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—————- The next find out more meeting for our March programme is on Tuesday 23rd February which is in [cntdwn todate=“27 August 2019 23:59″ timeoff=”0″ showhours=”0″ showmins=”0″ pretext=””] Check myrise.co.uk/briefing-meeting to find out more, see what the meeting involves and, potentially, take that next step to transforming your life and body
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I saw a Facebook advert the other day.
For a “28-days Low-Cab diet plan that is easy to follow”.
I was intrigued by the attached image (shown and REDACTED to protect the b̶u̶l̶l̶s̶h̶i̶t̶t̶e̶r̶s̶ innocent).
22kgs of weight lost in four weeks?
That’s 48.4lbs.
Based on there being 3,500 calories of energy stored in a pound of body fat (open for debate on accuracy but won’t be a million miles from the truth)………..
That’s 169,400 cals of energy to be released from fat stores in 28 days.
A little over 6,000 per day.
And that’s the deficit to be created.
Assuming the plan involves eating, that would mean the body having to use 7 to 8 thousand calories of energy per day.
Resting calorie usage plus a double marathon (the 26.2 mile run, not what is now known as a Snickers unfortunately) for an average sized person.
Every day.
No I know some people swear by the ketogenic diet (a very low carb, high fat, moderate protein eating approach that can cause the body to use ketones as an energy source more than glucose).
And, as with most things, if it works for someone, that’s cool.
But it’s not magic.
The studies have shown time and time again that it works when in a calorie deficit.
The energy is still coming from and going to somewhere – it isn’t ceasing to exist.
And there is no statistically worthwhile difference (from a weight loss perspective) between different macro (carbs, fat and protein) ratios, when matched for total calories.
The keto diet has been shown to be an effective approach for epilepsy (and some other conditions).
But a doctor would be prescribing that, not a Facebook advert.
And if someone wanted to do it for a short period as a way they found effective to lose weight, that’s cool.
As long as the overall average of what they did didn’t adversely affect other health markers, it can be a ‘method’ someone incorporates in order to hit the required ‘principle’ of calorie deficit.
Remember “Methods are many, principles are few. Methods often change, principle never do”.
But, there’s no way around the fact that to lose 22kgs of fat in four weeks an (approximately) 6,000 calorie a day deficit has to occur.
Or we’re losing weight from some other source such as food and water in our system, retained water (both fine, to a point), muscle, organs or bone (not so good).
So, this eating plan can only work with one (or more) of the following happening:
1 – Loss of none fat weight
B – Massive amounts of exercise
3 – Magic
And the third one is the most likely really.
Two points to take home here;
A – There’s nothing wrong with using different methods for different reasons if they work for you and you understand the principle behind them
2 – Ads like this are bollocks
Much love,
Jon ‘Have tried keto and, like anything, it works if you do it properly. But it’s hard to do while living a normal life’ Hall and Matt ‘ogenic’ Nicholson
P.S. If science and, you know, fact based approaches are your thing, check out the next step with us at myrise.co.uk/briefing-meeting.
