It’s the unknown that kills a good diet plan.

The little treats here or there that can derail months of work.

And the underestimations of calories in a food, well…that’s just UNBELIEVABLY AGGRAVATING!

Over the summer we had a Baskin Robbins move into our neighborhood.

As a treat, my family would go once a week for ice-cream. Sometimes twice a week of the grandparents were around.

I’m a chocolate mint kinda guy, so I normally get the chocolate mint ice-cream in a waffle cone – about 500 calories…but occasionally, I’d order the chocolate milk shake.

I figured, “It’s a treat, besides it’s probably about 750 calories, I can handle that”

You can imagine how mad I was when I saw this:

1300 Calories!

Almost Double what I thought.

Brutal.

Luckily, I wasn’t trying to lose weight this summer, so it wasn’t a giant deal, but this is where the “I didn’t change a thing, but gained weight” stories come from – forgetting or underestimating the calorie content of foods.

Eating responsibly means being aware.

You can still have chocolate milk shakes from Baskin Robbins if you are trying to lose weight, you just need to be aware that the darn thing has 1300 Calories.

Being aware – it’s the key to weight loss.

BP

PS – The secret to losing weight while still occasionally having a large chocolate milkshake? Share it with a friend!

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I just realized after writing that last post that we have pretty much debunked the idea that a pound of muscle burns 50 calories a day.

Realistically, if we include the metabolic cost of keeping the muscle alive, AND the cost of moving that extra weight around, we see that a pound of muscle really helps you burn an optimistic 5 extra calories per day.

Now the point of this post isn’t to downplay the importance of resistance training or even building muscle. As there is an entirely different way to look at this phenomena.

While adding 10 pounds of muscle only increases your daily calorie burning by about 50 Calories (again, just an estimate) it will do wonders for the way your body looks. So there is still a benefit to adding muscle.

And while I like the idea of adding muscle, I think the difference becomes really significant when we start talking about LOSING muscle.

As we age we become less active. This isn’t unavoidable, but seems to be a relatively excepted fact.

If we are less active and using our muscles less, they will shrink (use it or lose it applies to just about everything within your body, from intelligence to muscle mass)

If you had 155 pounds of LBM while you were in your thirties, but have 130 pounds of LBM in your sixties, that missing 25 pounds can create quite the difference.

Just by HAVING less muscle you would be using 125 less calories per day, not to mention the fact that you are less active (the reason you lost the muscle in the first place).

So bottom line – Weight training and building/maintaining muscle are NOT the metabolism boosting miracle they have been made out to be, but they are still a VITAL part of your weight loss plan.

Eat less and maybe eat less often. Lift more and move more often. This is a pretty effective recipe for weight loss success.

BP

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A great question from Chris:

Brad, I am on the fence about your program. I have been low-carbing it for a while now with some great results. However I am starting to feel a little limited in what I can eat. It would be nice to have the occasional taco or dessert! Are you saying all calories are the same? Meaning if i switch to ESE and add some carbs to my diet, and still lift, my weight and body comp shouldn’t change b/c of the calorie reduction? Thanks!

My Answer:

A calorie is a calorie. 100%. After all, a Calorie is a unit of measurement. So just as an inch of anything can only ever be an inch long, one calorie from any food is still one calorie.

Now, all macronutrients are not created equal (proteins, fats and carbs do have different effects on the body) but this does not have anything to do with the measurement of calorie (By the way..I think this whole calorie nonsense would disappear if we finally adopted the Joule as the standard measurement of energy..but that’s another story all together).

So to answer your question, I am confident that you can switch to an eat stop eat lifestyle (as long as you are still lifting), increase your carb intake (within reason) and not see a change in your body composition, as long as you do not increase the amount of energy you are consuming.

Regarding your carbohydrate intake, remember even if you moderately increase your carbs on the days you ARE eating, on the 1 or 2 24-hour periods when you are fasting, your carobydrate intake will be ZERO. So most likely it will all balance out.

I do think that macronutrients play an important role in health, and the majority of us could benefit from eating a little less Carbohydrates, but in the end, my opinion is that it’s your ability to eat a wide variety of foods that will bring the best health, and the ability to reduce calorie intake that will bring the best weight loss (add in resistance training if you want to make sure the weight lost if body fat).

BP

PS- In the last month I have heard from a die-hard paleo person, a vegetarian, a fruititarian, and a pasta addict, and they have all found benefits with Eat Stop Eat. Bottom line – Eat Stop Eat doesn’t discriminate, it can help people of all diet-beliefs lose weight and feel great!

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