The Man Who Lost Weight By Eating More

That's right, I once had a client who wasn't losing weight until he increased the amount food he was eating each day. Sounds too good to be true, and it kind of is. Here's what happened.

Stephen was a determined client, who was well on his way to looking lean and muscular. Until plateau struck! He was working out, eating lots of protein and tracking calories diligently using my fitness pal.. but, only on weekdays.

Weekends would roll around and Stephen would reward himself for all his hard work by blowing out. Eating way more calories than usual and undoing all of his efforts from the week.

Stephen and I had a chat and he told me that his calorie target on my fitness pal was 1500, which was kind of low for a guy of his size and activity level. Now physiologically there's nothing wrong with eating low calories, it's a pretty effective way to lose weight if you can do it consistently. But from a behaviour stand point, eating that little can make you feel restricted and hungry, sometimes causing you to say "eff it" and eating everything in sight. And that's exactly what was happening to Stephen.

Stephen started eating more during the week, be changed his calorie target to 2000 which was still less than he was burning each day, and BAM! No more weekend blow outs.

So yes Stephen did technically eat more too more weight, but only because his calories were too low to begin with. He didn't go in to "starvation mode", his body wasn't "holding on to the fat because it didn't know when more food was coming" (these are actual theories). He was just overeating in the weekends after a hard week of being to restricted.