I am currently reading ‘Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It‘ by Gary Taubes and came across this very thought provoking idea ((Gary Taubes attributes the idea to Chris Williams who blogs under the name of Asclepius)). If we were invited out to a gourmet meal that will have monumental amounts of utterly delicious food, then how would we prepare? Skip lunch – or at least reduce the amount of food eaten at lunch/breakfast? Make sure we do some vigorous exercise during the day to work up an appetite? – Or at least walk to the feast and walk back to burn some of it off?
Now if we’re trying to lose weight, what are we normally told to do? The usual advice is cut back on the amount we eat and exercise more. But isn’t this what we do when we are trying to build up an appetite for a big meal? So by exercising and reducing the amount we eat, we raise the appetite enabling us to eat more. Why then do we expect these same actions to result in making us eat less to lose weight? So maybe the holy cow of “do more, eat less” for weightloss is not so holy after all. How exciting.
