Eat To Perform Blog

Ok, let’s get right into it because there are often fixes people don’t consider when it comes to struggling with weight loss (one specifically for sure):

1. Are hormones a factor? It would be hard to say they aren’t but they often aren’t THE BIGGEST factor. For instance, through Eat To Perform Health (currently in BETA) you can get your hormones checked and even get replacement for hormones you are deficient in but it rarely kick-starts weight loss. People often THINK it’s hormones and they are right a bit but not often in the way they think. I will try and address this in another answer. So yes it probably is hormones a bit, yes there is a fix (hormone replacement) but no it likely won’t kick-start weight loss the way most people think it will. It is in combination with something else that is a much bigger factor.

2. When people think of activity they often think of exercise and don’t realize how active they were when they were younger. For instance, it might have been common that you wouldn’t have worked out when you were younger but with more energy you were technically more active. In scientific terms this is called NEAT (non exercise activity thermogenesis) basically when you are younger you sit down less and walk around more. Sometimes even muscle twitching and leg bouncing because you had so much energy. So that was a bigger factor than most people consider. Being more conscious of steps can help with this a bit.

3. We don’t keep the muscle we have and we often aren’t building more muscle as we go. That said, part of the reason we aren’t keeping the muscle we have will be addressed here in a bit. You can do all the weight training you want but if you are hormone deficient and you don’t have other parts in place also (the parts below) you are often just spinning your wheels.

4. It’s also hard to argue that alcohol doesn’t play a role for a lot of people. The reality is that alcohol doesn’t add a lot to your calorie equation overall. It also works against the way your body metabolizes food. Often as teenagers as an example alcohol isn’t a factor, as alcohol becomes more of a factor, especially with higher calories but sometimes even without it can be a big way to pack on pounds. Which often makes the hole bigger and for some the hole gets so big that the want to do something about it can go away.

5. The biggest factor and it really isn’t close comes down to math, metabolic math. Think about it, when you ate like an idiot in the past all you had to do was mix in a salad, go for a jog and bam, you dropped a few pounds. So as we age we often OVER ADJUST and weirdly eating healthier is simply fewer calories eaten over time. While that is a good thing it works until it doesn’t. Then what often happens is you lose a few pounds, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze and frankly ribs and beer taste better than misery. So whatever you lost comes back with interest. So then you "eat clean" (eat less) you go keto (eat less), Intermittent Fast (eat less), track macros (eat less) and what you find is that you are dieting more than you are not dieting. Metabolic math is simple, your body likes more food, when you combine that with activity it will often keep muscle on your frame and build some along the way. For example, if you weighed 150 pounds and ate 3000 calories but now weigh 200 pounds eating the same 3000 calories you technically have a better metabolism, not a worse one.

The reality is that the more you diet the worse you get at dieting. That doesn’t mean that is the case for everyone but there are some constants that will help everyone do all of this better. So the BIG FIX is to have a much better understanding of what a good amount of calories is for you (which is why it needs to be customized like we do here at Eat To Perform). Once you have THAT number subtracting for weight loss becomes MUCH easier and much more intuitive.

Lastly I want to address sugar cravings, when you under-eat most of the time and you experience something like stress or after a workout you won’t crave chicken or kale. Your body wants calories and fast, this is why some people crave sugar and others crave fat but we mostly crave SUGAR AND FAT together because it’s much easier to consume when together. If you are eating an adequate amount of food most of the time (and that number is often a lot bigger than you think) you just don’t crave foods like that, for one because you can often easily fit it in but also because you are eating enough most of the time that you don’t have big swings in hunger the way you would if you are constantly trying to lose weight.

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