Texas Lap Band Surgeons Talk With You

I figured it’s summer, so it’s time for some remedial education.  I wanted to go over weight loss basic science to make sure that all of our patients understand why we ask them to eat what we do (in addition to the fact that we’re just mean people).

Fat is your body’s way of storing energy.  It is much more dense in energy than either carbohydrates or protein which are also stored by your body (the latter as muscle).  Fat allows your body to survive periods of “famine” or low food intake.  It does this by burning the fat for fuel when your food intake is low.  If you ate exactly what your body burned for energy each day, your weight would never change.  If you eat more energy, i.e. if you eat more calories, than you burn you will gain weight (fat).  If you eat fewer calories than you burn then you will lose fat (weight).  Every pound of fat is made up of 3500 calories of fuel.  Therefore, to lose one pound, you must burn 3500 more calories than you take in.  Two pounds per week would be 7000 calories more on the burn side than the intake side.

All of this is another way of saying that watching your calorie intake is imperative.  Women should generally shoot for a goal of between 1200 and 1500 calories per day.  The most scientific way of knowing how many calories you need is to get a Korr metabolic test (the breathing test we do at the office) which will measure your metabolism and tell you exactly how many calories you need to take in in order to burn 7000 calories per week more than you take in.  That allows you to have a two pound per week weight loss. 

Simple, right?  Not so fast. All calories are not created equal (there is no Declaration of Food Independence).  When you eat protein calories, your body will tend to store them in the form of muscle, or convert them to use as fuel if your intake levels are low.  Fat generally goes right into fat stores. Carbohydrates can go either way: either storage as fat or used as instant energy, depending on how many calories you’re taking in.  So if you’re eating a fairly moderate calorie diet, where about 25-35% of all your calories come from protein, then the carbohydratees you eat will most likely be used for instant fuel and not stored as fat.  If you eat the same number of calories, but the majority of them come from fat and carbohydrates, you’ll be likely to put on fat – and lose muscle.  Because of the hormones that are released by fatty and high carbohydrate foods, you’ll also be more hungry just a few hours later than if you had a high protein/mod carb/low fat meal.  And remember: muscle is what burns fat, so if you lose muscle (aka “lean body mass”), your metabolism will drop and your weight loss will become even slower.

In practical terms, this means the following: a meal of cottage cheese and fresh fruit, or tuna-fish salad with low-fat mayo in a tomato will keep you fuller, longer and will help you maintain lean muscle (which burns fat) vs. chicken nuggets and sweet tea which will add fat and you’ll be hungry in 90 minutes or less.

Choose wisely.