There is a quote, I’m sure some of you have seen it: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” This quote is tremendously applicable to diet and weight loss.
Calories-out has to be greater than calories-in to lose weight. That is the way things are, and if you want to lose weight you need to adhere to that principle.
Diet hacks, weight-loss tips, diet-pointers, etc. will help you to do that. Make no mistake, though: if you don’t know how many calories per day your body burns, or how many calories per day you are taking in, you will not be able to lose weight effectively. These tips and tricks are giving you a fish. They are not teaching you to fish.
A lot of blogs and websites offering weight-loss tips seem to overlook this, or fail to add a disclaimer to their post: “by the way, even if you do all 5 (or 10, or 18, whatever click bait number that article chose) of these tips – if you’re not in a deficit they are completely meaningless.”
It doesn’t matter how many “hacks” you’re using, or how many fast-pointers you read: if you do not eat in a caloric deficit, you will not lose weight. It’s baffling to me how people can make posts like that without the caveat “by the way: stay in deficit.” They are hurting their reader base and complicating the process.
Diets which espouse a certain method for losing weight, for example:
- Eat high-fat and high-protein (keto)
- Vegan diet (fruits/veggies)
- The “zone” diet (low-glycemic load)
- Intermittent fasting
All of these diets are doing the same thing: they are creating an environment where you are lowering the amount of calories you consume, often by excluding a food group or making calorie control easier. They say “you don’t need to count calories,” and anecdotally people will claim “I didn’t count calories and I lost weight.” It’s all true, but only because you are consuming less than you’re expending.
Diet programs which tell you that you don’t need to do what you NEED to do are disguising their lack of faith in their audience. They are giving you a fish and not trusting you with learning how to fish. You’re letting them.
Would you rather be spoon-fed your future, or would you rather KNOW exactly why you’re losing? Would you rather live ignorant of your weight-loss and be a drone to a program that works for reasons you can’t actually explain, or learn how your nutrition affects your mood, weight and progress?
Learning about proper macronutrients, and why your body functions as it does, can make it so that you don’t have to count calories. You’ll know, generally, that what you’re eating is conducive to weight-loss. You can’t just skip to that step, though. It takes investment in yourself and in your knowledge.
Much like how you can’t read a book of punches and kicks and expect to be a martial artist, you can’t just read a diet program and be a weight-loss expert. Our egos would love that, but that ain’t the way the world works, friend.
Learn, grow and do.
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Do Better Fitness 
So much this. My most recent (and first) blog post talks about these weight loss programs and their failings. You can go vegan or vegetarian, but if you consume more calories than you lose, you’re just not going to lose the weight. The diet schemes out there just don’t teach people how to manage their own weight loss and fitness goals, which means that you end up with a bunch of people who think of vegetarianism and low fat diets as quick ways of dropping the extra pounds. If people don’t believe that vegetarianism isn’t a quick method of losing weight, I can tell them otherwise; I’m a vegetarian who actually gained a few pounds after I stopped working out. The best way to drop weight is to develop a healthy lifestyle which includes physically activity and a balanced diet that create that deficit people are looking for. It’s rather simple (assuming that you’re not someone with extenuating circumstances), not that diet companies want anyone to do this on his/her own.
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Its good to see someone else espousing the simplicity of weight loss.
Seriously have no idea why it is hard for people to mention “make sure you are in deficit.” My best guess is because their posts are more concerned with getting views than helping people.
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Hi, you probably should change “•Eat high-fat and high-protein (keto)” to moderate protein or change the keto to (atkins). If anything true keto is actually on the lower protein side of moderate. Thanks for the like on my last post.
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If you’re making a semantic point, re: “true” ketogenic as a means of combating epilepsy and controlling seizures, then you’d be correct. That seems to me to be a superfluous point to make, though.
In the context of weight-loss, where the goal of the diet is to lose weight and maintain muscle mass, then consuming high protein and high fat is the ideal way to go about it.
I haven’t gone through your blog in great detail, and if the point is to espouse the benefits of ketogenics as a treatment-diety, then yes: 90% fat is the correct ratio.
My blog, however, discusses diets in the context of weight-loss and body recomposition. As such, a high-protein high-fat macronutrient ratio is appropriate.
Granted, consuming too much protein causes some of it to be broken down into glucose via gluconeogenesis, and can inhibit fat loss–however, I very highly doubt that is the point you were making.
Thanks for reading.
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Sorry didn’t mean to sound like I was trolling, it was just a recommended edit. Nutritional Ketogenic Diet is classified as low carbs, moderate protein, high fat. That’s all I meant.
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Oh, I didn’t take it as trolling. I just wanted to clarify for any readers who might see that and get confused.
I try to keep everything in proper context on this blog, because when it comes to nutrition (and really, everything) context is crucial. I wouldn’t write about “true” ketogenics for weight loss purposes because “true” ketogenic is less effective for that than high-protein ketogenic.
However, I didn’t specify that in my post, so it was worth discussing in response to your comment.
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No worries, good luck with your blog
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Interesting.
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