Why “Eat Less, Move More” – Least Helpful Diet Advice
If you’re overweight, you’ve probably heard the adage “eat less, exercise more.” Unfortunately, this saying will not help you progress. That’s why.
Essentially, weight loss is about “eating less and moving more.” Weight is lost when you burn in more calories than you consume. This is called a calorie deficit . However, this is where the simplicity ends. Dr. Spencer Nadolski , a physician specializing in the treatment of obese patients, summarizes:
“Eat less, move more” is the professional advice that has been given over the years. However, this tip doesn’t work. Yes, you have to do it, but telling people about it is useless in itself. Strong biological and environmental factors act against this advice. Obesity is not just some kind of decision that people wake up to and make a decision.
The truth is, “eat less, move more” is harmful. The human body is a complex system of mechanisms, and while it is tempting to think of it as a machine, how it regulates weight is simply not addressed by “calories in versus calories out.” There are countless physiological, psychological and environmental factors involved. Obesity is not just a person’s choice.
Don’t interpret this as “you are out of control, so don’t even worry about it.” Difficulty losing weight should not be an excuse for not improving . On the contrary, you should use this information to understand setbacks and help you overcome them so that you can become a better version of yourself.
Excessive dependence on willpower
“Eat less, move more” implies that fitness is just a matter of willpower – that it just takes an effort to get in shape. Failure to do this is simply not trying.
In fact, when it comes to fitness, people rely overly on willpower because willpower is a limited resource *. In the long run, no amount of willpower will force you to get out of bed for a run every morning if you hate running. It also won’t help you gag with broccoli blossoms if you’ve always thought them little Satanic (albeit edible) Treebeards for no reason.
* There are relatively recent studies that suggest that the concept of willpower may just be in your head . This is just one of a plethora of data from a multitude of studies on this topic. However, it still makes sense to believe that willpower is finite .
What happens when we rely on willpower? Let’s take advantage of a situation led by nutrition experts Alan Aragon and Lou Schuler from our article on target body weight :
Take a fictional character named Dan, who weighs 240 pounds and decides it’s time for a change. Dan buys a bestselling book (that is, a book not written by us) and decides to follow the book’s diet pattern exactly. He doesn’t know that the typical diet is only 1,300 calories a day, or less than half of what he usually eats. Nor does it have a solid target weight. He just wants to lose weight – the faster the better.
At first it seems like the kilos fly off Dan’s body – 24 pounds in just six weeks. His wife jokes that he loses a pound every time he takes a shower. Within a month, Dan calculated that he would be under £ 200 for the first time since his first year of college.
But there is one thing Dan doesn’t know: his diet has already let him down. Since he is hungry all the time, his adherence deteriorates slightly every day. And since he has weighed over 200 pounds his entire adult life, Dan’s metabolism is struggling. His NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis ) has already declined, and with the loss of muscle tissue, his resting metabolism has also declined. By the time Dan finally admits that he is no longer on a diet, he has partially gained weight and his body is ready to put on the rest, as well as a few extra pounds. This is what happens when you throw a firecracker into the hornet’s nest of homeostasis.
In the example above, Dan is waging a war against his body’s natural homeostasis – the tendency to maintain its long-term balance. What Dan doesn’t know is that this rapid weight loss leads to a sharp drop in leptin , the hormone that regulates weight.
As you lose weight, leptin levels drop, leading to increased hunger and a decrease in metabolic rate . Likewise, when you eat a lot, your appetite should decrease. Together, these effects are expected to help you achieve a somewhat stable weight.
However, it does matter for weight loss: your body will proportionately resist your success. The more aggressive your weight loss is, the more your body will fight back – and the more difficult it will be to succeed. You can limit your success for the first few weeks, but every day you will use more willpower to stay “good”.
Dan relies on willpower. He tries to fight nature by eating less and moving more. In the battle of nature against willpower, nature always wins.
Positive feedback loop
Success does not come from willpower, but from creating sustained positive feedback — a motivating mechanism that says “the results I get are worth more than the effort I put in.” When it comes to motivating and sticking to a fitness program, that’s the only thing that really matters.
Dan may have created positive feedback from the start, but it was unsustainable. He was probably very hungry and it was getting more and more difficult for him to lose weight. Undoubtedly, life also interfered. At this point, his feedback loop became erratic. What Dan probably attributed to a lack of motivation was simply an inevitable inability to maintain this feedback loop due to a variety of physiological and environmental factors.
No one can rely on willpower forever. Willpower is the ignition that starts the car, not the gasoline that makes it move. It should be protected at all costs by creating a habit and creating a supportive positive feedback loop.
This is why it hurts me to see people wanting to lose weight and then doing meaningless fitness activities like cutting back on sodium or making it their goal to “run every morning.” Sure, this may seem like a healthy exercise, but in many cases the opposite is true. We’ve already talked about the relative insignificance of exercise when it comes to losing weight . Eat a diet of only low sodium foods ( which, by the way, doesn’t really do anything ) and you’ll get a lot of pain for very little reward.
Painful actions that do not pay off are actually “unhealthy” in the long run if they use willpower but do not generate significant returns. Lowering sodium levels, eating “organic foods” and “moving a little every day” (just for the sake of it) can actually interfere with your healthy lifestyle.
I hate running? Then don’t run. Don’t like giving up pizza? Then figure out how to include it in your diet. Don’t like salads? Buy vegetables elsewhere.
By understanding that “eat less, move more” is not the answer, you can understand that fitness is a skill, not a talent, and develop it as such . Most importantly, you can forgive yourself for past failures and renew your motivation to keep trying.