Keto, fasting, vegan, IIFYM, paleo, clean eating, low carb. There’s plenty of options out there now when it comes to how to eat to get results..
We don’t need more options but the fact is everyone is trying to sell their own nutrition program, so the reality is it’s gonna get even more confusing.
The problem we find consistently with this whole deal is most dietary approaches are designed for fast results at all costs.
Women have been taught that they all need to eat 1200 Calories a day to lose weight regardless of their activity levels, body composition and age. This just doesn’t make sense at all.. It’s just like saying everyone needs to eat 10,000 Calories a day to get strong because that’s what The Mountain from Game of Thrones eats.
If I was to tell you that as a statement you would tell me I’m an idiot and you would be right.. So why would it make sense to push the 1200 Calories a day for all women?
Here’s the thing when it comes to nutrition and training…
If you focus on fueling your body correctly to allow you to train as hard as you can and recover from your training nearly everything else follows suit.
Every now and then I have to get reminded of this first hand. Going back a little over 12 months ago I had decided I was going to tinker with lower carb dieting. Key point being LOWER, most days I was eating around 150 grams of carbs per day.
Guess what.. I lost weight quickly to begin with, I went from around 98kg down to 93kg in about the first month. My training at the time was very conditioning oriented and I felt like I had lots of energy in the tank at the start of sessions but faded hard about half way through…
I was convinced I just wasn’t in shape and needed to continue to work on my conditioning so I didn’t fade out as the session ran onwards.
After my conditioning phase I transitioned back into more strength work under the same diet hoping to continue on my journey back down under 90kg. My energy levels were still the same, strong at the start and fading fast half way through sessions. The next week I got spat out underneath a squat that I hadn’t missed in over 4 years and over 30kg below my max.
This annoyed me more than anything. I was ok with not being as fit as I had been but being considerably weaker was not ok. The next day I began ramping my calories and carbs back up to nearly double the daily carbs as before and something that surprised me happened.
My energy levels were much more consistent during training and I was finishing sessions as strong as I started. I’d dropped down my conditioning in half from before but felt fitter than when I was conditioning nearly daily. Two weeks later my squat had came back up by 30kg and I was back to feeling strong…
What happened to my body weight though?
The first few days on higher carb the scales jumped up quickly by about 1.5kg.. Enough to scare off anyone solely focused on the scales and strip those carbs back out of their diet.
By the next week it had dropped back down and a few weeks later it had continued to drop down below 93 where I had plateaued previously.
Yes I’m a big believer that the most important thing in weight loss is calories in vs. calories out so there was no magical food that I ate that sped up my metabolism
What happened was my calories and carb intake no longer limited my ability to push my training and increase the calories expended in my training.
The point here is dropping away all your carbs and calories to the point where you feel like shit and can’t train hard isn’t the best way to reach your fat loss goals.
If you allow yourself enough food to drive performance in your training and work with a small deficit you’ll feel better and often get better results than if you try to rush the process…