When you compare someone who eats daily Big Macs with someone who carefully curates each and every Tupperware salad, they both seem absurd. Leaving the aesthetic considerations of plastic lunch boxes aside, however, one of the two is more likely to be burning a lot more fat, and – as nutrition coach Max Lugavere recently revealed – it’s not just to do with calories.
It is to do with the types of food consumed. And if you are currently in the Big Mac camp (read: us, most Sundays), you will be burning calories at a glacial rate (and tempting yourself to eat a lot more) than someone who eats mostly whole foods. Why? It all comes down to ‘satiety checkpoints.’
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As Max recently took to Instagram to explain, “a person with the goal of simply maintaining a healthy weight shouldn’t need to count calories.” In fact, according to him, “Any suggestion to otherwise is garbage… because whole, minimally processed foods have a habit of regulating your hunger naturally.”
“They are satiating.”
“Ultra-processed foods, which often combine fat, salt, sugar, and pulverized, refined grains trick your body’s satiety signals and cause you to eat more, to the tune of 500 calories a day,” Max added. “That adds up to a pound a week of fat gain if sustained.”
“Now we don’t live in a perfect world and we are surrounded by packaged foods which add value to our lives due to their convenience and tastiness. If you want to indulge in these once in a while… go for it! Just note that they may be easy to overconsume, and you’ll need to be a little more careful as a result,” Max continued.
According to Max, the only people that should really be counting calories are fitness competitors who are trying to get to a specific body composition. Those people, however, are “by no means the norm” (regular folks who just want to not be overweight).
The overall takeaway? “Having specific fitness goals is totally awesome, but your average person should probably just cut out the packaged, processed foods.”
Put that in your pantry and eat it – one fat-burning machine coming right up.