Your weight is not your destiny – Part III

This third part might be as well the most interesting of the whole series. Because now I’m showing you the things, which affect your daily life. I will address some of the most common myths about proper nutrition, food and eating. In addition, I will show you, how to determine how much energy your body really needs. As usual, I’m going to provide some studies where you can educate yourself further.   

Myth 3: I’m fat, but I don’t eat much at all!
Ask yourself two, simple questions:
"How much do you think you eat?"
"How much do you REALLY eat?"
I can almost promise you, there will be two different numbers as answers. The reason for this is simple as well: You don’t know, how much calories the food and beverages you consume have. In addition, you are quite likely to forget some of the small “snacks” you are eating (or drinking) during your day. That’s ok, most people don’t really care about this, but it’s an important to difference to be aware of, if you want to get control over your weight.
But that’s not all! It is most likely, that you regard the level of your daily activity much higher, than it actually is. In short: You underrate your caloric intake and overrate your activity level. Damn. That’s rough.
But you are not alone with this problem. To give you some perspective, I can show you the results of a study conducted by Lichtman et al. (1) in 1992. They wanted to test people, who thought to be resistant to any kind of dietary changes. The participants stated, they didn’t eat that much and had a high activity level as well. Problems was: neither were true. They underrated their average caloric intake by 47% and overrated their level of activity by 51%. Of course, they didn’t do it on purpose, but our brain has some effective ways to ensure, we look good, even if reality thinks otherwise.
A similar study by Pietiläinen et al. in 2010 (2) was conducted with identical twins – one was obese, the other one had a normal weight. The obese twins were convinced, their caloric intake and level of activity were quite similar to the ones of their twin counterparts. In comparison, the normal weight twins said about their siblings, they were eating more and unhealthier and their activity level was lower. Perception is a devious thing.
To outline this further, you can take a look at a study provided by Burton (2006) (3), in which participants should try to estimate the number of calories different kinds of meals had. The results were as hilarious as fascinating: The higher the actual number of calories was, the more imprecise the guesses of the participants were. 

So, what do to now?
My advice, to avoid this perception problem, is again quite simple: If you are not sure (you aren’t), just track the number of calories your food and beverages have. Just take a look at the wrapping, write it down and then calculate how much you are going to need to achieve your dietary goals. Therefore, I’d strongly recommend, to ask yourself a different question from now on:
How much food do I need?
To determine this, you will need to know two different numbers.
1. Your BMR – which stands for base metabolic rate
2. Your TDEE – which stands for total energy expenditure
You can calculate both quite easily with the two links I provided.
As soon as you know about your daily needs, you can start planning your diet accordingly.

Source

Myth 4: I’m heavier than before, but I just ate an apple the whole day. Really!
So, you are trying to lose weight and you start to adjust your diet accordingly. You don’t know yet, how much energy you actually need, but you have the feeling, less than now would be a smart decision. That’s most probably right. So, you cut your food intake at one day and the next day, you get up, run to your scale – and burst into tears. Instead of losing weight, you actually gained some overnight. Although you ate less than before, your body didn’t care, laughed hard and said “Nope, nope, nope.”
Maybe you are cursed? Maybe your genes are bad? Maybe you have no control over your weight at all? Oh, what a cruel world!
Breath. Keep calm. Relax. Everything is alright.
You are not some kind of physical anomaly, which somehow ignores the common laws of physics.
Your body is an interesting organism. Surprisingly, most people do not know about “body water” (4).
 
Body-what?
As you probably know, your body consists mostly out of water. For men it’s roughly about 60% and for women (who have, be brave, more body fat) 55%. Each day you gain or lose some litres of water, which is stored (or not) in your body. This depends mostly on your diet, weather, health condition and the level of activity during your day. It’s not unusual, that your weight differs each day for about +/- 3kg, sometimes even more than 5kg. That’s a big deal, if it comes to weight control. Always keep that in mind, because that means, losing or gaining weight is always a long-term issue. Don’t be frustrated, if early results keep you waiting.
 
To give you some perspective, why it’s simply not possible, to gain 3kg of fat overnight, especially if you ate less than before, here are some numbers:
One kilogram of body fat equals roughly 7000 calories. A common person needs about 2000 calories a day and if you decide to reduce your caloric intake by an amount of 1000 each day, you will lose about 140g of fat. Each day. So, you lost almost a whole kilogram of fat after only one week. But to actually gain 3kg of fat in just one night, you had to eat food worth about 21,000 calories (ignoring, of course, you would be more likely to vomit and had a hard time, keeping all this inside your body)!
As you can see: Nothing is wrong with you.
Body water affects you even heavier, when you start a new diet. Just stay calm and keep on going.   


Source

Myth 5: Obesity is defined by genes
“Ok, you told me quite a lot about food and nutrition and calories and stuff like that. But I tried so much already in the past and nothing seems to work for me. I think, my genes are just bad.”
Please. Stop right there. Nothing is wrong with your genes.
There are three things, you can make your genes responsible for:
Appetite, need for activity and preference of taste (sweet or fatty).
In 2009, a study by Haupt et al. (5) proved, that participants with so called “obesity genes” had a higher average caloric intake of 125-280 calories a day. That’s something but definitely not disastrous. Nothing you can’t handle.
If you are one of the unlucky people, who has obesity genes, you are still not bound to them. It might be harder, to lose weight or to obtain a healthy life style, but it’s not out of reach. You can compare it to alcoholism:
Genetics play an important role in the development of alcoholism – some people are just more prone to get ill than others. But if they never had a sip of alcohol, they would never suffer from alcoholism. Your genes merely provide the environment of your habits, but it’s still up to you, if you play by their rules or set your own. If you think, it’s too hard to do it yourself, just ask some friends to help you out. There is almost always a solution.
 

In the next part, I will write about the positive effects of sport, different ways to plan a dietary, gaining weight and why changing your weight is not the solution to all of your problems, but still a good idea.   

Feel always free to discuss my ideas and share your own thoughts about the things I’m writing about. Nobody is omniscient and if we all walk away a little bit smarter than before, we’ll have achieved a lot.  
Thanks for reading!
Ego  


References
(1) Lichtman, S.W., Pisarska, K., Berman, E.R., Pestone, M., Dowling, H., Offenbacher, E., Weisel, H., Heshka, S., Matthews, D.E. & Heymsfield, S.B. (1992) Discrepancy between self-reported and actual caloric intake and exercise in obese subjects. The New Englad Journal of Medicine. 327 (37), 1893 – 1898
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199212313272701

(2) Pietiläinen K.H, Korkeila M., Bogl L.H., Westerterp K.R., Yki-Järvinen H., Kaprio J. & Rissanen A. (2010) Inaccuracies in food and physical activity diaries of obese subjects: complementary evidence from doubly labeled water and co-twin assessments. International Journal of Obesity. 34 (3), 437-45
https://www.nature.com/articles/ijo2009251

(3) Burton, S., Creyer, E.H., Kees, J. & Huggins, K. (2006) Attacking the Obesity Epidemic: The Potential Health Benefits of Providing Nutrition Information in Restaurants. Journal of Public Health. 96 (9), 1669–1675
http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2004.054973

(4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_water

(5) Haupt, A., Thamer, C., Staiger, H., Tschritter, O., Kirchhoff, K. & Machicao, F. (2009). Variation in the FTO gene influences food intake but not energy expenditure. Experimental and Clinical Endocrinology & Diabetes. 117(4), 194–197
https://www.thieme-connect.com/products/ejournals/html/10.1055/s-0028-1087176