In 1992, a study was conducted on weight loss resistant individuals.
In this study, the lab specifically studied people who reported eating less than 1200 calories daily and had bodies that were resistant to losing weight.
Researchers set out to explore this phenomenon:
- Were their bodies kicking into starvation mode?
- Did their bodies process calories differently?
- Was something else going on?
They brought these people into a metabolic ward, and used an energy tracking system that involved “doubly-labeled water.”
Essentially, these techniques allowed them to track everything exactly: How much energy was expelled via waste, sweat, or breath, how many calories were consumed.
This is the gold standard for tracking calories “in” and tracking calories “out.”
Group 1 included the people above who were described as “diet resistant.”
Group 2 was the control group: people who had zero history of “dietary resistance.”
What did this study reveal?
What was different about how Group 1 processed calories compared to Group 2?
The result: not much!
Total energy expenditure and resting metabolic rate in the subjects with diet resistance (group 1) were within 5 percent of the predicted values for body composition, and there was no significant difference between groups 1 and 2 in the thermic effects of food and exercise.
Here’s what the study DID reveal:
Subjects in Group 1 drastically underestimated how many calories they were eating by an average of 47%.
This meant they thought they were eating 1200 calories, but actually consumed 1800 calories or more.
Group 1 also overestimated how many calories they burned through exercise by 51%.
Which meant if they thought they had burned 300 calories exercising, they really only burned 200 calories.
Combine these two things and most of us have a massive discrepancy between how much we think we eat, and how much we actually eat.
We humans suck at all sorts of things!
Life is hard, and we humans aren’t cut out to thrive in a world of abundance.
At the same time, we’re pretty bad at quite a few things:
I can tell you what we’re really good at though: crafting narratives.
Our brains will jump through hoops to craft a story that explains why our body doesn’t obey the same laws of thermodynamics as everybody else.
It’s similar to the story we tell ourselves about getting older: “Of course I gained weight, my metabolism slowed down when I hit 20/30/40 years old,” when science tells a different story.
Our brains are convinced by these narratives far more easily than accepting the uncomfortable reality:
If we are trying to lose weight but the scale isn’t going down, we are eating more than we realize.
YES, hormones and stress and life and our environment and relationship with food can impact how much food we eat, or the types of food we crave. Some people have medical conditions that impact how their bodies respond to calories or exercise…
But when it comes to the number on the scale, our bodies still obey thermodynamics.
This is actually amazing news, if we can accept it.
So let’s start there.
Self-compassionate Acceptance
If we’re telling ourselves a narrative that we’re broken and progress is hopeless, we can start with self-compassionate acceptance:
Of course we suck at counting calories!
Of course we don’t know how much we actually eat!
We’re not cut out for this type of environment in which delicious, calorie-dense food is always available.
That doesn’t make us a bad person, nor does it mean we need to shame ourselves or beat ourselves up.
Instead, we can accept that we’re bad at this (because everybody is), and then adjust our behavior accordingly:
- We can learn how to actually track calories, educate ourselves on actual serving sizes for our favorite foods or meals.
- We can work on eating more nutrient rich, filling foods that have less calories. Lean protein, fruits and vegetables. It’s quite tough to “overeat” vegetables!
- We can cut back on easily consumed liquid calories and switch to zero calorie beverages.
- We can use Ulysses Pacts to protect ourselves from…ourselves.
And even then, despite our best efforts, we should accept that we’ll still eat more than we think each day.
Not because we’re broken, dumb, or stupid.
But because we’re human.
-Steve
