One of the ideas that many people have about losing weight is that if you just eat less, then you’ll naturally lose weight. Well, this is what we want to look at in this article and see how much truth there is to the belief.
In essence, it would seem perfect common sense to expect to lose weight when you eat less, but that is only a part of the bigger picture. When you eat like a horse and then sit around all day doing nothing much of anything, then you will gain weight like a champion sumo wrestler. But you can eat the same amount and instead of sitting around, get out and run for 10 miles or so every day, then spend another hour a day working out in a gym. Will you gain weight? It is doubtful.
So it would follow that if you did the exact same amount of exercise every day, then cut the amount of food you eat by, say 20 percent and you would expect to see a reduction in your weight. Not necessarily!
If the 20 percent you cut out was purely protein, then you probably would not see much if any reduction in body weight, because the body’s metabolism would alter to match the amount of proteins being consumed and your muscles would simply not build so much strength. You would continue to burn all the sugars generated from carbs and fats so no change.
But if that 20 percent was purely carbs, then your muscles would continue to build strength but have less fuel to allow you to work out for the same period. In that case, fuel would be taken from whatever store of fat your body has, so you would lose some weight.
Change tack and look at things from a different perspective. Say you eat that 20 percent of all food groups in general less but do no exercise. Then you may lose some weight in the beginning as your body takes time to adjust to the restriction in fuel. Once it has made the adjustment to less food, the metabolism will have slowed down to a point where you will not lose any more weight and in fact will still continue to store fat, so your weight could even go up.
So in answer to the question of “does eating less really make you lose weight?”, it can although in many cases it won’t. So now you know!