3218 More Eat More Propaganda//

MetCon//

CrossFit Open 18.2, look it up!

To loose fat, weight, mass, etc., you need to eat less energy than you expend. If you're eating like no calories but no longer loosing weight though something's up. I would have to do the math, but I really doubt there is a single human at our gym needing less than 2k calories per day. Maybe our very smallest athletes... maybe, but doubt it.

Our bodies keep us alive and adapt very well to our stresses. Training hard and living on low calories, doesn't make your body smaller and smaller, it does at first, but do you know any runners or exercisers who ran themselves out of existence? Like they burned enough calories into nothingness? It's not like people who are super healthy and fit and with really great physiques just quit eating and started again right before they've vaporized. Do the math on energy balance and it looks like this. You have a baseline called maintenance. That's how much food you need to eat to stay the same. Whenever you eat anything below that, you gotta get the energy from somewhere right? Go too low below that and you're going to adapt either by moving less (if you eat too far below your maintenance, you simply don't have the choice, you literally quit moving as much regardless of your natural ambition or will power). On low calories we think more and more about food and when your will power reaches it's end, you will re-feed yourself! You will re-feed yourself! You will re-feed yourself! 

Are you there right now? Eating next to nothing with no scale movement or physique change? Or if the scale does move, it's at it's lowest on Friday morning and you're back to square one on Monday? These are really strong signs that you've adapted to the low calories. 

If you're trapped under ice. You can panic, pound on that ice as hard as you can. You might break through, you may find the hole you fell in by accident, it's more likely that from all your efforts, you'll drown. Or you can calmly swim back down deeper, look up and find the hole and swim straight for it. 

If you're eating less than 2000 calories and have stopped seeing the change you seek, is it really worth it to eat so little? You're always hungry, hangry, disappointed by your efforts. Swim back down underneath the ice. Eat more! Enjoy the benefits of eating enough calories for a while. Find out how much you can eat without gaining weight. Do this for a couple of months. Re-adapt to properly fueling your body. A couple things could happen. The best-case-scenario is you hyper-respond, get leaner and actually pretty quick. Less desirable probably would be no change, no weight gain, no weight loss, but you feel really good, sleep better, increased libido, all health markers improve aside from body composition. Would you rather eat 1900 calories and not loose any weight or eat 2500 calories and not loose any weight? I'll go with the 2500 calories thank you very much! Worst-case-scenario, you might gain a little weight, and man, that is just so scary I know, but you'll feel better, and you weren't loosing any weight anyway before, you'll level out after some time and you can have a much better handle on how to eat just a little less than maintenance rather than starving yourself. 

Here's a little hint though. I really doubt you'd even be able to eat enough whole foods to gain any weight. I don't know any morbidly obese people who got there eating Meats and Vegetables, Nuts and Seeds, Some Fruit, Little Starch, and No Sugar, I don't think you know any either.