THIS IS WHY YOU'RE GETTING FAT (NO SUGARCOAT)

Now before you start crying about the title, please understand that I'm here to help you. If I came across mean and condescending, I'm sorry. It's probably because I've a chip on my shoulder from being called fat when I was younger. Maybe I'm not over it but that's a conversation for my therapist.

I needed a catchy title because if you don't see the title, you don't click this article. And if you don't read this article, I can't change your life forever.

Before we go on, I'm proud of you for not giving up and putting in the effort to look for solutions, which has in turn brought you here. You've made it this far, you might as well read on.

You've probably heard this from the majority of fitness influencers on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram - "calories in, calories out, calorie deficit, energy balance, and yada yada..."

I get it, you get it, grandma gets it. And it's still not working.

Why is it not working? Spoiler alert, it does work. The problem lies in it being oversimplified by some while overcomplicated by charlatans. Neither of them give you the tools to apply and sustain it for the average busy, hardworking Joes like you and I.

Imagine someone telling you, "The underlying theory behind the atom bomb is E = mc², now go make your own a-bomb." Yeah right... just that we're missing a dozen steps in between.

I assumed you understand the concept of calories and energy balance well enough, but let's briefly go through for those of you who are new to this.

What's energy balance?

Here's the deal, the calories you consume (in) represent your income. And the calories you burned (out) represent your spending.

Calories In = Income

Calories Out = Spending

And when you start earning more than you spend, you would store the spare money in your bank and that is how your bank balance goes up.

And so, your

Bank Balance = Body Fat

Similarly, our body works the same. When there are more calories coming in versus calories going out, the extra unused calories gets stored into your body's bank, as body fat.

Now, to lose fat you need only reverse the process. We need the bank balance to go down. So you'll have to ensure there's less money coming in and more money being spent. In other words, you have to burn more calories and have less calories coming in.

If you do that, your body goes into a state of negative energy balance and you create what is known as calorie deficit. Ultimately, how much fat you lose depends on how long and how big of a calorie deficit (debt) you sustained.

Many client's of mine have personally found it helpful to think of their calorie consumption like how they manage their finances.

I'm sure we'd all love to own a private jet. But it doesn't fit our budget.

I sometimes want to eat a whole pack of cookies and pizza. But it also doesn't fit my calorie budget.

The point is, you make the conscious decision to either accrue debt (fat) or find something that suits your financial (calorie) budget.

I know a hypothetical someone's going to say, "Then we should get a calorie credit card." Well, maybe you should get a "calorie accountant" too...

The problem

It's a simple enough concept. But at some point, some unscrupulous people in the industry started thinking - "Instead of just giving people the information they need, we could extract the most amount of money if we package it in a way that sounds sexy..."

This makes my blood boil. Instead of teaching what's calories and how much calories are in your foods, they peddle sugarcoated nonsense like "skipping breakfast somehow ramps up your metabolism", "you burn more fat if you eat more fat", "buy my nutritionally-bankrupt meal replacement drink if you're too lazy to diet or exercise", or "your metabolism is broken and the only way to fix that is in my meal plan/book."

In the end, the ones who really needed it don't get the tools that would benefit them, the vulnerable and those looking for quick fixes.

Ladies and gents, you're being sold the methods, not the working principles.

Methods are many, principles are few.

"Don't Methods Work The Same?"

My job as a personal trainer and educator is to arm you with the principles and then you only look at the methods as tools. And methods have to be personalized based on the individual's situation, there is no one size fits all method.

You don't just build a house by hitting everything with a hammer, you could, but would it be effective?

Here are a few examples of how to implement methods effectively according to the problems you face, rather than blindly doing it just for the sake of doing.

"Oh today I've got a corporate lunch event and it's a huge buffet line. Maybe intermittent fasting will work for me today, so when I restrict calories from breakfast I can have more calories later for lunch."

"Oh I've had a heavy breakfast with the in laws, I'm not feeling too hungry so maybe I'll just have a protein shake for lunch so I don't overspend my calorie budget."

"Oh I have to join my colleagues for dinner and most of the dishes are too high in calories. I guess I will just go for the lean protein that no one seems keen to eat. This low carb/keto meal helps me to minimize my calorie intake and keeps me full."

Exercise To Burn Fat

Besides all the gimmicky fad diets, another way the fitness industry tries to pull wool over your eyes is telling you there's some special way to exercise for fat loss. Sounds awfully familiar don't it?

Here's what you need to know, exercise is for all the benefits like stronger, fitter, better shape, lowering blood sugar, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels, making sure you can still wipe your own butt and stand up from the toilet seat on your own when you're old... EXCEPT weight loss.

This is because for the majority of people, who are not professional athletes that exercise for a living, you're simply not going to burn much calories from exercising an hour a few times a week.

That's because intentional exercise only burns around 200 to 400 calories per hour, depending on how heavy you are and how intensely you exercise. Most people simply aren't burning nearly as much as they eat. The average Malaysian consumes around 3,000 calories a day, an hour of exercise would burn only 10% of that amount, that is if they were even exercising everyday.

Trying to lose fat/weight through exercising on it's own is like trying to get rich by pinching pennies. They both don't work. Pinching pennies doesn't get you rich because the amount you could save daily from discounted items just isn't significant compared the cost of luxury goods.

The calories you burn through exercise just isn't significant compared to the calories we consume in a day. In other words, you can not out-exercise a bad diet.

So if you can't get rich by saving pennies on the dime, that means you've got to earn more money, right? If you can't burn much calories from exercise, you got to either eat less calories and/or burn more calories through the other aspects of your TDEE.

So here's the good news - you can make your body burn more calories, not with exercise but by building a strong, robust body that is a metabolic furnace, eating more protein rather than carbs and fats, and by sitting less throughout the day.

Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)

What I mean by a strong, robust body is a body with sufficiently strong muscles and healthy organs. For they constitute almost 70% of your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE), which is your basal metabolism. You do this through progressive weight training to build big, strong muscles, and eating a healthy nutritious diet to ensure you're not deficient in micronutrients so that your organs are functioning at full capacity.

Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT)

It sounds a whole mouthful, but it's just the calories you burn from doing house chores, walking, picking up your child, fidgeting and anything that isn't exercise. You'd be surprise how much more calories a busy waiter burns compared to the average office cubicle dweller... upwards of 1,000 calories difference and they don't even workout. An easy and simple way to help burn more calories would be going on walks after meals or while scrolling social media, and making sure you maintain a high step count with the help of a step tracker.

Thermic Effect Of Feeding (TEF)

Basically, the process to digest and metabolize food for energy, requires energy too. So it's like a production cost or tax on your calorie intake. Which is a good thing. You'd really be happy if 50% of the calories you eat had to be paid as "tax." Not so much if it's the government taking your income. Now, what if I told you protein has a tax bracket of 20~30%, while carbs 5~10%, and fat 0~3%.

What that means is, if you eat 1,000 calories of lean meat, your body has to burn 300 calories to digest the protein, so you effectively only get around 700 calories. Compare that to the miniscule TEF rates of carbs or fat, protein is a much better bang for your buck.

The Bottom Line

The problem is, why are there so many fit-fluencers still selling their "fat-melting" workout programs when it doesn't even burn that much calories compared to these 3 things I just mentioned?

And why are people still buying into fad diets even though they keep regaining the weight they lost? Again and again.

Because they simply don't know better or choose not to acknowledge the fact that our modern life and processed foods are making us fat. Just 50 years back, obesity rates were a fraction of today's. Also there's less cars, TV broadcast stops at 9pm so people go to sleep earlier instead of snacking, there are no 24 hour eateries or fast food drive throughs, food portions are smaller and lower in added sugar and fats.

Stop looking for quick fixes to problems that are rooted in your lifestyle and poor food choices. The sooner you accept the truth, the closer you are to your goals.

Here's the short and sweet summary to losing fat and keeping it off once and for all:

• Slowly incorporate unprocessed, whole foods into your diet instead of cutting out entire food groups. Replace, don't restrict.

• Maintain an active lifestyle, spend less time sitting and more walking. Aim for at least 8,000 steps daily.

• Lift weights. It's the only long term solution to increasing your metabolism.

• Eat more protein and veggies. At least 20% of your calorie intake should come from protein. Aim for 2 to 4 palm-sized portion of protein daily, and 3 to 4 fist-sized portion of veggies daily.

• Learn to count calories. You don't need to do it forever, once you've familiarized yourself with the calories in your food and your food portions, you can do it intuitively without tracking.