How eating more can help you lose weight!

Good evening everyone, welcome to blog post Monday!

Keeping with the same popular topic of fat loss, todays topic is how eating MORE food can help you to lose weight.

First, we’re going to start with our favorite macronutrient and the biggest trend since carb free diets were a thing, PROTEIN. You’ve heard of it, you’ve seen it on every package everywhere, todays marketing appears to target the consumer looking to “get fit” by adding the word protein followed by the number of grams of protein in said product. The downside here is that it is just that, marketing. Before you dive in to that “high protein” snack bar, take a look at the other macronutrients. Many “protein bars” you see in the grocery stores contain just 10g of protein, which to start is hardly anything and secondly the next highest macronutrient is commonly sugar. So what you’ve just purchased is a chocolate bar with some protein in it. It goes without saying that eating whole, nutritious foods for your protein source is a far healthier option.

But why protein for fat loss?

Well, have you ever heard of the term “thermic effect of food” or TEF. TEF is defined as the increase in metabolic rate after ingestion of a meal.(1) TEF is responsible for approximately 10% of all caloric intake of health adults who eat a standard mixed-macronutrient diet. (2) However, it is not as simple as this. Other factors that effect the total TEF for you are; age, meal timing and macronutrient composition of each meal. So how does this look with the 3 macronutrients:

Fat - provides 9 calories per gram and it’s TEF is 0-5%

Carbohydrate - provides 4 calories per gram and it’s TEF is 5-10%

Protein - provides 4 calories per gram and it’s TEF is 20-30%

What is metabolic rate you ask? Metabolic rate is the overall rate of tissue oxidation of fuels by all the body’s organs. RMR or resting metabolic rate refers to the amount of energy used while the body is at rest. For example, if you were lying down all day and did absolutely nothing, your RMR is your bodies total expenditure for the day. TEF is related to this as it refers to the increase in RMR after you have consumed food and accounts for that 10% we discussed earlier.

How can we optimize our TEF to our benefit?

Meal Frequency

You’ve all heard you have to eat more meals through the day to “speed up” your metabolism right? Well, unfortunately that just isn’t true. Interestingly enough, consuming a single giant meal will actually produce a greater thermic effect, however, before you go and consume 3000 calories in one meal, you should know there is no significant difference in doing this versus consuming those 3000 calories over smaller meals.