Why Calorie-Counting-Obsession Is Not Necessary

As I've mentioned a few times before, I read the message boards of a 60+ year old - a man who is a successful soundtrack producer but who in private life is a diva. He also has some misguided ideas about losing weight, and since he knows best (on every subject under the sun) it's useless to try to point out his mistakes.

He's the guy who eats one meal a day (which he calls his meal o' the day) and then he wonders why he's not losing weight as fast as he'd like. He counts his calories - he ate 1,500 calories yesterday, for example, and according to him burned off 400 of those calories with a jog.

Well, mebbe so, mebbe so, but those numbers aren't all there is to it.

First off, of course, he's over 60, so his metabolism is slower than it was up until he was about 40. (And indeed, if you look at photos of the guy up until that time, he had one of those beanpole figures. Could probably eat anything without gaining weight. Now that he's old and his metabolism has slowed down, that is not the case.)

So, he did his diet a few years ago, and it worked, apparently. Eating one meal a day and jogging 4 miles a day. (Not bad for a 60 year old, admittedly.) But of course once he'd reached the weight he wanted...he got away from jogging, and he started eating three meals a day. End result, within a couple of years he'd put all the weight back on (because even if he was staying within 3,000 calories a day, which I doubt, his body's metabolism had slowed down yet more - caused by his diet - and his body was busy re-storing the fat it had lost so precipitously.

So now, he's trying it again, not having learned anything.

It's taking him longer than he thought to lose a pound or two a week. Why? Well, on the one hand because his metabolism is even slower than it had been, and on the other hand, because he's not eating enough!

Does that sound like a contradiction in terms?

Your body is not a clean-cut organism. It tries to save itself from starvation. If you suddenly cut drastically down on the calories you are consuming, your body doesn't know that you're trying to lose weight, all it knows is that it is starving, and it better conserve energy until the food starts coming normally again.

So it will give up muscle before it will give up fat. And that is a bad thing. And even when the fat starts coming off, it will come off verrrry slowly and reluctantly... and will always strive to restore that fat to its "normal" levels in preparation for any future starvation periods when it might need it.

So yes, eventually someone on a starvation diet will lose weight... but they will lose it a lot faster if they cut out 500 calories a day, rather than 1,500.

And, in addition - they will be able to keep that lost weight off for more than just a year or two!