The less you eat the more fat

By Dr. Fabio Schirru

Of course the title of my article is provocative ... I decided to write this article because I feel more and more often, people who turn to me for food advice, for a real diet or even just chatting with friends, they make me now mythical question ...

"But why can't I lose weight ??? Yet I don't eat who knows what ... in fact, I eat a little !!!"

Well, my first thought is "Here's another one" and of course my first answer after smiling is ... "Well, you have to see how little this is ..."

In reality in most cases the person eats very little ...

A sweet breakfast at the bar, lunch outside with a salad and a nice meal complete with pasta and bread for dinner, because in the evening "I'm finally home and then I cook a little for myself".

What to say, nothing more wrong. Especially if your goal is to lose weight.

Our body, if we say it, is a perfect machine with its well-oiled mechanisms and its countermeasures to remedy our numerous errors. And that's exactly what he does when we eat little. Our body, despite millions of years since man's first appearance, has still maintained its primitive behaviors. It reacts almost instinctively, as if to protect itself, against what it judges as the beginning of a period of famine, trying in some way to survive the threat of lack of food.

More or less slowly, depending on the caloric restriction, the body begins to change its metabolism, which is the amount of energy necessary to carry out the activities of everyday life.

Imagine a woman who needs about 1800 Kcal to carry out all her daily activities and for a variety of reasons, starts to eat 1000 Kcal a day. After an initial period of adjustment and consequent weight loss (attention, I said weight not fat) the metabolism will continue to fall, getting closer and closer to those 1000 Kcal that are introduced with food every day.

This is because the body, seeing itself arrive less fuel than it actually needs, thinks: "Oh, here I know that we should start saving because otherwise it ends badly".

The biggest problem is that the metabolism slows down very quickly and does not manage to return to its normal levels.

The weight loss obtained up to this point causes a loss of fluids, a destruction and cannibalization of the muscular masses and a tiny part of a loss of fat mass. This triggers a vicious circle that further slows consumption as the muscle masses are important metabolism accelerators.

Not to mention what a diet like the one mentioned above can cause. After a sweet breakfast and a miserable lunch, I challenge anyone not to get home after a day of hard and stressful work with a hunger that devours the entire refrigerator ... And that's how it was in the last meal of the day (when in reality the day is over and most probably the evening will be spent in relax) most of the daily calories are introduced.

The newly introduced calories, not being used due to the lack of evening activity, are "set aside" by the body that still remembers the periods of famine and carries on with work. Needless to say, all of this causes an increase in body fat.

Starting from a situation like the one just described (which is widespread), in order to achieve the objectives sought by the patient, the professional must:

1. restore metabolism to normal levels through a normocaloric diet and adequate training
2. carry out a correct nutrition education
3. implement a low-calorie diet to encourage weight loss

So, first bring the metabolism back to normal levels and only then implement a low-calorie diet that could not have been successful before. Therefore it is essential that there is an accurate planning of the dietary path and not an improvisation or worse still a "do it yourself" diet.

In order to guarantee the achievement of the results the 5 fundamental points in the treatment of patients are:

1. a correct dietary and pathological history
2. the calculation of the energy needs of the individual
3. anthropometric measurements
4. the preparation of the diet plan
5. periodic checks to ensure that results are maintained

All very specialized operations that only an adequate course of study can provide.

It is also important to remember that every individual has different needs and therefore the only possible approach is the individual and personalized one that pays attention to life habits, food, possible pathologies, blood tests (vulgarly "blood tests") and all those elements that make us completely different from each other.

My advice is to contact a dietitian or other specialists in the food industry.

Beware of those who have other specializations and pretend to be food gurus without having followed a degree course and having graduated. There are too many people who, in order to earn money every day, abuse a profession that is not their own, not even imagining in the least what damage can be done to the health of a person with an improvised or preprinted diet plan ...