How To Lose Weight While Eating More

Photo by Gabin Vallet on Unsplash

I’ve been in the fitness and wellness space for a minute, and when it comes to fat loss, “calorie deficit” is the go-to phrase for trainers, nutritionists, and wellness professionals alike.

And while this isn’t “wrong,” it is pretty vague. We all know you need to consume less energy than you expend, but the question is, “how?” How you go about a calorie deficit is the single most crucial part of your fat loss journey because your approach (“the how”) will not only determine how successful you’ll be but also how sustainable the results (and process) are.

The How

To understand the two strategies you can use to create a calorie deficit, you must first understand energy flux. Energy flux can is the “absolute level of energy intake and expenditure under conditions of energy balance.”

You can take a low or high energy flux approach when creating a caloric deficit. Low energy flux is low-calorie expenditure paired with low-calorie consumption, while high energy flux is high-calorie expenditure paired with increased calorie consumption. The more calories you expend, the more you can consume, whether you’re maintaining or losing weight.

There’s this bizarre idea going around that the first thing people should consider when looking to lose weight is their food quantity. In my humble and professional opinion, that’s bogus, especially if said “people” are in the U.S. According to the CDC, 25 percent of Americans sit for more than 8 hours of the day. But listen, although sitting gets a bad rep, it isn’t the problem; inactivity is. Sitting is simply a position of rest.

Our bodies are designed to move, discover, explore, play. Movement is integral to our existence. Our ability (or inability) to move dramatically influences how we learn, communicate, and even survive.

What This Means For You

First, I’d like to make clear what this doesn’t mean. This doesn’t mean you now need to turn your 45-minute gym session into a 90-minute gym session or that you should now run a 5k every day.

This means that you should make exercise more ambiguous and opt for more movement. Walk, bike, take the stairs, pace around your apartment, fidget, play, and so on. Exercise is essential, but it’s far too structured. To increase your daily caloric expenditure in any sustainable way, you need more unstructured movement. Because if exercise is your primary source of movement throughout the day, you’re doing it wrong.

For those of you who need something less ambiguous than “move more,” I’ve outlined some general guidelines of ways to increase daily movement and thus calorie expenditure. In incorporating these suggestions, not only will you reap the physiological benefits of increased movement, but you’ll also be able to eat more during your fat loss phase (sounds like a win-win to me).

1. Walk 10,000 steps every day (or 70,000/week). Some people might be tired of the steps/day phenomenon, but it holds validity. Your body will reap the benefits of increased walking up to at least 16,000 daily steps. This task is much easier if you choose walking as a primary mode of transportation.
2. Take some movement breaks. Break up your days with intermittent movement. If you spend most of your day sitting, take a few laps around the office (or home) every hour. Not only does this movement lead to calorie burn, but it stimulates the brain and protein production within the muscles. Opt for movement-based forms of transportation such as biking, walking, or skating. Integrate several 5–10 minute movement breaks throughout your days. Keep them short in the beginning. Remember, the lower the barrier to entry, the better when it comes to habit building.
3. Do 30–40 minutes of steady-state cardio five days/week. The average American doesn’t do nearly enough aerobic activity. The national consensus is 150 minutes of moderate-intensity (at least). Ironically, the better your aerobic health, the more energy you’ll have throughout the day to move. Translation: the more you move, the more you’ll want to move.

The more you integrate movement into your day, the less it’ll seem like a “thing you have to do” and more like the thing you do because it’s a part of who you are and your habits.