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I was recently introduced to a podcast that provided some nutrition and training information. A few friends of mine asked me to review the information provided and give some feedback.

I would like to preface this by saying that I will not mention any names or throw anyone under the bus. This is merely an example of misinformation and how much ‘stuff’ there is out there that the small force of us dietitians have to combat.

Know Your Sources

First of all, I want you to all be skeptical humans. ALWAYS ask where the information is coming from, what education the author/speaker has, and if they may have any biases. Nutrition is an incredibly complex science. There are some decent certification programs out there, but in order to fully understand the physiology and how your metabolism works, that takes years of education. Someone who claims to be a nutritionist can give basics recommendations, but look out when they try to start giving you anything specific. Most nutrition professionals will hold an RD or RDN credential; however, that’s not always the case. Some individuals who have a background in nutrition sciences may choose to spend their career in academia and pursue research versus patient care. This may show up as a PhD versus and RD/RDN credential.

Moral of the story. Check the individual’s background and credentials.

Calorie Deficit

Creating a calorie deficit is the one of the basics of weight loss. Consume less energy than you expend. On average, when I do a calorie deficit calculation, I’ll do something around 250-500 calories lower than current consumption AS LONG AS THEIR CURRENT CONSUMPTION IS WITHIN A HEALTHFUL RANGE. Now the information that I was asked to review suggested a calorie deficit of 500-1000 calories, even up to a 1500 calorie deficit!!

Let’s point out the obvious. You’re gonna be HUNGRY. And if you’ve heard me talk about calorie deficits in the past you know that I probably won’t let you fall below a total of 1400 calories for the day. That means that for a 1000 calorie deficit this individual would have to have a baseline intake of at least 2400 calories. Not impossible, especially for an athlete, but eek that’s a huge drop.

Here’s my issue with the suggested 1000 calorie deficit without additional context, people love going to extremes for quick results. When someone suggests cutting 500-1000 calories, most people will only hear “cut 1000 calories” and jump straight to that for quick results. That is NOT the best recommendation for everyone.

Sometimes, people shouldn’t even be attempting a calorie deficit if they’ve been jumping from fad diet to fad diet and already have been in a deficit of some kind for longer than 3 months.

And one more note… don’t ever cut 1500 calories…

One strategy suggested for cutting calories was a common approach of eating ‘clean’ during the week and allowing cheat days over the weekend. I do have a few concerns with this concept.

One thing to note is that our bodies don’t ‘reset’ each day. If we eat in a calorie deficit one day it’s not just like the weight automatically drops off overnight. What we need to be paying attention to is how we eat in general. That may mean looking at your average calorie consumption over the course of a week or two. If you consume 1400 calories on weekdays, but overindulge in sweets, high-calorie foods, and booze on the weekends (say 3500 calories), then your average calorie consumption is 2000 calories/day. Not really the same deficit as you thought you were in.

The other issue, we’re creating restriction during the week. This inherently leads to bingeing. We don’t do that over here. We just eat. If you’re having ‘cheat days’ you’re obviously labeling foods as good versus bad. The bad foods you can’t have unless it’s a cheat day. This is a huge contributor to disordered eating patterns.

I don’t know about you, but I just don’t see this as a sustainable lifestyle pattern.

All of this talk of restriction and large deficits is contributing to the mindset that we only need like 1000 calories in a day… or that there isn’t a minimum number of calories that we need to consume.

Calorie Surplus

A slight calorie surplus may be necessary if you are looking to add muscle mass. Added calories do help to add weight and feeding your muscles leads to it being easier to repair and grow!

The information given to me suggested a 500 calorie surplus, which I feel is a little more than one may need. To put that into perspective, that would basically be another small-ish meal.

Ya know, it’s really honestly hard to say where one should be at for a surplus without know more about them, their activity level, nutrition history, and goals… so I’m just gonna let this one go.

Metabolic Adaptations

Your body is smart. It’s going to adapt to how many calories you take in. Your body will prioritize where it sends your calories. If you’re severely undereating, forget the fact that you need to rebuild muscle after training, your body is just going to use the calories it gets to keep you alive.

Example given in the podcast I listened to: Eating 1000 calories and burning 3000 calories. First off, YIKES.

I agree with the statement that was made that the body is going to need to become more efficient in utilizing calories, but essentially you’re still running on empty! That’s not enough calories for anyone…

This is another careless statement that will make people think that consuming 1000 calories is okay.

Yes, your body will adapt, but this is a very high stress situation for the body and you’ll likely have some negative consequences. You will burn fat in the beginning due to the large deficit, but the body is going to begin to question when it will get it’s next food intake so it may store what it needs outside of the bare minimum it needs to function.

At this point, there’s a chance that you’re depleting the glycogen stores in your muscles and even breaking down muscle mass. Protein is the LAST thing your body wants to use for fuel, but it will breakdown muscle for fuel if necessary.

Protein does not have a storage form in the body like carbohydrates and fats do. Protein is either utilized or excreted from the body. This means, when your body does need to use protein for fuel, it has to break down tissues that were already utilizing that protein for structure, i.e. muscle mass.

This is one of the reasons why protein needs remain constant over the period of a deficit, maintenance, or even growth.

Estimating Needs

The calculation used in the podcast I was asked to review was your body weight in pounds times ten. So an individual that is 150# would need about 1500 calories. A friend that was reviewing this information with me stated that she was 150# so I used my calculation that not only includes body weight, but also height, age, and gender, to come up with a basal metabolic rate (BMR AKA baseline calorie needs) of 1390 calories. These are needs before activity.

The two estimates are fairly close, but one thing that is important to note, is that these are JUST ESTIMATES. The key in using these estimates is actually sitting down with the individual whose needs you are calculating and figuring out what their current average intake is to assess how it compares with the estimates and then using professional judgement to determine the next steps for this person. Those next steps may be to proceed with a calorie deficit, reverse diet to baseline, or make other adjustments according to the individual’s goals.

This is where I feel like a dietitian may differ from someone with less experience in the field. Calculating calorie and macronutrient estimates isn’t difficult, the art is in creating a personalized plan using those estimates and the actual human being you have in front of you.

Now, as I mentioned before, the BMR is what you need before factoring in activity levels. There are a few different ways you can incorporate activity levels into your daily needs. Usually this falls into two categories, adding it on to your BMR as an average/estimate or actually calculating your daily calorie burn and adding that daily.

Personally, I am not a huge fan of the idea of using daily calorie burn as a way to assess the allotted calorie needs for the day. To me, that seems too much like having to earn your food through activity, and that’s definitely not an ideology that I subscribe to. There’s no reason for us to feel we HAVE to do a certain type of activity to be able to eat our favorite foods. Also, the wearable technology that we wear to track calorie burn aren’t always the most accurate things to go by…

That’s why I use something called an activity factor. For most people, it will be a number between 1.3 and 1.6 that is multiplied by your BMR. This accounts for activity over the course of the week and gives you a number (or range) that does change based on daily activity.

So, just know that you can do one or the other, but you can’t do both. You can’t figure out your BMR, multiply that by 1.4 for your activity factor, and then also take into account the activity you do for additional calories… that doesn’t work.

Protein recommendations were another thing I was asked to touch on. Protein recs are tough because I feel like there are so many random numbers flying around to try to follow! That was actually part of the issue with the information in the podcast. When speaking about protein recommendations, there were 2 ranges given and then a completely different number outside of that range used to actually calculate needs. Talk about confusion!

The one range that was given was rather large, but what I would recommend did fall within that range; however, the calculation they actually did for this 150# person with 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight was much higher than the initial range that they suggested. When I calculate needs, I use kilograms and for a resistance training athlete, I use 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. This ends up being right around 0.73 grams per pound of body weight.

As I mentioned before, your body does not have the capacity to store protein, so it either uses it or excretes it. If you’re consuming more protein than you need, you’re just consuming calories and peeing out the extra amino acids. Only very specific athletes need over 1.6 g/kg protein daily.

Health Professionals and Body Image

The information I reviewed caused a slight bit of concern related to the topic of body image and how the body was being portrayed. It was stated that with a calorie surplus you would also unfortunately gain body fat. Why does this have to be an unfortunate thing? Why is it unfortunate to have body fat? We NEED body fat to survive! I feel as if some people may have not caught on to how this was phrased, but as someone who has struggled with disordered eating in the past, this is something I am VERY aware of.

In my opinion, I feel as if health and fitness professionals should be very careful with their words and how they choose to phrase things in regard to body image. They should be continuously conscious of the audience they’re speaking to and how their words may affect others.

Society and social media are already feeding us enough of this BS and telling us that we aren’t thin enough or that we need to lose more body fat. As the professionals in the industry, let’s just focus on helping people be healthy and maintaining a positive relationship with food and exercise.

There’s a good chance that I’m just overreacting since this is a topic I’m passionate about. But I will be the first to tell you that I am one to say what’s on my mind and not give a fuck. And this is one area where I will say, that using phrases like this and creating a negative connotation around body composition changes, especially when someone is trying to do something beneficial for their body… it’s not okay.

When I was dancing professionally, my body composition was a big piece of the puzzle… and it did affect me negatively. And for some athletes, yes, body composition is part of the equation. But here we are speaking on a different level. To people who are exercising and just want to see results. So to hear others creating a negative energy around what they need to be doing to better themselves is upsetting.

There’s a better way to address this. Don’t hide the fact that the body will change. Make the client aware of what to expect and help them see how this will get them to their end result. I will say this, you tell someone that is not aware of the process or has a more severe history with disordered eating patterns that they’re going to have to ‘just deal with’ gaining weight… that person is going to refuse to follow that protocol and work towards gaining muscle which is a huge factor in health and longevity.

Now, that was in regards to gaining muscle and having to go into a calorie surplus.

On the other hand, there was mention of how you become flabby after a calorie deficit…. HUH?!

This was explained as a result of your body burning muscle in a deficit. Well we talked about this before, if you’re doing a deficit correctly, you shouldn’t have to use protein or muscle mass for energy. That’s a simple fix.

Training and Nutrition

Training and nutrition go hand in hand. They both impact body composition changes and it is important to know how to eat for the type of training you’re doing. The body uses different fuel sources/systems for different types of activity and, therefore, nutrition may need to change as well.

Cardio in a calorie deficit was discussed as being a bad thing and this was a little confusing to me. They stated that when you do cardio in a calorie deficit you are just creating more of a deficit. That is true, and I don’t disagree with that statement. What I would like to point out is that any type of physical activity you do will cause a calorie deficit, not just cardio. Steady state cardio activities have a tendency to increase calorie burn during the activity itself, while more high intensity and power activities can lead to a calorie burn outside of the time you’re performing the activity.

Another thing that was mentioned was that the only purpose of cardio is heart health and it otherwise doesn’t matter. And lifting weight will increase your cardiovascular health. Yes, all exercise is good for you, but something like a one rep max lift is not going to give you the same cardiovascular training as a run or a 30 minutes of continuous movement.

During a calorie deficit, I do actually favor long form activity versus some of the more high intensity activity. The likelihood of you hitting a max lift during a calorie deficit is slim. The fact that you aren’t giving your body all of the nutrition to may need to see muscle and strength gains makes it kind of silly to even attempt this form of training during a deficit. This is a great example of why nutrition strategies need to change with training.

Problems with Readily Available Information

We have information at our fingertips at all times. This information is readily available, but it’s not always the best information. What I’m seeing regularly in social media is content that leans towards the need to lose/cut weight, the desire to be smaller, and promotion of a certain body type.

This is also an issue because if you decide to reach out to a qualified nutrition professional, it will likely be a very different approach than what you’re seeing on social media. As I mentioned before, someone who has been in a calorie deficit for an extended period of time will not be getting calorie deficit recommendations from me. In fact, I will make them increase their calories, and as you can imagine, many times this creates some mental turmoil for clients or even potential clients. This can be a potential barrier for clients starting to work with me! Clients have to be ready for some major changes at times, and they really have to just trust me and trust the process.

Really this makes my job so difficult, because I don’t have a quick fix. I can’t make sustainable, healthy changes for you in 30 days. I can be the last person you’ll ever need to reach out to related to your nutrition, but you’re going to have to be patient.

So there’s that, a little review of information that is being put out into world for people to consume that has some obvious flaws. Unfortunately, there is information with errors everyone. Be careful who you put your trust in and always be skeptical.