Cutting Calories Doesn’t Work
Rob Faigin uses simple math to refute the theory of cutting calories:
Consider this: whatever your current daily calorie consumption average is, let’s say that you increased it by an average of 400 calories per day for a year, without deliberately changing your activity level. Then let’s say you increased your average calorie consumption by another 600 calories per day for the following year. If you do the math, with a pound of fat equaling 3500 calories, this would mean that in those two years you should gain over 100 pounds, right? Not likely.
You would likely gain some weight in the scenario depicted above, but, time and again, studies have shown that a consistent linear positive relationship between calorie consumption and weight gain simply does not exist. Furthermore, when weight is gained as a result of overfeeding, there is a tendency to gravitate back to the pre-overfeeding weight following resumption of normal eating. Incidentally, the hypothetical presented in the foregoing paragraph describes an actual study carried-out by a German scientist. At the end of the second year he weighed almost exactly the same as he did before the study began! Where did the extra 365,000 calories go? Not to his waist, or his hips, or his arms or legs. Answer: they were “wasted” by the body as part of a million-year-old metabolic adaptation.
Similarly, if there existed an airtight mathematical relationship between caloric intake and weight loss, cutting daily caloric intake from 3000 to 1000 calories would result in a 60,000 calorie deficit and, correspondingly, a 17-pound weight loss in the first month - that’s possible (although much of it would be water and glycogen loss, not fat loss) - and would result in a 200-pound weight loss after a year. What if the person began the diet weighing 200 pounds, would he disappear?