IT’S CALORIES THAT COUNT BY BILL DOBBINS FOR LOSING WEIGHT, HOW MUCH YOU EAT MATTERS MORE THAN WHAT YOU EAT The world is full of competing claims as to what kind of diet is best when it comes to losing fat. Various programmes advocate high or low levels of protein intake, high or low carbohydrates and fat, a lot of fruit or very little, and everything in-between. But scientific studies and the experience of competitive bodybuilders over the decades have proven that what you need to lose bodyfat is to be in negative calorific balance, no matter what types and proportions of food your diet includes. That is, you have to take in fewer calories than you burn through basic metabolic processes and physical activity. The term calorie is really just a measure of heat, and therefore energy. Protein contains four calories per gram of energy, as do carbohydrates. Fat, on the other hand, is more energy dense, at nine calories per gram. Each of these nutrients has a different biochemical structure and performs different functions in the body. But once broken down by the digestive system, all food is made up of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, with protein also containing nitrogen. Therefore, at a fundamental level, a calorie of energy is a calorie of energy, regardless of the source from which it comes. This statement challenges a lot of widely held assumptions – that carbohydrates make you fat; that ingesting fat in the diet will cause you to store bodyfat at a disproportionately high rate. The goal of this article is to help clarify whether these commonly held assumptions are true, or, if in fact, success in dieting is more a matter of calorific intake than specific nutritional balance. Of course, if you’re trying to lose bodyfat rather than just body weight, how much protein you eat is also important. You can’t build or maintain muscle mass if you deprive yourself of sufficient protein. A study done in 1996(1), that still holds weight today, involved giving a group of participants adequate amounts of protein while they exercised regularly (which is also necessary when it comes to conserving lean body mass). They were all put on reduced-calorie regimes, with each group taking in the same amount of calories per day, but their diets were composed of slightly different amounts of protein and considerably different amounts of carbohydrate and fat. The two diets used were: (1) 32% protein 15% carbohydrate 53% fat (2) 29% protein 45% carbohydrate 26% fat The result was a similar degree of weight loss in both groups over a six-week period, indicating that “it was energy intake, not nutrient composition, that determined weight loss in response to low-energy diets over a short time period.” This result should not surprise you. After all, fat stores in the body represent an energy surplus. Therefore, the logical way to reduce your body’s stores of fat would obviously be to create a situation of energy deficit, which, as mentioned before, means taking in less energy than your body requires over a given period of time. Of course, there are health hazards associated with eating too much fat, including greater risk of heart disease and certain cancers, but this research doesn’t involve high-fat, high-calorie diets. Rather, this is about low-calorie diets that contain a greater or lesser percentage of fat versus carbohydrates. Analysing this study, it seems it was designed with bodybuilders in mind. For example: (1) The subjects were required to exercise during the course of their diets. Exercise not only burns additional calories, but it helps keep muscle in good condition. Obviously, exercise is a primary part of a bodybuilding programme. (2) The calorific intake for each subject was distributed over four meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner and bedtime snack) rather than the traditional three. Bodybuilders as a rule eat at least four meals a day, and often up to six or more. (3) While the protein content of the two diets varied, it didn’t vary by much, and in both cases was sufficient enough to prevent the loss of muscle tissue due to protein deprivation. No matter what kind of diet a bodybuilder is on, it almost invariably involves substantial protein consumption. (4) The combination of low calories plus exercise created a sufficient amount of energy deficit to result in significant weight loss over a relatively short period of time. When you stop to analyse it, the results of this study do not mean that bodybuilder A is correct in his diet and bodybuilder B is wrong – quite the opposite, actually. The take-home meaning here is that any approach to a fat-loss, muscle-sparing diet plan – high or low carbs, high or low fat, eating dairy or not, etc. – is probably going to work, as long as: (1) You create an energy deficit with a combination of low calories and exercise. (2) You exercise effectively and efficiently. (3) You eat enough protein to sustain your muscle mass. “I’m not that surprised by the findings of this study,” says Armand Tanny, Muscle & Fitness writer and former Mr. USA. “Over the years, bodybuilders have tried a lot of different diets. I’ve seen some pretty strange approaches to dieting, let me tell you. But the one thing they all had in common, if they were successful, was taking in less food – reducing calories. That’s the unchanging common denominator.” As a matter of fact, this study is unlikely to change the dietary practices of most top bodybuilders, who tend to keep their protein intake high, limit both fat and carbohydrate intake to reduce calories as much as possible, and further encourage an energy deficit by daily lifting and aerobic exercise. These three factors – training, protein, low calories – are what make the bodybuilding diet work so well. The findings of this research should help to reassure those who are concerned that eating any significant amount of fat will cause their bodies to produce excessive fat, or who believe that allowing more than a tiny amount of carbohydrate into their diets will lead to an inevitable weight gain. When it comes to losing weight, the valid approach seems to be: eat enough protein to maintain muscle mass and create a calorie deficit (by eating less and exercising more). In other words, with certain restrictions, to lose weight, how much you eat is more significant than what you eat. M&F References 1. A Golay, AF Allaz, Y Morel, N de Tonnac, S Tankova, and G Reaven. Similar weight loss with low- or high-carbohydrate diets. Am. J. Clinical Nutrition, Feb 1996; 63: 174 - 178.

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