Most people would have encountered this popular nutrition philosophy, most clearly explained in the phrase “calories in versus calories out”. The idea is that by exceeding energy input with energy output, you will put your body into deficit – allowing your body to burn existing fat and lose weight.
Diets based on this theory will initially assist you in losing weight, but because they’re based on deprivation, the body will always hit an immovable plateau. While following a programme like this, the initial drop in weight and body fat you experience will be stimulated by low blood sugar – causing you to lose body fat, but also muscle. The drop will continue to happen until your body reaches its internal set point – the weight it’s used to being.
Once you reach this set point, your body will begin converting its muscle into the glucose it needs to maintain cognitive and bodily functions. Each pound of muscle burns approximately 30-50 calories per day, which means every pound of muscle you lose slows down your metabolism. This is why it’s so difficult to lose body fat when you’re on a programme centred on restriction; it prevents the body from reaching an internal hormonal balance and actually slows the metabolic rate.
Once your metabolism has slowed, if you begin eating normally again, your body will actually struggle to burn up the calories you consume – causing you to gain back more body fat than you had before starting the diet.
Unfortunately, almost all restrictive diets like this lead to a ‘yo-yo’ scenario. All deficits must eventually be paid back and due to the difficult, restrictive nature of these diets, many people resort back to poor nutrition and lifestyle choices. And if you are able to continue the diet long term, you will need to keep cutting down more and more to overcome plateaus as your metabolism slows down – which is not only bad for your energy levels, but bad for your overall health.
Luckily, there is a better option.
From the moment of birth, our bodies are designed to be fed with a balanced source of nutrients at regular intervals. Babies will eat every three to four hours, and never overfeed or underfeed – because they drink breast milk, a balanced source of protein, fat and carbohydrates. Our nervous systems are designed to use glucose as its main energy source and our body’s goal is to create balance (homeostasis) or the stabilisation of blood sugar.
The key to stabilisation is to implement the correct nutrition ratios and calories per meal, as well as to maintain the correct meal intervals to help the body maintain stable blood sugar levels. This in turn will create homeostasis in all systems in the body, ensuring the continual release of the body’s stored fat (each pound of stored fat has 3500 calories), which is then burned within the muscle tissue. As long as the body maintains this balance it will continue to build lean tissue (what forms your metabolism) and burn stored body fat.
The main difference between the deficit philosophy and the stabilisation philosophy is that stabilising your blood sugar allows your body to use energy stored in fat, not muscle – even when your body is in deficit. By maintaining muscle you will increase your appetite, and your metabolism will speed up. Homeostasis will also eliminate your sugar cravings and increase your overall energy – making it even easier for you to stay active and maintain the programme long-term.
In summary, the key to blood sugar stabilisation is to use nutrition to create balance, balance to create energy, and exercise to burn that energy up. Not only does this philosophy make sense, it’s proven to be easy to maintain and effective – even in the long term.
Written by Tarryn Thompson, Director of Generation Health
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