One of the most common weight loss strategies you’ll hear is a simple one: eat less, move more. It suggests that restricting caloric intake and increasing physical activity will help you lose weight, lose fat, and look better. And it will, which is a good thing.
Shoot, it’s a very good thing. Here’s why:
Most people eat too much and aren’t active enough. We’re overeating and sedentary. That’s a devastating one-two punch to your health and fitness, especially in the long run.
The advice—eat less, move more—will help with both aspects of this ticking time bomb.
Eating less can help people take control of their diet. And moving more can help people take control of their physical activity. Combine the two and you’re poised to create a caloric deficit, which is the backbone of any weight loss program. Yay.
Why Eat Less, Move More Is a Good Thing—At First
When it’s all boiled down, weight-based fitness goals all come back to calories in vs calories out. If you want to lose fat, you need more calories out than in. If you want to gain muscle, you need more calories in than out. Simple enough.
Note: Yes, there’s more complexity to it than that. But a lot of the time that complexity does little more than complicate and confuse. Other things can play a role, even an important role, in fitness success. However, calorie balance is a fundamental key to that success.
The laws of thermodynamics help to explain why calories in and calories out are so important to any nutrition plan. The first law states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. In other words, energy is conserved.
Calories are the food-based energy used by your body.
The food you eat contains calories and everything you do—lifting, reading this, even sleeping—burns them for fuel. The interplay between calories in (what you eat) and calories out (what you do) is called calorie balance.
A positive balance, or caloric surplus, means you’re consuming more calories than you’re burning. A negative balance, or caloric deficit, means you’re consuming fewer calories than you’re burning. In a surplus, you’ll gain weight. In a deficit, you’ll lose weight.
If the goal is to lose fat, you need more calories out than in. There are a few ways to make that happen. 1) You could eat less, decreasing calories in. 2) You could move more, increasing calories out. Or 3) You could do a bit of both. Hence the common advice: eat less, move more.
The Bright Side of Eat Less, Move More
Properly followed, eating less and moving more can be great advice. Implementation is simple. And with a little effort, the results start pouring in…
You drop weight, get leaner, and become healthier. All big wins.
The caloric deficit led to weight loss. Because thermodynamics. Your inevitable fat loss led to a slimmer waist. Awesome. Plus, your risk of chronic disease has decreased significantly. Life. Changed.
It took nothing more than simplest advice—eat less, move more.
But there’s a slight catch. Sure, it’s useful advice. A good thing. Problem is, you can have too much of a good thing. And when you do, it ceases to be good at all.
Too Much of a Good Thing
Bacon. The general consensus is that bacon is a good—if not great—thing. And I tend to agree. In fact, I even threw a bacon party once.
Yes, it was just as delicious as it sounds. We invited a bunch of friends over for a potluck during the championship game of NCAA Tournament. It was your usual potluck with one important caveat—whatever you brought had to include bacon. But with something as versatile of bacon, there was a lot of room for culinary freedom.
We had everything from sweets and treats like candied bacon to savory deliciousness like stuffed mushrooms wrapped in bacon. Everything tasted great. As the table filled with smokey goodness, my roommate and I knew that this bacon party was a fantastic idea.
And it was. At least at first.
Before we knew it, we had too much of a good thing. And I ate way too much bacon. (Something I hadn’t even considered to be possible.) But of course I did. There was a seemingly endless spread of bacon-filled goodness and I love food.
By the end of the night, I was confined to my couch. Unwilling, or unable, to move. Incapacitated by a good thing. By bacon. Bacon wasn’t the problem, having too much was.
As with most things, the poison’s in the dose—even, perhaps especially, with good things.
The Ugly Side of Eat Less, Move More
It’s well established that eat less, move more can be great advice. A good thing. But too much of a good thing comes with consequences. When I had too much bacon, moving became a terrible idea. I felt sick. Too much of “eat less, move more” can lead to stalled progress, even negative results.
Wait, Ben. How can a strategy that gets results also do the opposite?
Honestly, it is a bit counterintuitive on the surface. But it’s important to remember the mechanism of change within the body—adaptation. Any success you see from training and nutrition (less fat, more muscle, increased strength) is simply a manifestation that your body’s adapting.
If you keep doing the same thing, the law of diminishing returns will take effect. It’s inevitable.
Over time, what might get results at first becomes less and less effective. Before long, those results stop altogether (think: plateaus). And eventually, the same strategies can even start working against you.
Not good. That’s when you see the ugly side of eat less, move more.
That’s when you’ll hit insurmountable plateaus. That’s when you’ll experience metabolic down-regulation and an inability to lose weight—even on starvation diets. That’s when you’ll have hormonal consequences like chronically high cortisol, which is linked to poor cardiovascular health and excess belly fat. And that’s when people get stuck in the insanity cycle of fat loss.
At that point, eat less, move more isn’t merely ineffective—it’s bad advice.
How to Know If Eat Less, Move More Is Bad Advice for You
It’s pretty simple, really. Eat less, move more becomes bad advice when it stops working.
When that happens, don’t eat less and move more again. It’ll cause more harm than good. Well, unless you’re looking for plateaus, negative metabolic adaptation, more fat, and wasted effort. If that’s the case, go for it.
In my coaching program, I look for two red flags when deciding if someone should be eating less and moving more:
1. The person’s been chronically dieting and following fat-loss programs. And I mean a long string of them, consecutively.
2. The person shows any sign of obsessive or disordered eating (which can rampant in fitness culture).
If these are the case for anyone, it would be unwise to eat less and move more. At best, the results will be minimal. At worst, it’ll gravely impact their long-term health and fitness. In my book, I’ve utterly failed you if working with me leads to mediocre results and poor health.
What to Do Instead of Eat Less, Move More
If turning right won’t get you where you want to go, don’t turn right. And if turning right takes you away from your final destination, turn left.
When eat less, move more is a bad idea, it’s time to make that proverbial left turn. It’s time to flip your programming. And it’s time to do the opposite:
Eat more, move less.
Eating More
This isn’t an excuse to run off to the local buffet and eat all of the food. That might not be the best idea (even though it sounds like a delicious one).
Considering anyone that’s followed eat less, move more runs the chance of negative metabolic adaptation (read: a sluggish metabolism), you need to be strategic. Dive headlong into eating more and you’ll erase a lot of the hard-earned progress you’ve made. Let’s not.
Instead, let’s control this increase in calories, revive your sluggish metabolism, and recover from the negative effects of a chronic eat-less-move-more mentality.
Enter reverse dieting.
A reverse diet allows you to eat more—strategically. By increasing how much you eat the right way, you stay lean while increasing calories in. More food without blowing up like a balloon? Double win. It’s simple too.
See how to start eating more, do it the right way, and everything else you need to know about reverse dieting.
Move Less
Fun fact #1: 90–120 minutes in the gym isn’t twice as good as 45–60. Fun fact #2: 20 minutes is enough to shed serious fat. Fun fact #3: Moving less doesn’t mean you’ll cripple your results.
In fact, most people spend too much time in the gym. It’s simply unnecessary for their goals. More isn’t always better. And when that’s the case, moving less can even improve results.
Take cardio, for example. Logging miles on the treadmill is a common fat-loss strategy. And it works. But you know what also works? Moving less with more intensity.
A 20-minute conditioning workout is both quick and effective. (Try this Sadiv Set workout.)
Additionally, low-volume strength work is a great way to help you move less while still making progress. Again, you’ll move less but the intensity (weight) is higher. In other words, you’re still working hard and that stimulates adaptation, progress, and results.
Instead of your usual workout, try five or six sets of two to three heavy reps with your main lift. You’ll move less, work hard, and get results.
Eat less, move more is good advice. But only for so long. When it stops working for you, it starts working against you. Good news, though, you can fight back and take control of your progress.
How? Well, that’s simple: eat more, move less.