So been thinking about this all day. My biggest question is this, “does this study suggest that the most successful strategy for fat loss is a high energy flux diet?”
That is, a diet whereby you meet your caloric restriction through increases in activity rather than focusing on caloric restriction through lack of calorie consumption.
Here’s what I mean
Given the study in the video, the experiment confirms that there is a lower bound to your caloric intake that, when you go even lower, causes to to lose both lean body mass and fat.
If this is true, then the lower bound suggests that caloric restriction can only be used to a point until it becomes harmful. That is, you cannot go lower than this and not cause loss to muscle in the diet.
For example, if you are 75kg at 30% body fat, you have 52.5kg of lean body mass. At an OEA of 30, you have a suggested daily caloric intake of 1575. Going lower than this will cause all the bad stuff mentioned to occur.
Now this amount, should you diet with caloric restriction only, should put you into a caloric deficit. Using a BMR calculator found here and assuming a height og 5’9", tyou have a BMR of roughly around 1717. Assuming sedentary lifestyle, you have an additional 344 calories of activity. Meaning your overall Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) is 2,061 calories. The net difference is thus 486 calories.
So, at most you can expect to lose almost a pound a week while ensuring you don’t lose muscle.
Thus, if you want to lose more weight (ideally fat) at a faster rate than this lower bound, you inevitably need to increase your caloric expenditure to increase your daily caloric burn.
So, for example, say you decide to do a daily 1 hour walk (which is one common thing many people who succeed in losing weight do) and you burn an extra 250 calories. Should you not make up with larger caloric intake, that additional 250 calories will lead to increased fat loss.
This ultimately suggests that the more successful programs need to not simply claim “calories in and calories out” but rather “reduce calories to a point then increase activity to speed up fat loss”
Naturally, if your are performance focused, you need to balance the increase in calories due to training with recovery through increased caloric consumption. Thus in that case, you have to go through the more complex calculations of how much calories to consume to perform optimally in workout and how much to consume to adequately recover out of your work out. This is when the calculations get more complex.
Am I off base here or is this how I should think of it all?
If this is correct, then it would be better to use this study to suggest what is your caloric lower bound and to focus your efforts on increasing your activity if you want faster weight loss.
