By fitlifemonthly 
If you’re aiming to lose weight, you might think the best strategy is to count calories and eat less. But it’s not that simple, says Terry Fairclough, a top personal trainer and co-founder of Your Body Programme.
As a personal trainer, I’ve encountered a lot of different opinions and questions about the best diet for weight loss. People often wonder if they should count calories, adopt a low-fat, low-carb, or high-protein diet, or follow fasting schedules. They also ask if they should eat small, regular meals.
While a big calorie deficit can help you lose weight, it won’t necessarily lead to fat loss. It’s important to understand that under-eating isn’t the right approach. Many people drastically cut calories to get ready for the beach, thinking the weight will just fall off. While you might lose weight, it might not be the type of weight you want to lose.
Our Western diets are typically larger than necessary, and many people do need to cut down a bit because they were overeating to begin with. However, cutting calories excessively isn’t the solution.
Here’s what happens when you eat: your body breaks down carbohydrates into glucose, which fuels your cells. If your body doesn’t need to use this glucose right away, your muscles and liver store it as glycogen, which includes water molecules. When you cut calories, you lose this stored carbohydrate and water, not fat.
If you continue with a long-term calorie deficit, your body will hold on to fat and start breaking down protein for energy. Protein helps burn fat even when you’re at rest, so it’s crucial to consume enough calories from fats, carbs, and proteins.
People often think they need to avoid fat to lose weight, but fat is actually a valuable energy source. It provides more than twice the energy of carbs or protein and is stored within muscle fibers, making it easily accessible during exercise. Cutting fat from your diet will leave you without enough energy to burn the fat you want to lose.
Cutting calories too much and restricting certain nutrients can lead to deficiencies, affecting systems in the body, such as the immune, liver, and digestive systems. This can cause issues like fatigue, malnutrition, osteoporosis, anemia, hormone imbalances, fertility problems, and more.
Extreme calorie cuts also stress the body. The body releases cortisol, a stress hormone, which initially leads to weight loss. Over time, though, high cortisol levels cause the body to hold onto fat, slow metabolism, and reduce thyroid function. Stress also impacts digestion, which affects how your body absorbs nutrients.
Constant calorie reduction can harm your sleep, too. When blood sugar drops, adrenalin kicks in to normalize levels, which can wake you up. Poor sleep affects everything from liver function to immunity and productivity, and it can even lead to weight gain.
I’ve seen bodybuilders restrict calories to get lean for competitions, then increase them afterward. But this needs to be done carefully to avoid health issues. Constantly cutting calories can lower your metabolism so much that losing weight becomes nearly impossible because your body enters famine mode, storing any excess calories as fat.
The key is to eat the right number of calories, including carbs, fats, and proteins, based on your body type, goals, activity level, height, weight, and age. At Your Body Programme, we help people figure out their specific calorie needs with our YBP calculator.
Always aim to fuel your body correctly with lean proteins, healthy carbohydrates, and good fats. Include foods like lean beef, chicken, eggs, fish, pulses, legumes, tofu, fruits, vegetables, sweet potatoes, quinoa, brown rice, whole wheat pasta, avocados, nuts, seeds, and olive oil in your diet.
Remember, it’s all about balance and nourishing your body to keep your metabolism active and your health in check. Increasing your calorie intake appropriately can help you lose fat more effectively than restricting calories drastically.