Trick Your Metabolism into Burning More Calories

Diet experts and trainers almost always advise their clients to lose weight by the Law of Energy Balance:

To lose weight, you must burn more calories than you consume each day.
To gain weight, you must consume more calories than you burn each day.

The basic problem with this axiom, is that while calories count, they aren’t countable. The actual caloric content of food may vary 20-30 percent higher or lower than the caloric content listed in the nutritional tables. Some days you follow your diet and you exceed your calorie goals. Some days you follow your diet and you don’t consume enough calories.

The way to deal with this reality is not to ignore calories. It is to use them as a rough guideline—and there are actual benefits to the fact that nature counts calories with “fuzzy” math. The inherent variability of calorie content in whole foods—the calorie content of say, a Twinkie, is nearly constant—allows you to “cycle” your calorie intake.

When you first restrict your food intake, your body responds by producing fewer thyroid hormones so the smaller amount of food provided by your diet provides energy longer. If you restrict calories by just 500 calories a day for just 10 days, your resting metabolism will be 5-7 percent slower for six months.

If you eat a normal number of calories just one day in ten, however, your resting metabolism does not slow down. Adding back 500 calories for just one day does not slow your weight loss, but it keeps you from gaining weight back once you stop your diet.

How can you be sure you are cycling? One day in a week, increase your portion size by one-third or one-fourth for every meal you eat that day. Then go back to your diet plan the next day and for the rest of the week. Or, if you have trouble resisting certain “forbidden” foods, splurge once a week. Just make sure you only splurge once a week!

Whatever diet plan you choose, be sure to eat some carbohydrate foods and some protein foods at each meal. Proteins cannot be stored like carbohydrates. Your body needs some protein every time it uses carbohydrates. If you eat all carbs, your body has to strip protein out of muscle.

If you get no exercise at all, this effect may not be noticeable. If you exercise—and you should exercise—separating carbohydrates and proteins at mealtime will lead to slower weight loss and possible fat gain. Fiber-rich carbohydrates are absorbed gradually and stimulate the least release of insulin and the least storage of fat.