Buzz
If you're struggling with weight, you've likely encountered the mantra "eat less, move more." Unfortunately, this advice isn't going to drive real progress. Let’s explore why.
At its core, weight loss does involve "eating less and moving more." The principle of losing weight revolves around burning more calories than you consume, a process known as creating a caloric deficit. But this is where the oversimplification ends. As Dr. Spencer Nadolsky, an expert in treating obesity, explains:
"Eat less, move more" has been the go-to advice from professionals for years. However, it’s often ineffective. Yes, those actions are necessary, but simply telling people to follow this advice is of little help. There are powerful biological and environmental factors that work against it. Obesity isn't just a choice someone makes on a whim.
In reality, the phrase "eat less, move more" can be damaging. The body is a sophisticated system, and while it's tempting to treat it like a machine, the mechanisms behind weight regulation aren't so easily understood through "calories in versus calories out." Many complex physiological, psychological, and environmental factors influence weight. Obesity is not a mere choice.
Don’t take this to mean that you’re not in control and shouldn’t even bother. The challenges of weight loss shouldn't serve as an excuse to avoid making improvements. In fact, understanding these challenges can help you tackle them and ultimately become the best version of yourself.
The Over-Reliance on Willpower
"Eat less, move more" suggests that fitness is simply about willpower—that success comes from just putting in the effort. If you fail, it’s seen as a lack of trying.
The reality is that when it comes to fitness, people often depend too much on willpower, even though it’s a finite resource. Over time, no amount of willpower will motivate you to get up every morning to run if you despise running. Similarly, it won’t make you choke down broccoli if you’ve always thought of it as an oddly edible version of a satanic Treebeard.
*Recent research suggests that willpower might be more of a mental construct than an actual resource. This is just one study among many on the subject, but the idea that willpower is finite still makes sense.
What happens when we rely on willpower? Let's use the case study by nutrition experts Alan Aragon and Lou Schouler, from our article on setting a target bodyweight:
Let's take a fictional character named Dan, who weighs 240 pounds, decides it's time for a change. Dan buys a bestselling diet book (that is, one not written by us), and resolves to follow the book's sample diet to the letter. He doesn't know that the sample diet is just 1,300 calories a day, or that it's less than half what he typically eats. Nor does he have a firm target weight in mind. He just wants to lose weight—the faster the better.
The pounds seem to fly off Dan's body at first—24 pounds in just six weeks. His wife jokes that he loses a pound every time he takes a shower. In another month Dan figures he'll be under 200 pounds for the first time since his freshman year in college.
But there's something Dan doesn't know: his diet has already failed him. Because he's hungry all the time, his adherence gets a little worse every day. And because he's been over 200 pounds his entire adult life, Dan's metabolism fights back. His NEAT (
Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis
) has already declined, and with the loss of lean tissue, his resting metabolism has also downshifted. By the time Dan finally concedes that he's no longer following the diet, he's regained some of the weight, and his body is primed to regain the rest, plus a few extra pounds. That's what happens when you toss a firecracker into the hornet's nest of homeostasis.
In the above example, Dan is waging a war on his body's natural homeostasis—the tendency to maintain its long term equilibrium. What Dan doesn't know is that rapid weight loss like this leads to plummeting level of leptin, a hormone that regulates one's weight.
When you lose weight, leptin levels drop, which triggers an increase in hunger and a decrease in metabolic rate. Similarly, when you eat a lot, your appetite should naturally reduce. Together, these effects are meant to help stabilize your weight.
This presents a challenge for weight loss: your body will fight back in proportion to your progress. The more drastic the weight loss, the more fiercely your body resists—and the harder it becomes to keep going. You may experience early success, but with each day, it will take more willpower just to maintain your progress.
Dan is relying on willpower. He's attempting to outsmart nature by eating less and moving more. In the contest of nature vs. willpower, nature will always prevail.
The Positive Feedback Loop
True success comes not from willpower, but from creating a sustainable, positive feedback loop—a motivation engine that convinces you "the rewards I gain are worth more than the effort I put in." When it comes to staying motivated and adhering to your fitness plan, this is the only thing that truly matters.
At first, Dan may have built a positive feedback loop, but it couldn't last. Eventually, he became too hungry, and losing weight became an ever-growing challenge. Of course, life had its own way of complicating things. In the end, what Dan mistook for a lack of motivation was simply the unavoidable failure to maintain that feedback loop, hindered by various physiological and environmental factors.
Willpower alone isn't sustainable. It's like the spark that starts a car's engine, but it's not the fuel that keeps it running. To keep moving forward, it’s crucial to build habits that support the positive feedback loop, which will fuel motivation and keep you going.
It frustrates me to see people chasing weight loss and turning to ineffective strategies—like reducing sodium or making it a point to 'run every morning.' While these might seem healthy, they often miss the mark. We've already discussed how exercise plays a relatively minor role in weight loss. Combine that with a diet focused solely on low-sodium foods (which doesn’t really help, by the way), and it’s just a lot of effort for minimal reward.
Engaging in strenuous activities that don't bring real results can actually be detrimental in the long run. If you're relying on willpower without seeing substantial progress, you’re not contributing to a healthy lifestyle. Cutting back on sodium, eating 'organic,' or moving aimlessly every day could ultimately hold you back from achieving lasting wellness.
If you dislike running, then skip it. If giving up pizza is too hard, find a way to incorporate it into your diet. If salads aren’t your thing, there are plenty of other ways to get your vegetables.
When you realize that the old adage 'eat less, move more' doesn't fully capture the essence of fitness, you’ll see that fitness is a skill to be cultivated, not an innate trait. More importantly, this understanding allows you to forgive past missteps and reignite your drive to keep pushing forward.
Images by William Ismael, jacsonquerubin, and Jurgen Appelo.
