What Other Eating Styles Can We Compare Fasting to?

From subchapter 8 in Chap. 1 of smArtFast: A Simple Guide to Weight Management

What Can We Compare Fasting To?

Being aware of other diet approaches and why they are popular is important because when comparing them to fasting it is easy to see how much more effective and safe fasting can be over the long-term. Some common dietary approaches include Calorie Reduction Theory, the Exercise More Myth, and Grazing.

Calorie Reduction Theory: Calories in - Calories out = Body Fat. This way of thinking assumes that body fat and weight loss is achieved by simply decreasing the calories we take in.

Why it is a popular assumption:

1. Simplicity: Because counting calories is the easy thing to do and generalize around why we gain or lose weight
2. The Real Equation for Calories Out is complicated: Because asking people to measure the body’s Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) is a complicated formula that most don’t understand (learn more about TDEE in Chap. 2)
3. Doctors and Government Policies: Our world leaders can prescribe pills and suggest eating less but seldom do they prescribe or teach fasting as a weight loss alternative

Why it doesn’t work:

1. Weight loss plateaus & Homeostasis activates to return to Body Set Weight (BSW): Because decreasing Calories In triggers mechanisms in the body to decrease Calories Out meaning if we eat less then the body will slow metabolism, increase hunger, and will have less energy to move in an effort to survive
2. Side effects: Since metabolism is slowed and the body is in survival mode body temperature drops and you feel cold, blood pressure also drops, concentration and focus becomes difficult and interest in anything other than food becomes a challenge
3. Because calories are not the only thing we need to consider when the goal is weight loss –what foods we eat, when we eat it, and how our body’s mechanisms respond to the food all affect weight gain along with taking in more calories

Exercise More Myth: Eat Less, Move More. This way of thinking assumes that lasting weight loss can be achieved by simply eating less and exercising more.

Why it is a popular assumption:

1. Simplicity: Because it easy for the average person to think of Calories Out as just exercise or physical movement and not a complicated equation like TDEE
2. Lots of money is spent on marketing exercise equipment & programs: Because social media and TV marketing know how important weight loss is to each of us and uses this to sell their products. They have mastered mass ad campaigns in selling weight loss as a product rather than a discipline

Why it doesn’t work:

1. Too much focus is given to exercise: ‘Abs are made in the kitchen’ meaning Diet choices make up nearly 95 percent of weight gain/ loss but we often give more than 50/50 attention to exercise as if it were equal to diet
2. Overcompensation & Limitation: It also doesn’t work because when we think we can ‘outwork’ our poor eating habits by increasing exercise homeostasis will activate to get more calories in to balance out the calories out being used during the extra exercise. Also it is common knowledge that there is a limit to how long and how much exercise we can perform before it becomes a health risk
3. Exercise is not the only thing that burns calories: Yes, exercise is one part of the TDEE equation but the majority of calories (up to 95 percent) are used for maintaining basal metabolic rate which measures functions such as breathing, keeping the heart pumping, body temperature control, etc.

Grazing: A dietary approach that assumes that by increasing the amount of meals eaten per day, we can increase metabolic rate enough for effective weight loss

Why it is a popular assumption:

1. Because sports trainers and bodybuilders made it popular to eat 6-8 meals a day claiming it increased their metabolism enough to keep them lean when really it was their amount of training and other untold methods
2. This myth has also only been popularized in recent years because Big Food spends lots of money on marketing foods that can easily become addictive with the goal of having everyone spend more on food

Why it doesn’t work:

1. While eating more meals a day does cause a slight increase in metabolic rate in the thermogenic effect of food (TDEE), this assumption is false because that slight increase is not enough to make up the difference in the additional caloric intake of food, often poor diet choices, longer periods of elevated insulin levels, and blood sugar response
2. Increasing meal count is also an ineffective diet approach because it runs the risk of us developing diet-derailing habits such as grazing through our pantries with whatever is available throughout the day and mindless snacking at night to meet number of meals per day