Does this line sound familiar to you?
"Look how skinny he is and he is eating a whole piece of chocolate cake. If I ate that, I would be huge."
There is actually some truth to that statement, and this article is going to explain why. One of the core things to understand about losing weight and keeping it off is understanding the difference between calories and calories from fat. Its a huge difference which very few diets actually point out. Many diets have you "counting calories" but calories per se aren't nearly as big a deal as calories from fat when it comes to losing weight. Here's why.
Your body burns calories all the time. Walking, typing at a desk, even just breathing burns calories. In almost all cases, your body burns calories in the form of readily available carbohydrate stores. The only time your body actually burns fat (the process is actually your body taking the fatty reserves and converting them to carbohydrates) is when it has run out of the readily available carbohydrates. So let's look at an example.
Suppose for breakfast you have a moment of weakness and go to dunkin donuts for a glazed donut. Let's say it has 300 calories. Okay, you say to yourself, when I go to the gym today I will work myself an extra 300 calories harder on the treadmill and I will be all set.
Wrong. You might get away with that if you immediately went on a crash diet and didn't eat again until that evening and THEN worked out (wouldn't THAT feel nice!). Here's the problem. In a donut, you can be sure that at least half of those calories are "calories from fat." What that means is that all those calories are going to go straight into your body's reserves and your body will only burn them if it absolutely runs out of all other carbohydrates. That's right, in order to even get STARTED on working on those 150 calories from fat, you need to first completely empty your tank of your regular carbs. That salad you ate for lunch? Good for you, but you have to actually burn it all off before you even make a dent in that donut.
Typically most people don't do this. People think: I am exercising, I am eating pretty well, but I'm not losing much weight. This is because they are only making the first inroads into actual fat-burning territory. Let's expand the above example:
For breakfast you have a donut. That puts you at 300 calories, 150 of which go to fat. For lunch you have a salad with lots of greens and beans. Awesome. That is good fuel. That's maybe, what, 100 calories? And none of it from fat. Oh, but whoops, you put a "low-fat" dressing on it. That's probably 40 calories, and again, about half is probably calories from fat. In the afternoon you have a small snack. Let's say a biscotti? Probably about 80 calories there. And again, 40 of them are from fat. You go home and have dinner and you have a reasonable one: marinara with pasta. And you sprinkle on some parmesan. The pasta/marinara might get you 100 or so calories altogether with maybe 20 being from fat. Maybe 1/8 cup of cheese on the top? Probably 60 calories there, about 40 of which are from fat.
You wait awhile to digest, then you head off to the gym! Let's say you run 3 miles. You will probably burn through about 300-500 calories--maybe more, it depends on lots of stuff. Let's add up the calories you had today. 300+40+80+100+60 = 580 calories. 150+20+40+20+40= 270 calories from fat. So, doing a little math we see that 580 - 270 = 310. That is the number of calories that are "readily available" for the body. This is what you will burn through first. Jogging away on that treadmill you burn off the 310 calories, and once that is depleted, your body starts to burn into the fat reserves. If you really do burn 500 total, then you will end up knocking off 500 - 310 = 190 calories of fat.
Well, you see the problem here. You burned 190 calories of fat, but you actually ingested 270 calories from fat! That leaves you with 80 extra! So on this day did you lose weight? Nope, you GAINED weight, even though you counted your calories and exercised.
Welcome to the average American's dilemma. Even with regular strenuous exercise and fairly sensible eating, if you aren't watching fat intake over just calorie intake, you are going to have surpluses. Fat has a purpose. Your body needs it. Everyone has fat. The state of being overweight is a result of daily intake of fat surpassing daily usage.
Now, what about that jerk at the beginning of this article eating the chocolate cake and not gaining weight? Can you guess the reason? If his store of fat is already low and eating a piece of cake is a truly rare thing for him, then the next time he does strenuous exercise, he is going to start burning that fat right away. He won't have to first burn away fat from the day before and the day before that, and so on.
What this means for weight loss is that if you are okay with gradual loss with danger of some occasional spikes, generic calorie counting might work for you. However, if you REALLY want to get the most out of your workouts and see the fastest drop, you will make a CONCERTED effort to drastically cut your fat intake at least until you have reached a weight you wish to obtain. At that point you can start to think about how much fat you want to incorporate into your diet because at that point your tank will be "empty" and you can actually burn fat as you add it (assuming you continue to exercise, don't go crazy, etc.)
What does this mean? I would put it this way:
You follow these guidelines and you will start to see better results from your workouts.