EAT MORE LOSE WEIGHT

The body will adapt to what you give it, so if you aren’t eating enough food and getting enough nutrition, then your body will say, ‘Okay, I need to lower my metabolism’

It sounds like an impossible dream, but if you’re cutting calories without paying attention to where you get them from, you could be starving yourself to no great effect. Losing weight without losing power is as much about what you eat as how little… and you may well need to eat more

Can the answer to losing weight and improving body composition really involve eating more food? In some circumstances, definitely, as Cycling Plus columnist and sports nutritionist Will Girling explained when we met up at Allianz Park, the home of Saracens rugby club, where he would run some tests on me ahead of offering guidance on getting lean.

Despite a visit to the GP seeing me positioned slap-bang in the middle of the ideal BMI range for my height, I’ve been concerned about where the weight lies – in fat, around my waist. This was no doubt due in part to the ever-ready office doughnut supply (some days we put the Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department to shame), but I was running what I thought was a calorie deficit (1500 per day compared to the recommended daily intake of 2500 for a male) and picking up my cycling commute, and things weren’t moving along.

Will stepped up with the guidance that was going to see me eating more (much nearer 2000 calories most days) and shedding fat… and while not everyone can get in a lab for testing, some general principles emerged that can be applied across the board, particularly for those of us with sedentary jobs. Your calorie deficit may not be what you think…

01 Track your calories

I used the MyFitnessPal app to track my daily calorie intake, and it’s an approach Will approves of.

“Tracking food is very important,” he says, “because it allows us to be informed. It can seem like a lot of work, but once you’ve tracked a meal for the first time, you can save it for future use. If you buy prepared food, such as a sandwich at lunchtime, you can often just scan the barcode. As well as tracking calories, the free version of MyFitnessPal will also keep count of the amount of macronutrients – carbohydrate, protein and fat – you’re eating and, as we’ll see later, that’s critical. It doesn’t mean you can’t lose weight without tracking, but it allows you to understand exactly what’s going in.”

02 Measure your RMR

“Everyone wants to know their VO2 max figure when they come to a lab,” Will tells us, “but for an average cyclist looking to lose weight, that information is not critical. Having some knowledge about your resting metabolic rate (RMR) is the key.”

This is the rate at which your resting body burns calories, which gives you an idea of how much food you need to just fuel a day in bed. Given my details, I was predicted to have an RMR of around 1700 calories. After half an hour lying on a mattress hooked up to a machine, it emerged my RMR was less than 1200 calories.

“We encounter this frequently with office-based workers with inactive jobs and a carbohydrate-based diet,” expands Will. “Trying to run a 10 per cent calorie deficit from your predicted RMR would put you at 1500 calories, which is still around 400 more than you need! But if you took into account your lack of activity and

tried to diet from an RMR as low as 1100, then it might be a case of having to eat so little it wouldn’t be recommended for your health.

"Taking the reverse approach of eating more might work better, because as calorie intake increases, we see a subconscious increase in activity outside of exercise, so you end up burning more without even thinking about it.”

So if you think you’re running a calorie deficit, but aren’t seeing the results you would expect, the rest of this feature could hold the answers…

03 Boost metabolism

Will Girling team nutritionist Kas Ghaharian, on hand to assist with our testing, goes further on the subject of increased calorie consumption. “The body will adapt to what you give it," he says, “so if you aren’t eating enough food and getting enough nutrition, then your body will say, ‘Okay, I need to lower my functionality, my metabolism.’

“I worked with an athlete recently who was predicted at 2200 and came in at 1500. We got him eating more, and more often. He came in 10 weeks later and had lost weight, put on muscle mass and his RMR matched his predicted rate. So, eating more told the body to increase its metabolism and become more active.

“Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (including tapping on the keyboard), RMR, physical activity and the thermogenic effect of food are all at play in weight loss and altering body composition. All of those things make up your calorie expenditure, but RMR makes up the majority, so knowing this is the biggest thing to be aware of when giving people advice on nutrition.”

“It’s been termed ‘reverse dieting’,” adds Will, “but what’s been studied and what we’re looking at doing is steadily bringing the calories up to increase metabolism. Anyone who diets chronically – restricts their food intake over an eight-month period – will slow their metabolism right down, so when they go back to eating a recommended daily allowance they’re adding, say, 900 calories just like that. They’re going to put weight right back on. It’s important to increase calories gradually.”