Why you can’t lose weight!

For never was a story of more woe

Than lie of dieting and muscle growth.

Or the true reason why you can’t lose your weight, despite 1200 kcal daily and Olympic workouts.

In the experiment on the overweight group of people with traumatic stories of weight loss[1], the initial aim was to lower the expenditure level, but the BMR level varies only 5 per cent from the predicted one. Thus, I’m sceptically reading the comments like “Really, I can lose weight only by eating 1200 kcal”.

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On the other hand, the number of calories was  47% underestimated, while the energy expenditure level was overestimated by 51%. Moreover, most of the individuals mentioned that they maintain the meal plan, but are genetically predisposed to being overweight or are struggling from hypothyreosis. In fact, all the people in the experiment ate 2 times as much as was predicted and worked out 2 times less than reported.

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Weight loss challenges are like - run 100 meters - feel tired - reports “I’ve been running all day”

So, manual how 1200 kcal transform into 2265 and report 1200:

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1️. You are not counting veggies. “Green vegetables have 0 calories, red we need to count only after 12 and the blue ones are invisible at nights”

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2️. You are not counting snacks. “One cookie is just 1 cookie. Only 1 small french fries to feel the taste.” - why spending time and emotions on such small things!⠀

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3️. You are not counting dropdowns. 3 days, 1200 calories each! Wow, such progress, you need to tweet about it. Tons of soda during weekends are not counting, cheat meal, you know!

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4️. You are counting approximately. Weighing the meals - sooooo boring.

What to do in those rare cases when you are REALLY eating 1200Kc, I’ll write separately.

[1] Discrepancy between self-reported and actual caloric intake and exercise in obese subjects.