Please keep in mind while reading this that I do not claim to be a nutrition expert. I’m just a fat powerlifter who has been able to take off and keep off 85 lbs. I share my experiences because I know a lot of people out there have the same struggle.
I can’t tell you how many times I screwed up a perfectly good training program by trying to make it better. I would have the contest of my life and sure enough six months down the road I would be deviating from the program that got me there. Then I’d look back wondering why results were stalling, and I I’d see that I had lost my way. I realized a lot of the changes were the result of too much information. In the quest to do everything better, I fell into that trap of paralysis through analysis.
I just ran into the above mentioned problem with my diet. In my studies I came across a few things that caused me to raise my eyebrows. The first was leptin. Leptin is a hormone that plays a big part in weight management and hunger. This is one of the reasons why cheat meals can play an important role in a diet. The way I understand it is the calorie surplus from the cheat meal will help normalize leptin levels. There are reams of information on the subject; I just shared my layman’s take on it. So of course now I start wondering if I’m cheating correctly or if I’m cheating enough.
Before I address the old leptin issue I’ll share the other nugget I noticed in my plunge down the diet rabbit hole, cortisol. Cortisol a hormone that is released when you are stressed. When cortisol levels are elevated you can suffer muscle breakdown and fat gains. There’s a lot more to it, but my days of writing term papers have long since passed.
The reason cortisol caught my interest is because I came across an article that said counting calories can cause stress. When you get stressed, cortisol levels go up. As we learned from the paragraph above elevated cortisol is no bueno where dieting is concerned.
So now I have leptin telling me I need to cheat on my diet and cortisol telling me I can’t count calories. If I’m not mistaken, it was an abundance of cheat meals and an utter disregard for calorie counting that created the body up there on the left. Holy crap I’m confused. How the heck am I supposed to lose weight with this new information? I have a decent grasp on dieting and this news has me shaking my head. I can’t imagine how perplexing this must be for someone just beginning their weight loss journey.
What have I learned from all this? Stop reading so much! I’m doing fine on my diet. I am making slow and steady progress. I don’t need to make anything better. I just need to keep working hard. That’s not to say arming ourselves with information is not important. We just can’t start making wholesale changes because we read something new.
This whole debacle makes me think of a brilliant quote from Jim Wendler. When people start worrying too much about assistance work in their strength program he says “Don’t major in the minor’s.” If you spend too much time worrying about the little things you forget about the big things. I find that true for a fat loss program as well. Eat quality foods; keep your calories lower than maintenance, exercise and you will lose weight. Stick to the basics people and we’ll all be fine.