Losing weight is like slogging against a steeply-inclined treadmill with a broken “off” switch. But it doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, shed this metabolism myth and that rabid treadmill might start feeling more like a gentle downhill slope.
As Graeme Tomlinson, a nutrition coach who goes by the name of The Fitness Chef recently revealed, in a world where people take their nutrition cues from Instagram Stories, their workouts from influencers and their meal plans from 10 second Facebook videos, it’s easier than ever to be taken in by the promise of “metabolism-boosting” diets.
But according to Graeme, the truth is, contrary to what a select group of fitness gurus seem to have decided back in 2006, “you don’t need to alter your bodies [sic] metabolic performance to lose fat.”
According to Graeme, the “logic and evidence” for diets which encourage consistent snacking in order to speed up one’s metabolism remain “unproven and unknown.”
“If we take the metabolic process involved in food digestion (thermos effect of feeding), we know that this process uses energy,” he says. “Given that fat loss requires you to be in an energy deficit, it sounds logical to claim that we can burn more calories by digesting food regularly – because we can.”
The problem? The calories we eat also count in the balance of energy and “they count a heck of a lot more than the energy used metabolising food.”
“The truth is, consuming food regularly as a means to boost your metabolism is just another unnecessary and unfounded fat loss myth. If you were to consume 1800 calories per day across six 300 calorie meals, you would probably burn around 10% during digestion (30 calories burned per meal and 180 in total). But if you consumed 1800 calories per day across two 900 calorie meals using the same principle, you would burn 90 calories per meal and still 180 in total. It ends up the same.”
“Attempting to alter your metabolism to lose fat,” Graeme adds, “is another pointless, pseudoscientific process that clouds one’s mindset.” According to Graeme, the implications for this are twofold. Firstly: you don’t need to eat breakfast if you don’t want to. And secondly: you can have big meals less frequently if that suits your daily routine.
So although Graeme has had skirmishes with Keto diet advocates in the past, when it comes to the importance (or the lack thereof) of meal regularity he appears to be on the same page.
Overall though, he still differs to the low carb gurus in that he believes “adherence to a realistic, sustainable calorie deficit over a period of time” is more important for weight loss rather than cutting out certain food groups in favour of protein and fat.