorders. Retrieved November 22, 2021, from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23497604/.
Anton SD;Moehl K;Donahoo WT;Marosi K;Lee SA;Mainous AG;Leeuwenburgh C;Mattson MP; (n.d.). Flipping the metabolic switch: Understanding and applying the health benefits of fasting. Obesity (Silver Spring, Md.). Retrieved November 22, 2021, from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29086496/.
