How to lose weight while gaining health (without feeling hungry or counting calories)
“I’m not losing weight, I’m getting rid of it. I have no intention of finding it again” (Anon)
It’s been tough hasn’t it – the pandemic and lockdown? For lots of reasons but not least from the point of view of trying to maintain a stable weight. Our disrupted routines have made it really challenging to eat healthily and keep fit. A survey by Public Health England said that 40% of adults in England have gained weight during the pandemic, with the average gain being half a stone (3+ kg).
In 2019, various surveys reckoned that c 28% of adults in England were obese (BMI of 30 or above), with a further 36% overweight but not obese. This means that the majority of adults (64%) were either overweight or obese. But that was all before Covid. From what we know about weight gain during lockdown, those figures are now going to be substantially worse.
Obesity and being overweight are clearly associated with many serious conditions, including type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and coronary heart disease. But what you may not know is that being excessively overweight substantially increases the risk of severe illness and death from Covid 19. According to this PHE report, obese people are significantly more likely to be admitted to intensive care compared to those with a healthy BMI (18 – 25).
Covid represents a wake-up call for all of us, an opportunity to step back and take a hard look at where we are and where we’re headed in terms of our personal health.
“Just eat less and exercise more”
Losing weight can be hard. Really hard. I am sure many of you have been on a diet before, and perhaps you’ve even lost a significant amount of weight. But did you put it back on?
Did you know that in 95% of cases, weight lost through dieting goes back on, often beyond the weight you were when you first went on a diet? It’s enough to drive anyone crazy. But why is weight loss so difficult? And why do some diets work in the short term, but ultimately fail after months of hard work and dedication?
You probably know that we gain weight when we eat more calories than our bodies can use. But you might not know that this doesn’t need to be a huge excess. Eating just 10% more calories than we need on a daily basis would lead to significant weight gain over time. And that might only be a few bites extra at each meal, which would be hardly noticeable.
Hence the accepted wisdom that to lose weight all you need to do is create a calorie deficit, ie take in less calories than are being used by our bodies.
Seems simple, right? Just “eat less and exercise more.” The simplicity of this theory is so appealing that it has endured, and continues to endure, despite all the evidence to the contrary. It assumes that obesity is a disorder of energy imbalance: when calories-in exceed calories-out there is an energy surplus in the body which is stored as fat.
Unfortunately, this advice rarely works because the brain has powerful mechanisms for overriding our efforts to lose weight. If you consciously reduce the number of calories you eat, you will lose weight at first. But your body responds by lowering your metabolism to match your reduced intake. So, as you purposefully eat less calories, your body finds ways to use less calories, all the while ramping up ghrelin, the hormone that raises your appetite, driving you to eat more at every meal (1).
Your weight loss soon reaches that inevitable plateau. What’s more your hunger is now raging, gnawing at your stomach and your resolve. One emotional trigger, one unkind word, and your willpower crumbles. You return to eating normally. But eating normally results in instant weight gain and that creeping sense of despair – you can see what’s coming.
In other words, it’s extremely difficult to eat fewer calories than your body uses through sheer willpower alone—and this is exactly why calorie-restricted diets fail. Numerous studies have concluded that dieting is associated with long-term weight gain – the exact opposite of the desired goal (2) (3).
The holy grail of weight loss, then, is an approach that naturally and spontaneously leads to lower calorie intake. In other words, eating less without trying to eat less. Many diets promise this, but there’s only one diet I’ve seen that actually delivers over the long-term: the Paleo diet.
Research shows that a Paleo diet is more satiating per calorie than other diets (4). That means it’s more filling for the same number of calories. This is crucial for weight loss, since it helps you eat less without fighting hunger or counting calories. As you now know, if you’re constantly fighting hunger, your brain will respond by reducing your metabolic rate and increasing your appetite.
What lies behind this phenomenon is the crucial fact that calories are not all equal. This is one of the most important things to understand and something that Weight Watchers will have never explained to you. You need your calories to be bringing you valuable nutrients. Paleo eliminates worthless calories in the form of refined carbs, highly processed foods and added sugar. The science shows that eating these foods results in phantom fullness, which is the enemy when it comes to weight loss (5).
What actually makes me fat?
When you eat carbs of any kind, healthy, unhealthy, simple, complex, refined, unrefined, they are turned into glucose and absorbed into your blood stream, either quickly or slowly depending on how refined the carb is.
Insulin is secreted by the pancreas in response, and acts as a key to the cells, letting in the glucose. But when the cells can’t take any more, insulin makes sure that the excess glucose is stored in the liver and muscles as glycogen. These are easy-to-access stores of energy when the body needs some, but once these glycogen stores are full (and they get full quite quickly) the rest is sent off to your adipose tissue aka FAT! And the storage capacity there is prodigious.
And that, folks, is how you get fat. It’s from sugar that is transformed into fat. It’s not from eating fat. It’s the inevitable result of eating lots of carbs.
The other role of insulin is to block the flow of fat OUT of the adipose tissue while glucose is in your system. All that guff you have heard about carbs being the body’s preferred fuel is utter nonsense. Your body will always burn carbs first, not because they are the best fuel, but because it is dangerous to have glucose circulating and it needs to be dealt with it immediately.
Oh, and in the presence of insulin your appetite is increased because insulin stimulates ghrelin, the hunger hormone. Insulin also blocks your satiety hormone, leptin, so the brain never gets the “I’m full” signal. Yupp. It’s lose-lose.
So….If you continue to eat loads of carbs your fat stores will remain locked away. You won’t burn your stored fat, because there is no need to do so. But when glucose is not available, and the glycogen stores have run dry, your body is only too happy to burn fat instead.
Just in case you’d forgotten, I’d like to remind you that all this insulin is being stimulated by the carbs you are eating… and while I am at it, you should know that as well as increasing your fat storage, insulin also increases inflammation, raises triglycerides, lowers HDL (you want this high), raises blood pressure, lowers testosterone in men, screws up hormone balance in women, contributing to bad menopausal symptoms in senior women and infertility in younger women. How’s that for a crap list. Lower your carbs!!!!
What constitutes a low carb diet? Probably around 50g of carb a day. A very low carb diet, known as a Ketogenic diet, is less than 30g a day, but I am not on the whole a fan of this diet other than in very specific circumstances.
And what doesn’t…
Now you understand what carbs do, we are going to talk about fat. For years you’ve been told that in order to burn fat you have to avoid fat. It seems logical after all. Wrong. If you want to burn fat, it is essential that you eat fat. Remember your goal is to burn the surplus fat that has been tucked away in your adipose tissue. This surplus energy is just sitting there waiting to be drawn upon. The trick is to make it necessary.
When your diet consists of predominantly protein and fat, with low carbohydrate, you will switch from burning glucose to burning fatty acids and ketones that are made by the liver from your body fat.
How can I avoid being hungry?
It is every dieter’s dream to lose weight without feeling hungry. It is also a pre-requisite for sustained weight loss. Remember, if you are hungry your metabolism will adjust, and you don’t want this.
Welcome to protein. Protein keeps you satisfied for longer, while making you healthier in a myriad of other ways (6). How does it do this?
The answer lies firstly in its ability to influence hormones that regulate appetite. I have already mentioned ghrelin which stimulates appetite. Protein suppresses ghrelin once you have finished eating and for longer periods thereafter. Another relevant hormone is CCK which is stimulated by protein and fat and makes you feel full by slowing down the rate at which food passes out of the stomach. (7)
Secondly, a high protein diet speeds up fat burning. It does this by increasing your metabolic rate, and the effect is immediate, which is great.
When a group of 130 men and women aged 40 to 56 were given either a high protein, low carb diet, or a low protein high carb diet, for four months, those in the high protein group lost 22% more fat mass than the high carb group, even though the 2 groups consumed exactly the same calories throughout.
In reading for this article, I came across one study which took a group of people and increased their intake of protein from 15% to 30% of calories, so they double their protein intake. They consumed on average 440 calories less per day without trying to reduce their calories. That is a pretty significant amount – and yes it did lead to material weight loss for those people.
So how much protein are we talking about? Well this way of living (I don’t want to call it diet) is not about measuring micronutrient ratios or counting calories, but for those who feel lost without some form of guidance, I would say that you should be looking for 25-30% of your calories to come from protein - or 1.5g per kg of body weight, whereas someone who is not on a weight loss agenda, will probably be eating 0.8g per kg of body weight.
So if for example you weigh 80kg, then you are striving to eat around 120g of protein. How might that be made up: 6 oz chicken breast 52g, 2 eggs 14g, 6 oz cod 40g, 2 oz cheddar cheese, 14g, 1 oz pumpkin seeds or walnuts 7g. = 125g, so we are over.
It follows that it is important to spread your protein across all your meals, including breakfast. Gone are the days of cereal, toast and orange juice for breakfast – not just for you who are looking to lose weight, but for everyone who wants to remain in peak health.
The best sources of protein are meat, fish, seafood, eggs and cheese. The best plant protein for vegetarians is nuts, as they are a combination of protein and fat. The problem with other plant-based sources of protein is that they are almost always contain high amounts of carb, and that is what you are trying to cut back on. This is why it is much more difficult for vegetarians to lose weight.
That’s all for now, folks
So now you understand the mechanism for losing weight. My next article will take you though the Paleo diet, and the lifestyle changes that you should consider surrounding it with, in order to ensure a successful transition. Hang on in there. You can do this.