Death of the Calorie (2019)
The problem with calorie counting is you&#x27;re sort of modelling the human body on simple machines, like say, cars.<p>But the body is actually a complex system, and the core quality of a complex system is adaptation.<p>This means you can cut calroies below your current burn rate and still gain weight, because your burn rate will change.<p>To illustrate: suppose you consume 4000 calories a day, with your body burning 3000 of them and storing 1000. Does cutting to 2500 guarantee you will be burning 500 extra calories from your fat storage? Not at all. Your body can easily adapt by burning 2000 calories and storing 500.<p>Obviously the numbers are just for illustration purposes and I&#x27;m not claiming they are realistic by any means.<p>What you really want is to inroduce changes that make your body adapt into accessing your fat storage for energy.<p>So if we go back to the above (obviously flawed) example: what you want is to make your body burn all the input you are giving it (even if it remains at 4000) AND on top of that burn, say, 500 calories from its fat storage.<p>How do you do that?<p>I can&#x27;t claim to have the answer, but two things come to mind:<p>1. Walking.<p>I&#x27;ve personally lost weight by just walking a lot - with no changes to deit. By a lot I mean several hours a day.<p>Needless to say, I was single then. It&#x27;s not really easy to do when you have family and children.<p>But the point is: exercise. Exercise that requires energy.<p>The good thing about walking is it&#x27;s generally relaxing. You can actually walk for 2~3 hours and genuinely be enjoying yourself.<p>For exercising: I&#x27;m find exercise-band based workouts at home to have a similar effect: they use energy but I&#x27;m generally enjoying myself when I&#x27;m doing them. It&#x27;s a bit different from weight lifting in that you can easily adjsut the resistance to be just right for your skill&#x2F;experience&#x2F;strength level, so that you do get a real workout, but don&#x27;t feel like your muscles and bones are dying.<p>2. Hormones.<p>Cortisol and Insulin.<p>By eating during a short window (intermittent fasting) you can limit the amount and duration in which your body uses the energy from the food (regulated by insulin).<p>Working out while fasted (say, after you wake up and before you eat) will teach your body to access its fat storage for energy. And apparently it also increases your metabolic rate for several hours after.<p>By sleeping well, removing stress, and avoiding coffee, you can reduce the amount and duration in which cortisol is circulating in your body.<p>The thing about low-calories diets is they feel like stress and increase cortisol, thus sabotaging the whole thing.<p>Being stressed and not having enough sleep is the surest way to absolutely oblitirate your &quot;will power&quot; and make you want to eat for comform.<p>Incrase the amount of protein in your food is another thing that apparently helps regulat your hormones in a desireable way. And anyway it&#x27;s needed if you workout (which you should, if you want to lose fat).