Why Eating Less Isn’t the Answer

I had a Goal Review recently with a long-time client who is working her way back after having surgery.

She is strong. She lifts. She does CrossFit workouts as well. So she is not new to training, and she is not someone who is afraid of hard work.

But in our review, she told me something that caught my attention…

Her strength felt like it was about 50% of what it normally is.

Her workouts felt harder than they should.

She was slowing down more than expected.

She felt like she just didn’t have the same gear she used to have.

That was a huge red flag for me.

So we talked about training, recovery, and then nutrition.

She told me a lot of what she was doing was the same. She still wasn’t eating meat. She was still dairy-free. After surgery, her doctor encouraged her to remove all dairy, so she had also removed cheese.

Where is the fun in that, right?!

Then we got to total food intake. She mentioned that she was eating roughly 1,200 calories per day.

I think we have a winner!

It turns out this number is a huge thing for us to consider because her basal metabolic rate was a hair under 1,300 calories per day. In other words, she was eating less than the amount of energy she requires to just keep the lights on.

…and we haven’t even thrown in stress, work, daily life, workouts, and all the other things going on her life.

This is not to say she was doing anything wrong. In fact, she was operating with what we’ve all been told for our entire lives:

“Workout more and eat less.”

For the record, that was what I had heard in various places growing up too.

Now, for a while this works. You eat less and workout more and the weight decreases as does your body fat. But you know what else is probably decreasing? The muscle mass you are carrying (and that’s not the thing we want to lose, as a general rule)

And then you think about it and think: “Yes, I’m hungry, but it’s hard to argue with success.”

But what happens when it stops working. Notice I didn’t say “if.” I said “when.”

You’re still training, eating less, but now your energy is lower, your workouts feel worse, and you’re not losing weight anymore. In fact, your body fat might be going up as your muscle goes down.

At that point, the answer isn’t to cut more food. Turns out the answer might be to eat more food.

What caught my attention about this situation is that it isn’t unique to her. Researchers have been studying this for years.

In the sports nutrition world, there’s actually a name for it: low energy availability.

That’s a fancy way of saying your body doesn’t have enough fuel left over to support both your workouts and everything else it needs to do.

In a lot of cases, the exact symptoms people blame on getting older, having a slow metabolism, or simply needing to try harder can actually be signs that they’re not eating enough to support the demands they’re placing on their body.

The research is especially interesting because the effects go beyond performance. Consistently under-fueling can impact muscle retention, recovery, bone health, hormone function, and overall training adaptations.

In other words, the very things most people are exercising to improve can become harder to improve when there isn’t enough fuel coming in.

You don’t have to be an Olympic athlete for this to matter. If you’re someone who exercises, works a job, raises kids, tries to live a normal life, and expects your body to do what it’s supposed to do… this is going to affect you.

In this client’s case, my first suggestion wasn’t complicated. We weren’t going from 1,200 calories to some huge number overnight. We talked about slowly increasing intake.

Week one, maybe 1,300.

Then 1,400.

Then 1,500.

Small increases over a fixed amount of time and her assignment is now to watch a few things:

• Watch how she feels during the day
• Watch her hunger levels throughout the day
• Watch for her cravings and how those change
• Watch for your workout performance as that will likely improve too
• Watch her strength numbers
• Watch her body fat and muscle mass numbers as well

The goal isn’t to eat more just for the sake of eating more. The goal is for her to give her body enough fuel to actually do what she wants it to do.

If you want to get stronger, your body needs resources.
If you want your workouts to improve, your body needs resources.
If you want to build muscle and burn fat, your body needs resources.
If you want to recovery from surgery and return to training… yes, your body needs resources.

One stressful day, one missed plan, or one night out can make you feel like the whole thing isn’t worth it anymore if you’re in the “eat less and workout more” mindset.

That’s the frustrating cycle a lot of people get stuck in and this is one of the reasons I think tracking food can be useful, at least for a short period of time.

Not forever, mind you. But to track food long enough to get an average, see a pattern, and adjust what you’ve got going on. You can take the guesswork out of it and make the adjustments you know you need to in order to support your goals.

There is no arguing the idea that fat loss is in large part facilitated through a calorie deficit. Yes, calories matter.

But there is a difference between a deficit built on your total calorie expenditure throughout the day and what society is telling you about “eating less and working out more.”

If you’re working out consistently and still feel tired, hungry, weak, stuck, or beat up, I wouldn’t automatically ask, “How can we cut more?”

I’d ask: “Are you eating enough to support the life you’re asking your body to live?”

Looking for more help, here?
Send me an email at [email protected] and throw your questions my way!