Challenging Our Nutrition Mindset
May 23, 2021If we pay attention, we can notice an increasing awareness of nutritional health around us. In the midst of sources such as online/magazine articles, books, research studies, professional advice, or word of mouth, information is truly limitless. The objective should be to increase knowledge and education, clear misconceptions, and fill gaps within our understanding of nutrition. However, instead of building a fundamental understanding of what is correct, we are often biased in our research, and further feed our misconceptions. Naturally, we want to continue believing what we have been taught in the past, or what we deem convenient to understand. Nutrition is a broad science that can be challenging to comprehend, and the value of facing these challenges is heavily overlooked.
Fat Loss: The low-calorie misconception
The most common goal for a typical fitness enthusiast, exerciser, dieter, or anyone wanting to improve their health, is losing weight. Firstly, we’ll be more specific and call it losing body fat instead. Losing weight can mean losing muscle, water, or bone density, and can even have a negative effect on someone’s body composition and overall appearance. Therefore, losing body fat and improving body composition should be the more desirable objective. The general consensus is that in order to lose body fat, we need to eat less. If you ask ten people for advice on dieting for fat loss, chances are nine people will tell you to decrease your food/caloric intake. This normally can include a significant decline in calories, or exclusion of certain foods from your diet, most commonly junk foods or carbohydrate-rich foods. We thoughtlessly accept these recommendations, because over time we have built an understanding that we need a caloric deficit to lose fat, or that carbohydrates make us gain weight.
Metabolic Damage and Restoration
We can encounter numerous situations in which we find ourselves struggling to lose body fat, or we are trying to help another individual but we have hit a roadblock. In many of these instances, if we analyze the caloric intake on average, it is already fairly low. In fact, several overweight individuals have been on a persistently low caloric intake for years, even decades. So if the best method to drop body fat is to create a caloric deficit, we can either recommend them to reduce their calories even more, or increase their physical activity. In most cases, lowering the caloric intake, or eliminating certain macronutrients from their diet can be further detrimental to their metabolism, making it even harder for them to drop body fat. We rarely ever tell someone to increase their caloric intake to drop body fat, when in several cases, this is often what is required to restore their metabolic activity and normalize their internal functions down to the cellular level. The goal is to strive for balance in a diet, and the best way to ensure that is to not necessarily eliminate foods from a diet, but rather add essential foods and fill in the gaps required. The average diet for someone struggling with fat loss is often devoid of critical components such as water, vegetables, fruit, healthy fats, fibre, and a good macronutrient balance. Instead, low-nutrient dense processed foods, generally not from whole-food sources tend to make up a significant portion of the diet. Even starting with these necessary changes can easily increase someone’s total calorie intake, since we have actually added many nutrient-dense foods. However, it is important to note the increase in quality essential nutrients, which are required for our bodies to function the way they should, and help eradicate metabolic imbalances.
Our belief can be so powerful that we’ll accept and acknowledge the “what”, without truly understanding the “why”. It is convenient for us to understand that if we eat more, we will gain weight. However, like many theories within the nutrition field, even this concept is not that simple. Changes in our metabolism can be affected by several factors, such as energy intake, energy expenditure, food sources, genetics, level of physical activity, sleep, and even stress levels. Over time, an individual’s metabolism can continually suffer through poor food choices, restrictive dieting, inactivity, or increasing stresses. Imagine sustaining this lifestyle for several years or decades, then expecting miraculous fat loss successes in a short period of time by reducing calorie intake. Restoring proper metabolic function requires time, effort, and consistency. Nevertheless, a great start would be to introduce essential foods and nutrients, even if that requires an increased caloric intake. Metabolic damage or dysfunction can be a common occurrence, and can interfere with our body’s ability to function optimally and efficiently, which includes improving body composition.
Thinking Ahead
While it is important to consider the various sources of information within the field of nutrition science, we should make an effort to not overly simplify our knowledge closest to our beliefs. Allow yourself to challenge your thinking, understand the science, and make calculative assumptions, which is in fact what a large majority of nutrition experts do. Seeking education to solidify foundational knowledge, which includes understanding the science behind the theories, will be a vital step towards understanding nutrition. Developing this understanding into our mindset can help benefit us and those around us, who are looking to make a change. It is up to us to ensure those steps are taken on the correct path.
