Eat More to Lose Weight? Yes, It’s a Successful Strategy

But contrary to popular belief, you might sabotage your weight loss efforts by cutting too many calories. 

In some cases, you have to eat more to lose weight so your body can function properly.

Key Takeaways 

Making smart food choices by eating low-calorie, high-volume food and moving more can help you lose pounds.

Feeling tired, hungry, or moody can be a sign you’re eating too few calories and need to adjust your diet.

Calculating your ideal caloric maintenance can help tell you if you’re eating too little to lose weight.


Can Increasing Calories Help You Lose Weight?

Increasing your calories to lose weight seems counterintuitive, but it is possible. 

In fact, in certain cases, it can actually help you achieve your weight loss goal as opposed to severely restricting your calories. 

It’s also known as “reverse dieting,” which can help rev up your metabolism.

Eating well under your caloric maintenance amount can actually cause your metabolism to drop, so you burn fewer calories. 

If this is the case,  increasing calories may actually help you lose weight.

Nicole Ibarra, Registered Dietitian, explains:

“Eating too few calories can impede weight loss as it negatively impacts your metabolism. We have our Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR), which is the number of calories our bodies will burn just to simply live (i.e. calories needed for breathing, etc.) without including activity. When you eat very low calories, it reduces your RMR and can lead to weight gain.”

Another way increasing your calories can jumpstart weight loss is by avoiding plateaus. 

Alex Oskian, Registered Dietitian and Nutrition Coach, explains:

“The reason your body plateaus is because your body is actually really great at keeping you alive!  This means that your body will down regulate certain body functions if it doesn’t have enough calories to fuel the important body functions. For example, a female that is chronically under-eating may eventually lose their menstrual cycle. Compared to essential functions that are necessary for life like keeping your heart beating, lungs expanding, stomach and intestines working, and keeping the brain functioning, menstruation is considered non-essential.”

She continues:

“If there aren’t enough calories consumed, non-essential functions, including fat burning, are paused. Instead of fat burning, fat will be stored in your body to help have a store of calories to preserve life. This is known as metabolic adaptation; the metabolism will adapt to the amount of calories that are consumed.”

Why You Should Eat More to Lose More

Eating to lose more might sound counterintuitive, but it actually works.

Oskian explains:

“I like to relate this concept to a bonfire or a fire of any kind. In order for a fire to keep burning, it needs fuel to burn. We have to keep on feeding the fire with wood otherwise it is going to slow down and eventually fizzle out. Our metabolism is very similar to a fire as it needs fuel to burn effectively.”

There are three main reasons why you should eat more to lose more weight:

• To prevent muscle catabolism
• For more enjoyment/freedom
• To minimize or prevent binge eating episodes

Let’s take a closer look at each.

Prevent Muscle Catabolism

When you drastically cut calories and eat significantly fewer calories than what your body needs to maintain weight, your body will burn through muscle.

While this always happens when you cut calories, doing it at a dramatic rate will speed up what is called muscle catabolism, which breaks larger molecules in the body into smaller ones. Ultimately, this will affect your size, but the problem is, it will also affect your lean muscle mass.

Muscle catabolism will cause you to lose muscle size in particular, and muscle is what gives you definition. So if your goal is a lean, toned body, it’s important to eat more to lose weight (but still within your calorie deficit).

If you’re interested in calculating your ideal number of calories for weight loss, check out our article on calories for weight loss. 

In addition to proper nutrition, maintaining a regular strength training routine is key to building lean muscle mass. With a customized workout from Fitbod, you can build upon your progress without worrying about how to adjust your exercise regime accordingly.

More Enjoyment/Freedom

Being able to eat more while still losing weight will grant you more freedom with your daily food choices. It means that you’ll have more flexibility in what you eat and how much you can eat. It’ll make losing weight less of a tedious task, which can do wonders for your mentality.

Minimize or Prevent Binge Eating Episodes

You only have a finite amount of willpower. If you severely restrict your calorie intake, it will only work for some time before you hit a certain point and start binge eating.

By allowing yourself to eat more calories and not having any foods on your “completely off-limits list,” you can minimize, if not prevent, binge eating episodes that can affect you physically and mentally.