Laura Schoenfeld: There’s a lot going on in my personal experimentation, so I’m going to try to explain to you because I think it actually lines up super-well with the topic for this week. I’ve dealt with some of my own health issues, and a lot of them are hormonal. Not to go into too much detail, but let’s just say that most of my health issues are around HPA axis dysregulation and hormonal imbalances like low progesterone. I have a history of, I’d say, restrictive dieting. Not eating disorder level, but typical low-carb Paleo combined with high levels of activity. Nothing outrageous, but my experience was that at first it made me feel really good and I lost weight and I was feeling like this was right way to approach health, and there was a ton of research, and it just seemed to make sense. Then a couple of years in, especially combining that approach with grad school and starting a private business and just a variety of different stressors that I’ve dealt with over the last couple of years, I started to really feel poorly, and my energy was bad, and I was gaining weight, and my cycles were irregular, so my journey to the particular calorie and macronutrient ratio that I’m experimenting with right now has been probably a multiple-year journey. I’m going to guess it has been since 2009 I’ve been experimenting with my macro intake. I don’t do CrossFit. I don’t do CrossFit-type workouts, and I also don’t do it that frequently. I’ve had clients that do CrossFit five or six days a week. I only train two to three days a week, so I’m definitely not a super-high intense athlete, but I’m doing a fat loss approach in my own calorie and macro intake that is about a 10 to 20 percent calorie deficit over what I’ve established to be my maintenance. My maintenance calories, based on how much I exercise and my current height and weight and muscle mass compared to fat mass is about 2,300 or 2,400 calories a day. That should be a maintenance diet that would keep me at my current weight, allow me to keep building strength, but it wouldn’t necessarily lead to any fat loss. Because I do want to lose some fat—I’ve gained a little weight after a car accident last year that I’ve been working on losing—I’ve put myself into a … I guess it’s like a 20 percent calorie deficit. I don’t always do it. I do 1,900 when I can, but if I feel hungry or if I’m … Mostly the reason I would eat more than 1,900 is if I’m about to go to bed and I feel hungry because I can’t sleep if I’m hungry, so I’ll have a 200-calorie snack or something and bring that up to 2,100, which is still a deficit if you consider that my maintenance calories is 2,400. I’m not doing any bouncing around, like eating more on workout days and eating less on non-workout days. Ironically, my hunger is usually better on the days that I work out, and that’s actually because strength training is an appetite suppressant. Take that as you will, but it’s something that I’m usually less hungry on the days that I work out, and I do actually have to force myself to eat more.
Let’s see. You’re asking me if I’m recommending the approach that I’m doing for someone trying to lose weight. Honestly, it really depends on your client, so I don’t want to say that everyone should be doing this, but my experience with my particular approach and with this case study that Chris mentioned, MC, a lot of women—and men also, but women, especially—who are very active really do better on a higher carb intake and paying attention to their calorie intake, so not going so low that they’re causing their bodies to shut down hormone production, reduce their thyroid function. If you’re going down to 1,200 or 1,500 calories a day and someone really needs 2,000 to 2,500, that’s going to cause metabolic issues and hormonal issues. But if you do want to lose body fat or if your patient wants to lose body fat, you do have to be in a calorie deficit.
Ron is saying that this patient sounds very similar to me. “She has been hesitant to increase her calorie intake. She’s at 1,500 to 1,600.” Ron, how often is she doing CrossFit? Is she doing it, like, three days a week? Five days a week? Honestly, these are my people. These are the clients that I take. Six-plus times a week CrossFit and eating 1,500 to 1,600 calories a day. OK, so, Ron, we know that she’s not eating enough. It sounds like she has a fat loss goal. How much weight would you say she wants to lose? Sorry if we’re taking over the conversation here, but this is actually quite relevant to the last couple of weeks of the nutrition information we’ve talked about, so I think this is important. I’m just waiting until Ron answers with how much weight she wants to lose. “Really more of the distribution of fat she seems to store in her abdomen.” OK, so that’s definitely a sign that this is stress-related body fat, and she needs to increase her food intake.
Just to review for everybody, we have a patient who is doing CrossFit six or more times a week, she’s eating 1,500 to 1,600 calories a day, and she has belly fat that she wants to get rid of. And it sounds like she’s a little bit afraid to increase her calorie intake because she thinks if she eats more, she’s not going to lose this body fat. Again, this is, like, my jam. I love working with this kind of client because it’s really fun to see them be able to eat more and actually start losing weight and performing better and feeling better and getting their hormones improved—all that good stuff.
All I’ll say about this is that we know that she’s not eating enough. She’s probably causing some hormonal damage to either her thyroid or her HPA axis or her ovaries. I don’t know if she’s still menstruating or having any issues with PMS or anything like that, but she’s not going to lose this belly fat unless she eats more, and then if she’s going to do a deficit the way I’m doing, it needs to be a controlled deficit. The other thing that I want to mention is that if you’re going to do a deficit, it needs to be a timed deficit. For example, I am currently at a 20-percent-calorie-a-day deficit—10 to 20 percent, give or take; I’m sure I’m not totally 20 percent—but I don’t plan to stay in this deficit forever. I plan to do it for maybe six to eight weeks and then start to eat at my maintenance again for a while.
That’s another really common problem with women. They start to just constantly be on a diet. They’re always in a calorie deficit because they always want to lose weight. Eventually that causes problems with your body’s HPA axis, with your hormones, with your stress hormone release and sensitivity. It turns into a really bad situation, and if you think about CrossFit, that’s already a stressful type of exercise approach, and so if you’re doing a glycolytic-type activity like CrossFit, and I’m assuming she’s not eating a lot of carbs either. I mean, she couldn’t be if she’s eating 1,500 calories a day. But if you’re demanding your body create new glucose from protein, and then you’re asking it to repair damaged muscles from the CrossFit, and then you’re also asking it to run on 1,500 calories a day when you might be actually burning 2,000 to 2,500, there are just so many different things that are adding stress to this woman’s life. And because she sounds afraid to increase her calories, I bet she has some body image dysmorphia going on, so that’s another source of stress. Ironically she sounds like a perfect candidate for our Paleo Rehab program that we just are relaunching with Chris this week, but I would say that if she’s afraid of gaining weight from increasing her calories, do it slowly. I’ve done this with clients before, where we just go, like, 100 or 200 calories a day extra for a couple of days and then increase it again until we get to the point where she’s at where she should be for her amount of activity.
I also think if she’s trying to lose belly fat, then she should probably be on a very-high-carb, lower-fat diet. I can do a quick calculation to figure out what that would probably be for her. Let’s just guess that she needs 2,200 calories a day. I don’t know if that’s what she needs, but I’m just going to guess. Actually, Ron, can you give me information? How much does she currently weigh? I’m just going to wait for you to answer that question. 130. OK, so I would say 130 grams of protein would be a good number to shoot for. She may fall short of that. Usually my clients that I give high protein goals to will fall a little short, but they’re going to be getting way more protein than they would be getting otherwise, so I’d say 115 to 130 grams of protein per day.
Now, as far as fat is concerned, I’d probably keep her fat to, like, 55 or 65 grams per day. Let me just figure out what that is. If we have 130 grams of protein and then 65 grams of fat … Sorry. Sometimes this math is a little complicated, as I’m sure you guys have recognized. Let’s see, 130 times 4 … and then we have 65 times 9. That means about 1,100 calories should be coming from fat and protein. Then if I subtract that from 2,200, that’s almost 1,100 coming from carbs. And then if I divide that by 4, that’s 274 grams of carbs. I would imagine she’s probably not eating anywhere near that. I know that I’ve struggled in the past to get that high. That is a lot of carbohydrates.
Now, I’m not saying she has to be up at 2,200 right now, and maybe you just work on adding carbs until she’s around 2,000 or so, but honestly, if this girl wants to lose body fat and she wants to lose belly fat specifically and she’s doing CrossFit six days a week, she needs to be eating, at most, a 20 percent deficit from her maintenance, and honestly, I would get her up to maintenance before I’d try to put her into a deficit. Then she should be eating 200-plus grams of carbs per day because she’s doing an activity that is extremely glycolytic-demanding. This is probably going to freak her out, but I can promise you that she’ll get so much better results than what she’s doing, and she’ll probably feel a lot better. Usually I just go in a slow approach. If you’re trying to add 200 calories a day for a while, then just add, like, 50 grams of carbs total to what she’s eating.
Brent’s asking if I’m doing a certain ratio of fruit versus starch. Not really. I’d say either is fine. Some people really do well on fruit. I know I tolerate fruit very well, especially bananas. I could eat multiple bananas a day and feel great. Other people really like starches. I know some people that can eat multiple cups of white rice during the day and they feel great. I personally eat a lot of sweet potatoes and white rice, some potatoes, some plantains here and there. Like I said, multiple bananas in a day, and that makes me feel really good with the type of exercise that I’m doing, which is powerlifting about three times a week, maybe two or three times a week. Yeah, I’d say whatever her gut likes as far as carbs. It really shouldn’t matter. The idea that fructose from fruit is going to be harmful to somebody is complete garbage, so if you’re limiting someone’s fruit, especially if they’re glucose tolerant and they are highly active, then that is not appropriate. There’s absolutely no reason that a person should avoid fruit if they’re doing CrossFit six days a week. Like I said, I’m only training two to three days a week, and I don’t limit my fruit at all.
I’m glad you asked this question, Ron, because it’s something that I’m super-passionate about recently, and by “recently,” I mean in the last year or so. I think a lot of women, especially … Ron says, “Thank you! I can tell!” Yes, I am very passionate. Honestly, the reason I’m so passionate is because that really screwed me up. It really caused some major health issues in the last couple of years for me, and it also caused me to gain weight, and certainly nobody wants to gain weight if they’re working out and they’re eating a healthy Paleo diet. I think there’s a lot of misconception about carbs. I know Diane Sanfilippo of Balanced Bites has been talking about this more recently, so if this girl needs more convincing, maybe send her that way. Certainly feel free to send her my way because I’ve been writing about my experience a little bit. I’ve worked with clients before that were really afraid that adding carbs was going to cause them to gain weight. People are really afraid of carbs because of things like the Wheat Belly books and Jimmy Moore’s work and that kind of stuff, and I’m not saying that to be like those people are wrong. I’m just saying that there’s a lot of misinformation about what’s appropriate for a healthy person that’s active on a Paleo diet. This is something that I think we as practitioners really need to be very careful about because things that look like infections or hormonal disruptions, that kind of thing, a lot of times is just that the person is not eating enough for the amount of activity that they’re doing. Making sure that we’re not overlooking that and if we do have a client that is trying to lose weight and is on a very restricted diet, avoiding carbs, avoiding too many calories, that kind of thing, for the sake of their long-term health and for the sake of them wanting to lose weight and continue to do the activity that they’re doing, they absolutely need to eat more food. It is something that’s going to take some counseling on your part, Ron, and like I said, I’d send her to Diane Sanfilippo’s site or my site, and there are other people doing this work, as well, but make sure she knows that other people have done it before her and that they’ve gotten really good results. I’ve never worked with a woman who was super-active and wanted to lose weight and was concentrating fat around her belly and didn’t benefit from a higher carb and higher calorie intake. I’ve actually had clients lose weight on higher-calorie intakes, and for me, I’m losing weight on a much higher carb intake than I’ve ever eaten recently. I can’t say ever in my life because I don’t really know what I used to eat when I was in high school. It’s one of those things that carbs, especially for women—but for men, too—are really, really important for supporting high-intensity activity. Yeah, maybe a person will feel good for the first six months that they’re doing low carb and CrossFit together or low carb and high-intensity interval training, boot camp, that kind of thing, but I guarantee the wheels are going to fall off the wagon at some point, and then they’re going to feel like garbage. If you have a client that’s doing it and they’re not feeling poorly yet, you should probably encourage them to change their approach, and if they’re coming to you because they feel terrible, it really does take some encouragement, but tell them to just try it and see how they feel. They may be super-surprised that they may actually lose weight instead of gaining it like they expect.
Chelsea just asked if what I just calculated was 50 percent of calories from carbs. Let me tell you if that is. Yeah, it’s 49.7, so about 50 percent of calories from carbs. Now, maybe she goes a little lower in the carbs and a little higher in the fat. I don’t care if this macro ratio is tweaked a little bit, but I do think that the bulk of her calories should be coming from carbs. That’s kind of the take-home point of this answer.