Women have been taught for years that the key to weight loss is to eat less and exercise more. And for generations, we’ve followed that advice. But Mama, let me ask you a question; How’s that working for you? Have restrictive diets gotten you to your goals? Has spending hours working out worked? It didn’t work for me! I stuck with it for years and never reached my goals! It took shifting my perspective and eating more food for me to finally lose the baby weight!

The science behind eating less and moving more to lose weight isn’t wrong, but most women misunderstand it! You should only cut calories if you’re already overeating. But most women who’ve been dieting for years aren’t overeating. They’re undereating.

If you’ve been trying to follow a 1,200-calorie diet for months or years, then you’re most likely undereating! And if you undereat for too long your body stops losing weight because it needs the nutrients!

However, what do women usually do when their weight plateaus? They dig in deeper, cut more calories, or do extra workouts to be in a bigger calorie deficit.

The problem is that you’re just creating more stress on your body, so it stores even more fat!

It’s a vicious cycle! But the best way to break it is to understand where you’re at in your nutrition and then decide if it’s time to increase your food intake to repair your metabolism.

How to know if you’re undereating

Some signs of undereating are easy to spot. You’ll probably feel tired. You may experience hair loss and your skin may begin to wrinkle or look duller as you deplete collagen. Undereating can be the source of low energy, brain fog and headaches.

Other symptoms of undereating are less visible. When your body is starved for fuel, it starts to break down muscle and organ tissue. Your immune system becomes weaker, so you’re more likely to become sick. You may also develop osteoporosis or anemia. It can even affect your mood!

As we’ve already talked about, your weight might plateau or you might start gaining weight. Your metabolism has slowed down to conserve energy and undereating is actually having the opposite effect that you want.

You really should only diet, or eat in a calorie deficit, for a few months at a time. If you’ve been dieting for more than 3 months that could be a big reason you’re struggling to lose any more weight. To kickstart your metabolism again, you’re going to need to slowly increase your calorie intake.

How to increase your food without gaining weight

It’s not as easy as it sounds to eat more food. A lot of times we swing so far into undereating that we end up overcorrecting when it comes time to increase our food. But the key to losing weight while eating more is to live between the two extremes.

The best thing you can do to live a healthier life is to invest in nutrition education. When you start to understand how your body processes food and what balance looks like for yourself it changes everything! Inside my Macros Made Easy Program, I teach busy mamas exactly how to do this! If you want a detailed plan designed just for you, check out my program.

For now, I’m going to give you a few easy tips to start increasing your food that won’t make you put on fat in the process.

Start tracking what you eat

Food accountability is the most important part of a healthy lifestyle. The best way to be accountable for your food choices is to start tracking what you eat every day.

I always advise my clients to track their normal eating patterns for a week before they try to make any adjustments. Doing this will help you to make changes that keep you from gaining weight. But if you try to “be good” instead of accountable for your current choices, then you’ll end up skewing your data and messing up your results.

Instead of hiding your late-night cookies and ice cream, own it! Once you start seeing what you’re eating, or not eating, you can decide if it’s serving you or hurting you.

Increase protein first

Protein is one of the most satiating macros. It will keep you fuller longer and it plays a role in literally every part of our bodies, including the production of new cells. Our bodies need so much more protein than we give them!

Include protein in each meal and snack. If you need high-protein ideas check out my guide on High-Protein foods to have on hand. I share some of my family’s favorite protein foods in that post! It’s seriously gold!

Keeping quick and easy sources of protein on hand will make upping your protein so much easier!

Determine if you want big or small meals

Some people like to eat a lot and some people don’t like a big meal. You need to know which kind of person you are so that you can figure out how to get the nutrients you need without feeling deprived or like you’re eating all day.

If you are a volume eater (you like a lot of food on your plate) you can eat fewer, bigger meals. This usually means eating lower-calorie foods so you can have more of them. For example, if you’re eating a burrito bowl you’ll want it to fill your whole plate. So you could add a lot of lettuce and chicken, but then go lighter on higher calorie foods like rice, guacamole, cheese etc. You’ll still get the feeling that you’re eating a lot because you filled the plate with lower-calorie foods.

However, if you don’t enjoy eating a lot of food you can eat higher-calorie foods. Taking the same burrito bowl example, you could load up on rice, chicken, guac and cheese but have a smaller portion of it. That way you’re getting all the calories you need in but you don’t have to stuff yourself.

Don’t cut out carbs or fat

Carbs and fat are always made out to be the villains, but they aren’t! Carbs and fat play essential roles in a healthy diet. And they aren’t going to make you fat as long as you eat them responsibly!

Carbs are your body’s first source of energy. You need them to power your brain and give you the energy to get up off the couch, so don’t avoid them! Whole foods are the best place to start if you’ve avoided carbs for a while. But you can have a slice of bread or a bowl of pasta without gaining weight! Again, it comes back to being accountable for your carbs!

The same goes for fat. Women need fat to sustain healthy hormones and to lock moisture into our hair, skin and nails. Fat doesn’t make you fat, but it’s best to shoot for more nutritious forms of fat. Avocados, nuts, seeds, cheese and dark chocolate are all great sources of fat!

Mama, if you’ve lived with the idea that less food equals less weight, but you aren’t seeing the results you want, then it’s time to change your perspective. Because you can eat more and lose weight. I can help guide you through that process because I know it can be scary.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stunned my clients by increasing their carbs and having them drop weight that’s been stuck for years! It always starts with apprehension and turns into excitement as they add things like bagels, pasta or even just a slice of bread back into their diets!

If you want to learn how to eat more and lose weight then let’s talk. Schedule a healthy mama blueprint call with me to see how I can help you lose weight and rebalance your diet.

A Surprising Perspective Shift That Will Help Busy Mamas Lose Weight