What Happens When You Don't Eat Enough
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The secret to weight loss is eating fewer calories than you burn, right? So it would only make sense to eat way less than you burn to create the biggest caloric deficit you can to speed up your weight loss. Not quite!
In this episode, I break down why overly restricting your calories is not an effective or healthy way to create lasting weight loss. I dive into why you should never live in a caloric deficit, how it’s damaging your metabolism, as well as the entire functioning of your body, and signs you aren’t eating enough calories.
How do you know how many calories you need daily?
Download my free macro counting e-book to calculate your macros.
TRANSCRIPT:
Hey there beautiful human, you're listening to Embrace Your Real with me, Julie Ledbetter, a podcast where I empower you to just be you. With each episode, I dish you a dose of real talk and actionable advice for building your confidence, honoring your body, and unconditionally loving your authentic self. Stay tuned if you're ready to embrace your real, let's get in, let's go.
Hello, and welcome back to the Embrace Your Real podcast. I'm just going to dive right into today's episode. I want to talk about weight loss because I know that this is something that many of you guys, and this was me for a decade plus of my life, think that we need to do if we are on a weight loss journey, or we're trying to tone up or whatever it is, 99% of the time, people think that they drastically need to reduce their calorie intake in order for them to lose weight, in order for them to tone up. And it's crazy because people think, and this like I said, for a decade plus of my life, I thought this, I thought that if I had a drastically lower number of calories that I was eating versus what I was burning, then I would immediately see weight loss. And the fact is that is just not true.
In this episode I'm really going to break down why overly restricting your calories is not the answer to creating lasting weight loss, and how it's actually damaging your metabolism as well as the entire function of your body. So kind of going back to like the whole calories in versus calories out thing. So we think, okay, we need our calories in need to be way less than what our calories out, our expenditure, our burning, our workouts, our daily activity, non-exercise activity, all of those things that we are doing on a daily basis, we think that we need to be eating drastically less than what we're burning. And while you're not completely wrong, you do need to be in a caloric deficit in order for you to lose weight. The problem is when you are in too big of a caloric deficit, and I think that's the biggest confusion that many people struggle with is they don't really understand that concept.
So they're just like, well, I just need to be eating less, and less is more in the sense of less is going to get me to achieve my goals faster, and that's just not the case. A healthy deficit, keep in mind when I say this, this is the general standard, but there are so many outliers and there are so many variables and every single person's body is different. So keep in mind it's going to be a little bit different for each person, but a healthy average deficit is around 300 to 500 calories less than your maintenance. So whatever your maintenance calories is, a healthy deficit would be anywhere from three to 500 calories less, like that would be the biggest deficit that you should be in. And anything lower than that for a long period of time will have serious effects.
So let me rephrase that. When I say serious effect, I mean like it's going to have a negative effect on your metabolism, on your hormones, on your body fat, and furthermore, you should not be living in a caloric deficit of three to 500 calories for a long period of time. Like you shouldn't be in a caloric deficit for years of your life, because ultimately longterm that's going to have serious effects on your body and it's ultimately going to become an issue. So depriving your body of the calories it needs, it will, like I said, have a direct impact on your metabolism and because everything in your body is intertwined, it also has a direct impact on the overall function of your body. And let me give you a hint, obviously that's going to be a negative impact on that. I want you to kind of visualize this.
So it can kind of get confusing when we're talking about caloric deficit, caloric surplus, you're like, I don't even know what that means, I have been told that I need to eat less and that's going to help me achieve my goals. But I want you to think about your bank account. Imagine you only taking and making withdraws from your account without ever depositing anything into it. You're just constantly going to the bank and you're withdrawing money and you're withdrawing money and you're withdrawing money and you're never depositing anything into it. It kind of sounds scary, right? Like sooner or later you're going to run out of money in your account and you're going to be facing some serious issues, AK, you're no longer going to have any money for you to withdraw from. It's similar to how our body works. So our body is very similar in that sense. If you keep making withdraws, AK, you're burning energy, you are constantly cutting calories, all of those things, but you're not making any deposit, you're not eating the amount of calories that your body needs, you're ultimately going to run into some serious problems.
So let me kind of give you a very basic overview of why it causes problems. Again, you do need to be eating less than what your body is burning if you want to lose weight, that's basic science. You need to be in a caloric deficit if you want to lose weight. But the kicker is you still need to be eating enough food and in the right balance to make sure that your fuel and the different systems of your body, like your digestive system, your immune system, all the systems connected to your hormones, your muscles, your organs, and when you under eat you feel starving and you aren't just starving yourself, you're starving all of those essential systems in your body. So what I was talking about, your digestive system, your immune system, your hormones, your muscles, your organs, all of those things that are required for basic functioning.
So when this happens, your body does its very best to protect ourselves. Our bodies are so incredible in the sense that whenever we go into flight or fight mode, our bodies want to protect us. So kind of going back to that bank account analogy, your body is super, super smart with its money, it's not going to make more withdraws than it does deposits. And it knows when you're not getting enough calories, and so it adapts to make sure that it's not burning more calories than it's getting. If this is ... I'm just trying to make this very basic for you so that you understand it. And in order to reduce its overall caloric output, it slows down the systems of your body, and that includes your metabolism. So many of you guys are thinking, my metabolism is just slow, but the fact is you've been under eating, you've been starving yourself from all of these essential functions of your body, that your body is super smart and it's going to go into protecting itself.
It doesn't know when it's going to eat next, right? So if you are slowly reducing your calories, your body is like, okay, well I'm going to slowly reduce this, the rate of which my metabolism is operating because I don't know when I'm going to get fed next. And this also can change your thyroid, it can change your hormones, it can change your adrenals, your sex hormones, all of those things. And when your hormones are out of balance, that's when your whole body gets thrown out of whack, because like I said, we are all one system, everything is interconnected in your body. So yes you might be seeing results at first if you're drastically cutting your calories, but soon your body is going to adapt to make sure that the output is matching its input, AK, you're working out a lot, you are expending a lot of energy and you're not eating enough.
It's going to make sure that it's protecting itself and that's when you're going to experience a plateau. And when you experience those plateaus, that's when you will need to cut your calories even more to see the results, thus being in a deeper caloric deficit than your body even needs. And again, your body will slow down it's systems further to ensure its output is matching input. And again, you'll hit another plateau, which is why for me, at one point of my life, prior to really getting into my health and wellness journey and really focusing on feeling my body optimally and enough and all of those things, and I've gone through multiple different phases of my journey, I was at one point eating about seven, this sounds crazy I know, but I was eating about 700 calories and I hit a plateau. My body was just hanging on to everything because I had cut my calories so low that my body kept trying to protect itself in the new normal of me not eating enough, and thus I was hitting all these plateaus.
So it's again so interconnected, all your systems of your body will be slow and I hate to break it to you, but your metabolism will not be functioning properly if you're not eating enough and you keep cutting your calories. So typically what happens when you are at this low point, so let's just say you are in a severe caloric deficit, way below what you need to be, what's even a healthy range, like I said, three to 500 calories less than your maintenance. If you're like eating seven to 800 calories less than your maintenance, you're eating about 1000 calories, then your body is going to go into this fight or flight mode, and as a result, your metabolism is not going to be functioning properly. And then if you were to just like tomorrow start eating, let's just say your maintenance or your even, four or 500 calories more than what your body is used to, that's typically when people start to see that you gain weight extremely fast, and it's because your body is really trying to find that new normal.
Your body is like, Whoa, I've been so used to not having this food, not having these deposit into my bank account, going back to that analogy, that it doesn't know what to do. And so generally what happens is you gain back that weight extremely fast if you just dive right in to trying to eat more and you don't slowly ease your body into it. And most times if you're not particular, you're not number one, educated on how much your body needs, so you're just trying to eat more, and maybe that's like two or three days a week. We often see many people will severely cut their calories on the weekdays and then on the weekends, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, they double or triple their amount of calories their body is used to and that's when people will start to see that they're gaining weight fast, and oftentimes people gain even more back in this.
And it just creates a vicious cycle because you think you need to restrict your calorie intake again and then you just kind of repeat the whole thing over. And like I said, that could be even on a weekly basis, like you're eating super low calories throughout the week and then on the weekend you bump it up by 1000, or 700 to 1000 or 1500 calories and then your body is like, Whoa, I have so much more food, I don't know what to do with it. And then you're feeling fluffy, you're feeling watery, all these things, because your body is trying to keep up with what you're doing, and then you go back into this vicious cycle of cutting and restricting your calorie intake. If you've been doing this for a long time, you really need to be patient with yourself because it's going to take time for your body to recover and heal from the stress that you've been placing on it for who knows how long.
I know for me it was a decade plus of my life and the first two to three years of my health and fitness journey, they were a struggle in terms of like slowly increasing my food intake to have my metabolism adapt to it, and it was a slow process. And I remember there are so many times throughout that process where I was like, I hope that this just like, it levels out, like I was, there were so many times I wanted to quit. There were so many times I was like, this is not working, but I had to remember, okay, if I've been doing this to my body for 10 plus years of my life on and off, it's not right of me to expect my body to heal and recover from something traumatic that it's gone through for years in a month or two months or even six months, it's going to take time. So you've got to give yourself time.
So my best advice is to number one, figure out how much your body needs daily, and whatever number that is, you got to make sure that you're nourishing your body with that amount daily. So this was like such an eyeopener for me personally when I was going through this. I remember I had absolutely no idea what even my maintenance calories were, because I was getting all my information from magazines, from things that I was seeing on TV and all the things, and I had no idea what my specific body, based on my age, my weight, my height, my activity level, all those things, I had no idea what my maintenance calorie were. And so as a result, I was just like taking a shot in the dark, like I think it's this, and it wasn't until I actually learned and figured out how much my body needed, it was like, Whoa, that is so much more than I thought. So much more than I thought, in most cases, that's what it is for women. Or it's just a matter of like, Whoa, this is how much my body needs in terms of fats to really make sure that my hormones are healthy.
This is how much my body needs in terms of carbs to get the energy, like all these things. So I want you to kind of in this season, if you have found yourself in the season of just like severely restricting your caloric intake, for a long time you feel like you've plateaued, you don't have energy, which I'll kind of go into like some signs in a little bit, but you've got to let go of what you think your body should look like or what you want your body to look like, and you have to allow your body to find its normal. Our bodies are so incredible, like truly our bodies are so incredible, they're so adaptive, but I cannot stress enough how important it is that you have to be patient with yourself.
You have to be patient with yourself. If you've been doing this for years, it will take a while for your body to return back to normal and I don't want that to discourage you. Because what you were doing previously wasn't giving you longterm results anyways. So for me, I got to a point where I was like, why would I want to continue to damage my health, my mental health, my energy, all those things when it wasn't even working. So personally, losing weight at the expense of my health is the trade off that I never, ever, ever want to make again, simply because I was in that place for so long. You might be listening to this and you're like, "How do I know if I'm under eating?" There are some clear signs that I'm just going to kind of briefly go through and this'll give you a better understanding if you are in a place of under eating.
So number one, your weight is not budging. Even if you've been extremely strict with your calories and you're still not losing weight, most likely your body is screaming for more food. You have convinced your body that it's in famine mode or survival mode and it's doing everything possible to hang on to fat to make sure that you survive. Like I said, going back to how incredible our bodies are, they're very, very smart, they're very, very adaptive and the whole goal of our body, our organs, everything that's working together and interwoven inside of us is to protect us.
Some other signs that you might be experiencing is your fighting crazy cravings or you're just fighting hunger on a daily basis. I know for me, I would get to a point in my day previously where I would be so hungry. I would tell myself, "Just one more hour." And it was like a game I would play like how many hours can I go super hungry before I just can't take it anymore. And it's like you've got to identify those hunger signals and you've got to get to a place where you can learn those hunger signals and not look at food as the enemy. Look at food as fuel. Some other signs you lose your menstrual cycle. I know that was me for many years of my life I had lost my menstrual cycle. Your hair and nails are brittle, they won't grow, your skin is dull or you're losing chunks of hair at a time.
If you look back at, I've done a bunch of like transformation photos, but if you look back when I was in this severe, severe caloric deficit where I was just always restricting calories way past what even a healthy range of a caloric deficit was, my skin would always be breaking out, I would have all these dry patches, my hair refuse to grow. And I even remember like being at the salon and I remember asking my stylist like, "Why is my hair not growing?" At the time I was very blonde, so I don't know if you've seen my hair now, but it's a lot more natural than it was before. But even beyond that, I remember my stylist saying, it really has to do with the nutrients that you're eating or you're not eating and that's directly correlated with your hair.
And even now, one of my best friends, Kelly, who does my hair, she has said like how immediately when she gets into someone's hair and she sees the health of their hair, it gives many signs of the overall health of their body on their nutrition and all of those things.So that's one sign your mood can be unpredictable I know for me, I would experience crazy mood swings. It was far beyond just like the typical hungry like I know I say, "I'm hungry a lot." And we all experienced that, but it was like crazy, unpredictable mood swings, I was not sleeping well. Like another sign is you can't stay asleep or you can't fall asleep you're chronically constipated. That was me all the time. I felt like I just had like air in my stomach all the time because I was not properly going to the bathroom frequently enough because I was just constantly constipated. I remember in this time I was also really cold.
I remember in the middle of summertime, I would just be freezing all the time. Or overall you just feel like your hormones are all over the place. Again, I do want to preface and say that I am not a doctor so I want to make sure that you are going to the proper person for this to really see if these are things that are more serious thing, but these are just some signs that I have seen, I have personally experienced over the years of just being in a severe caloric deficit. So I know that, that's kind of a lot and all of those sound horrible, which they are. None of those are good things and none of those things are enjoyable. We just need to make sure that those things don't happen by giving ourselves the calories that it needs. I want to repeat again, a healthy caloric deficit is between 300 to 500 calories less than your maintenance.
But again, I have to preface that this deficit should not be permanent, right? I know I go through so many different phases and even right now where we're in quarantine, I am not in a caloric deficit. I am hanging out at maintenance right now because I know it's not realistic for me to be in a body fat loss phase. Personally, I've gone through almost six body fat losses phases, I've gone through four full reverse diets, which this'll be a whole nother podcast that I can talk about just like different phases, but it's so important that you hang out at maintenance sometimes and you go through the phases properly so that you're not just constantly in this caloric deficit. Because that's not something to be permanent. This should be something that you cycle in and out of and if you make it permanent, oftentimes you're going to experience the symptoms that I just mentioned.
So you might be saying, "That's all great, Julie, but how many calories do I need?" Like I said, I remember when I first went into this, I had no idea when I was eating 700 calories I was like, "Well maybe I need to just eat 1200 calories. And that sounded like a lot. And then when I actually learned what my body needed, I was like, Whoa. My personal maintenance calories is about 18 to 1900 calories per day again, depending on my activity and all of those things. And so when I learned that I was like, Whoa, that is so crazy. You might be in that place where you're like, I don't know how many calories I need. I know it's a tricky one to figure out. If you are wanting to learn about that, if you're wanting to learn like a step by step how to calculate how many macros your body needs for maintenance, I do have a free ebook it's, I don't know, 35 plus pages and I kind of go through my story and why macro counting has changed my life and just learning how to properly feel my body.
And then inside that ebook I also give you a step by step calculation that you can do yourself so that you will know how many calories your body needs for maintenance. I think that's just super important to remember and to first educate yourself on, remember how I said that your body not only needs enough food but it also needs the right balance. Remember how I said, your body not only needs enough food, but it needs it in the right balance. This is kind of where counting macros comes in because you're not only ensuring that you're consuming enough food, but you're ensuring that you're consuming it in the right amount. So I remember even for me previously, if I was like, okay, my maintenance calories about 17, 1800 calories, I would still say, well, I can't have carbs. Carbs are going to make me fat or I can't have bread, right? I just need to have like rice and keenwah, which great foods, nutrient dense foods, fabulous. But personally for my mental sanity, I need to have some foods that I actually really enjoy.
And so counting macros has just given me the freedom and flexibility to fit my favorite foods and moderation, knowing that it's properly fueling my body for what it needs. So let me of recap that. Drastically reducing your calorie intake can slow all of the systems down in your body, it can hinder your metabolism from functioning properly and it can cause some serious hormonal imbalances. All of which in many cases prevent you from losing weight. So if you've been struggling with trying to lose weight for a long time, despite constantly being in a caloric deficit, constantly reducing your calories, or you're struggling with those symptoms that I talked about above, most likely your body needs more food.
Again, it goes back to really understanding how much your body needs, and this is why I think it's so important and it should be a foundational thing that every single person at some point in their life knows and learns how much their body needs and how many calories their body needs in order to function optimally. So again, if you want to download my free ebook, I have a free 35 plus page ebook that will really go through my story, why this is important for you, and then a step by step, how to calculate your macros. So if you ever looked into this, I'm sure if you've ever like Googled it or try to YouTube it or whatever, it can feel super overwhelming because there's so many different things and people talking about it.
And so my goal for this ebook was to just simplify it was to put everything in one place to simplify it for you so that you don't feel like you need to go to five different websites to get one calculation and you'd, you're like, I'm bad at math. It's so simple. I really tried to break it down as simple as possible so that any person, even those who don't love math can do it. So my goal is to just really help you understand how much your body needs to function at its optimum. Because I was in that place for far too long of restricting my calories way past a healthy caloric deficit and I lived in that for so long and as a result, my body took a toll on it.
I hope that this episode gave you some tips, some helpful tricks, or just like an overall awareness of, "Wow, maybe that's me. Maybe I'm in a place where I'm not eating enough and that's why I'm not seeing results that I want." So that is all that I have for you today. But I would love to hear what comes from this episode. I would love to hear kind of your aha moments. If you have got questions, feel free to DM me on Instagram, feel free to shoot me over an email. If you go to julieledbetter.com/contact you'll be able to send me over an email there. I love chatting with you guys and that is all that I have for you, but sure to screenshot this, post it up on your Instagram story, tag me, Julia Ledbetter so I can say hi and thank you personally for tuning into today's episode. I want to hear your aha moments and I will talk to you guys in the next one.
All right, sister, that's all I got for you today, but I have two things that I need you to do. First thing, if you're not already following me on the gram, be sure to do so Julie Ledbetter, yes it's with the name, the middle for that daily, post-workout, real talk, healthy tips and tricks and honest accountability to keep your mind and heart in check. The second thing, be sure to subscribe to Apple podcasts to never miss an episode. Thank you so much for joining me. It means the absolute world, and I'm going to leave you with one last thought. The most beautiful women that I have met in my life are the ones who are completely confident and secure in being authentically themselves. Remember that beauty goes so much deeper than the surface, so go out there and embrace your real because you're worth it.