Sugar

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, sports nutritionist, Master life coach and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind so you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to Episode 243 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, Why Counting Calories Doesn’t Work. So when it comes to weight loss tips, one principle stands out among all the others, counting calories. For decades, you’ve been told that the only way to lose weight is to make sure you count all your calories honestly. If this worked as advertised, we wouldn’t have a crisis of obesity here in this country, and no one would really struggle with their weight. The truth is, it doesn’t work. So today, why counting calories doesn’t work, and what you should probably do instead.

But first, if you’re interested in getting leaner, getting stronger, running faster or running longer, you need to change something. What do you need to change? Probably your nutrition plan, probably whether or not your strength training or how your strength training, probably how you’re approaching your running training, because doing the same things you’re doing right now is not going to get you new results. I think we all know that nothing changes if nothing changes. So the real secret here is to make changes, but stick with them. You got to make them last. You got to do them consistently. So doing new things consistently is really the goal. That’s what we’re really after here. Trying to do new things consistently on your own, it’s tough. It’s challenging. I get it. I tried. It doesn’t work. Didn’t work for me. It didn’t work for me, until I got some help. I got a coach. I got somebody there that was in my corner, that was showing me the way, that was telling me what to do, that was holding me accountable, that was giving me guidance, that was offering suggestions, that was keeping me motivated. Once I had a coach, everything changed for me. I needed someone there to tell me what to do when things weren’t working right, you know, somebody there to hold me accountable and say, Hey, did you do what you said you were going to do? Yes or no. So I made a lot of progress. Once I got a coach. I improved my eating, my running, my strength, all those things. I’ve had all kinds of coaches in my life. I’ve had a nutrition coach, I’ve had a strength coach, I’ve had a business coach, and these coaches have really changed who I am from the inside out. Why I decided to get into coaching, because I got such a great experience. I’ve had such great experiences with my coaches. So if you’re interested in getting some help becoming the most badass version of yourself, just go to my website, running leancoaching.com. Click on work with me. I’ll show you exactly what to do. I’ll show you exactly how to become that best version of yourself yet. Okay, that’s running leancoaching.com. Click on work with me. Cool.

Okay, this topic today is one that I’m pretty passionate about. I’ve got a few notes here, but I just have to tell you that I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and I’ve talked a little bit about this in the last episode of the podcast, I mentioned 10 tips to help runners lose weight, and one of them was about not putting yourself into a calorie deficit. You don’t really want to go into a calorie deficit. And it sparked a little bit of conversation online. And you know, some people are asking some questions and stuff, which I thought was really great, and I’ll get into that in a minute, but it got me really thinking about this whole idea of counting calories and I was like, why is this such a accepted method of losing weight and eating healthy is to just count your calories. Don’t restrict anything you’re eating, don’t change anything you’re eating. Just keep your calories to a certain level and you should be fine. Why is this so popular? Why is this something that everybody kind of talks about?

We’ve got programs like Weight Watchers with points and they’ve, you know, determined what foods are higher in calories, and those get a higher point level, and lower in calories get lower point level, and things like that. You know, we’ve taken out all the fat from all our foods and replaced it with sugar a lot of the time, but we’ve taken out all this fat because fat is high in calories. You’re going to be eating a lot of calories. And I was just thinking like, if this worked so well, if counting calories was the answer to all of our weight loss problems or overweight problems, nobody would be overweight. Nobody would struggle with gaining and losing weight constantly, there wouldn’t be an obesity crisis here in the US and in other countries. And I was just like, this is really interesting.

And one thing you know that I saw a while back, but I thought this was really fascinating, is that there’s an obesity epidemic amongst toddlers here in the US toddlers. So these are people that are not making their own decisions. They can’t count their calories anyway. So the whole idea of counting calories is very controversial, and I’m going to admit that, and what I might have to share with you guys today might go against a lot of what you know or have thought to be true, but one thing that I really want to start with is just saying like we have evolved as human beings to be really good at metabolizing certain foods and not good at metabolizing other kinds of foods. We’ve evolved over 1000s upon 1000s of years.

You know, we’ve been some form of human hominid, some sort of human being, for like, two and a half million years. So you can argue that our evolution started about two and a half million years ago, and we’ve never had to track calories before. You know, we never had MyFitnessPal until recently. Why, all of a sudden, is tracking all your food in an app necessary? Why all of a sudden do we need to be eating in a calorie deficit, and we better know all these numbers. You know, do all this math and figure out all these numbers in order to maintain a healthy weight as a human being, we’ve never had to do this in the history of our species before.

Were there overweight people in the past? Yeah, probably, especially once we started processing more foods and people were eating a lot more bread and sugar, let’s just say those were two things that started to cause some of the obesity in people and so but think about when we started eating those foods. It wasn’t that long ago in the grand scheme of things, you know, maybe a few 100 or 1000 years ago, something like that. So just be thinking about, you know, the fact that we’ve never really had to count calories before, and now all of a sudden, everybody’s saying, well, that’s the only way that you can lose weight, is to count calories and listen. I was on board with all of that. I tried that for a long time.

I got an app. The app I was using was called Lose It. So it’s similar to my fitness pal or, you know, carb manager is another one that I like to use just for looking up foods and stuff like that. But I use this app called Lose It. And it was all about, okay, put in your weight loss goal. Okay, I want to lose, you know, 40 pounds. Okay, all right. Well, you just need, well, how much you working out every day? Oh, I’m doing this, and this is okay. So here’s what your daily calorie needs are. Let’s say it’s, you know, 2000 calories a day, and so you just need to be eating around 1700 or 1800 calories a day. Oh, okay, great, no problem. So I did that.

I tracked all my food, tracked all my calories, and then it asked you, okay, did you work out today? I sure did. I went and ran 10 miles today. Oh, well, good. You get another 1000 calories. Oh, awesome. I eat another 1000 calories of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream or whatever. And so I did this, and I did all the math, right, and I was putting in all my all my numbers, and putting in all my food. And at the end of the day, I lost like zero weight. It did not change a thing for me. So doing all this math, counting all my calories, tracking all my food, meticulously tracking on my food for a long, long time, because after some time it wasn’t working.

I was like, I just have to do this longer, you know? And this went on for months. I want to say I did this for like, a year or something like that, and it didn’t work for me. And in the process, I was running and training for marathons, ultra marathons and things like that. And so I was doing a lot of training and gaining weight in the process. I’ve shared this before, and a lot of people that I talk to tell me, yeah, Patrick, the exact same thing happened to me. I’m training for a marathon and I’m gaining weight. What the heck is going on? I should be losing weight. I know you should be according to the numbers, right? Right, but it doesn’t really work that way.

Now I need to say this, can you lose weight by limiting your calories? Yes, you can. Is it a good thing to do? I don’t believe so, because for a few reasons. Number one, it’s not sustainable, like you can’t just limit your calories and be able to maintain a calorie deficit for the rest of your life. You cannot do that if you want to lose weight and you’re trying to cut your calories, you’re going to get to this place where you’re cutting your calories probably too low. If you’re a runner, you probably shouldn’t be cutting your calories because you need the energy for running. But if you keep your calories too low for too long a time, you end up kind of slowing down your metabolism.

This is what happened to the people that are in like the biggest loser shows like that. They lose a ton of weight by dramatically cutting their calories and exercising like crazy, and they can burn some fat, and they do burn some fat, and they do lose some weight, but like 96% of the people on that show gain all the weight back, and then some. So they actually gain more because their metabolism slows down to the point where they can’t maintain that deficit anymore. And so let’s say you cut your calories to 1000 calories a day, and your body needs like 2000 calories a day. Well, your metabolism is going to start to slow down. To say, like, if we maintain this, if we keep doing this, we’re going to die. Like, your body will slow your metabolism down to match the energy that’s coming in. So that means that now your body’s only burning like 1200 calories a day, or 1000 calories a day, but you’re eating 1000 calories a day, so now weight loss stops, so now you got to start eating less again. Okay, well, I’ll just go to 800 calories a day. Great. Your body’s going to eventually slow down 800 calories a day.

And it takes time for that to happen. It’s not going to happen if you do that for a couple of days, or something like that. I mean, it takes time, but that’s the principle that a lot of people want to follow. They want to follow this principle of just eating less, eating less, eating less, it is not sustainable. They did a meta study that looked at hundreds of different diets. A meta study is a large study that looks at other studies. Okay, so they did a meta study on all these different diets, and they found that the one that had the most weight loss at the beginning was a calorie deficit. So cutting your calories does work to lose weight. They also showed from all these diets that the one that was the absolute worst in long term longevity was cutting your calories. So it does work.

You know, you can lose some weight in the beginning, but then you gain it back because of, you know, slowing down your metabolism, and that it’s just not really sustainable to continue to track your calories and cut your calories, at some point, you have to start eating more, and then you’re going to start to gain the weight again. And you’re probably going to gain it faster, because now your metabolism has slowed down. So this meta study showed that it was really good at initial weight loss, and I think that’s why a lot of people are so attracted to cutting calories, is that it does work, but it’s very short term. It’s not something that is sustainable.

Okay, so, like, can you track your calories forever? Do you really want to do that? I don’t want to do that. I don’t think it’s necessary. Again. Let’s go back to how we evolved as human beings. We’ve never had to track calories before. Why do we all of a sudden have to do this? And this whole idea is based on the energy balance theory.

The energy balance theory says, you know more energy going out than coming in, and you will lose weight. So if you exercise more, you can eat whatever you want, but as long as, you know, you burned X number of calories, you will not gain weight. And it’s a good theory, but it’s thought it’s flawed, because it’s assuming that we’re some sort of perfect vessel, like a steam engine that that works off of, you know, perfect principles of so much energy coming in, and then everything works perfectly, and we’re all the same, and then the energy going out, and we’re not steam engines, we’re very complicated, organic creatures, and we’re all different. We all have different genetics and different metabolisms and different food preferences and different cultures and things like that. We got to factor all this stuff in there.

So the energy balance theory, it’s a good theory, but it’s flawed. It’s much more complicated than that. The types of foods you eat matter. So if you ate nothing, but, you know, Twinkies and you were, you know, burning so many calories? Can you lose weight? I don’t know, but you know what? That’s gonna mess up your hunger signals. It’s gonna make you super hungry all the time. You’re not gonna have control over what you’re eating. You’re eating something that is really bad for you. You’re not getting the proper nutrition like there’s so many things we have to consider here. So just to eat a bunch of junk and say, Well, I’m not eating X number of calories, so it’s fine. It’s flawed.

And what happens when we eat certain foods? What happens to our hormones, our hunger signals? You know ghrelin as a hunger hormone. When you eat sugar, ghrelin is produced in mass quantities, so you become more hungry. That’s why, when you eat more sugar, you crave more sugar. You’re just hungrier in general, one of the worst things you can do, in my opinion, is to start your day with a high carbohydrate, high sugar meal, because then you’re setting yourself up for disaster. The rest of the day, you’re gonna be hungry the rest of the day. That’s why people can’t understand why somebody like me who does intermittent fasting, you know, and that just means I don’t eat breakfast. That’s the way I, you know, define it for me.

Anyway, I don’t eat breakfast. And people think I’m crazy because they can’t understand what it would be like to not eat breakfast because they have to start their day with a bunch of carbs, a bunch of sugar, and then they’re hungry the rest of the day. And so they just can’t imagine going until lunchtime without food, because they’re hungry all the time. But I’m telling you, once you stop eating all the sugar and you stop eating breakfast, you’re not going to be hungry all the time. You’re going to be very satisfied.

Another hormone we have to consider when we eat certain foods, like sugar, is leptin. Leptin is the fullness sensor. It’s a fullness hormone. And so when you eat certain foods, you get full, like if you eat steak, you can only eat so much steak, and then you’re going to get full. Chicken is another one, man I can eat a lot of food, but when it comes to something like dense protein, like chicken, I can only eat so much. And I’m like, Dude, I cannot eat any more of this. I am so full. But you give me a plate of pasta, man, it’s like, I can never stop eating it, because leptin, the hunger hormone, or, I’m sorry, the fullness hormone gets turned off or turned down when you start eating a lot of carbs and sugar.

So you’re more hungry because more ghrelin is being produced, less leptin is being produced, so you’re not feeling full. And this is a bad combination, because now you just, you’re more hungry, you’re going to end up eating way more than you should be eating, and your body is just not functioning the way it’s supposed to, right? So this is another reason why, you know, there’s more going on than just calories in, calories out. I believe that tracking your calories forever and going into some kind of calorie deficit and trying to count your calories is a very short term thing that you can do. I mean, maybe if you want to do it, just to get some data, good.

But listen, I think that it is very unsustainable. It’s very unsustainable. Do you want to track your calories for the rest of your life? Because if that is the case, then, I mean, go for it, if that’s what you want to do, but there’s got to be a better way, right?

Related to that, though, somebody asked a question on a post from my last podcast where I was talking about, you know, not going into a calorie deficit. That’s a mistake that a lot of runners make, is they want to lose weight, but then they think they need to cut calories, and you shouldn’t cut your calories, you shouldn’t go into a calorie deficit. And this person asked a question, if the idea is not to go into calorie deficit, shouldn’t you track your calories so you know that you’re not going to calorie deficit. So I get where this person is coming from with this, and it is a good question. But listen, if you’re eating to satiety, you really shouldn’t need to track anything. Some days, you’re going to eat more because you might have a higher training volume.

So you might be in the throes of marathon training, and so you’re going to be hungry, and you might eat more food. So your food volume might go up. Sometimes you might be at a lower place in your training volume, and you’ll be eating less food either way. It’s fine. Listen to your body. Eat until you feel full. Don’t go beyond that. Though. Eat whole foods. Eat real food. Get plenty of fat and protein in your diet. And you shouldn’t really need to track anything. You don’t have to track calories if you’re eating the proper foods, the proper human diet, which, in my opinion, is things like eggs, meat, fish, dairy, you know, avocados, fruit, vegetables, whole foods. Eat food that still looks like food, food that our ancient ancestors would say, oh, I understand what that is. I’ve seen that before.

What would happen if, instead of eating all the sugar and the carbs all the time, you just started eating more satiating foods? Fat and protein are very satiating, so when you’re eating more nutrient dense, more satiating foods, you’re going to be less hungry. You’re going to feel more full when you do eat, you will naturally be eating the right amount of food for yourself, because you’re going to start to get in tune with what your body really needs. Because now your hunger and fullness signals are not all messed up, so there shouldn’t be any need to track calories.

Now you know, if you’re one of these people, that you’re like, well, what about the numbers? Like, I just need to know the numbers. Then go for it. You can help yourself figure out how much, you know, what the numbers say you should be eating every day, and then stick to that if you want to do that great, but you don’t have to. If you’re eating the right foods. You shouldn’t need to do that.

One of the big problems is we are a society who is attracted to hyper palatable foods. Hyper palatable foods are foods that have been engineered in a laboratory to be crave worthy, to be something that we cannot get enough of. You know, right on the can of Pringles, I believe it is. I don’t know. I don’t buy that stuff. It says, like, once you pop, you can’t stop, or there’s another potato chip or something that says, bet you can’t eat just one. They’re telling you on the label, hey, we’ve designed this so that you cannot stop eating it. It’s that good. And it’s true. You start eating Pringles. You can eat a whole sleeve of those things.

You know, I used to be able to do that. I used to love Pringles for road trips because I just put that can of whatever they’re called. I don’t, they’re not really potato chips. Is there even potatoes in there? I don’t know. Probably put that thing between your legs while you’re driving, and just, you’re just good to go. You just keep dipping in there, and, you know, just eating all the Pringles out of the tube, whatever. So those foods are very hyper palatable. They’re highly processed, they’re full of carbohydrates and sugars, and they taste amazing, and they make you crave more of those foods.

So when you’re eating a lot of that stuff, eating less or eating the right amount of food is going to be very difficult for you. Instead, stick with those nutrient dense, satiating foods that have good sources of protein and fat. Protein is going to be one of the best things you can do for yourself, eat more protein. Just make that one change, starting this week, just start eating more protein, eggs, meat, fish, dairy. You’re going to be less hungry. You’re going to be more satisfied when you do eat, you’re getting nutrient dense foods that your body actually needs. There shouldn’t be any need to drop calories once you start eating more protein and good sources of fat too. Once you start eating good sources of fat and enough protein, you’re going to start to feel so much better.

So this idea that we have to count calories in order to be healthy human beings in order to lose weight, it’s flawed. I just don’t think it’s sustainable. You know? I don’t think it really works. If it worked so well, there would be no problems with people gaining weight or struggling to lose weight. So I think instead, a better idea is to focus on eating whole foods. Stay away from highly processed foods. I mean, if you stay away from foods in a package, for the most part, I think you’re going to be in a much better place.

And I don’t mean like, oh, it’s a piece of cheese and it’s, you know, got, you know, what, clear plastic over it. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about those foods with all the ingredients in them, you know, highly processed, highly palatable foods. Stay away from that stuff. Focus on more fat and proteins, you’re going to feel much better. It really is the key to losing weight and being able to keep it off long term.

And this is what I work on with my clients. We figure out what foods work for them, you know. And a lot of it is this, from these different categories I’m talking about here, you know, eggs, meat, fish, dairy, that kind of thing. And it’s just so, so much easier to do that and definitely more sustainable.

Okay, so that’s your work for this week. Get out there and start eating more protein. Start eating real food. Start eating more satiating, more nutrient dense foods. Stay away from these hyper palatable, packaged processed foods, and don’t count your calories, just stop doing that. You know? It just really doesn’t work. It’s not sustainable. It’s not something that I think you’re going to be able to do long term.

Okay, that’s all I got for you today. I know you got this. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean and I’ll talk to you in the next one.