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Sam Feltham's 5000 Calorie A Day Diet

Posted 08 June 2023

Blog tags: Fitness


Health activist, a friend of The Training Room, and founder of Smash the Fat Fitness & Fat Loss Bootcamps, Sam Feltham, shares some of the findings from his ‘21 day 5,000 calorie self-experiments.

“For my first 5,000-calorie self-experiment, I ate a low-carb high-fat diet of real foods. Mainly eggs, fish, steak and nuts with green vegetables. During that experiment, I ended up gaining 1.3kg in weight but lost 3cm from my waist circumference. From that, you might think “Sure, you're a naturally slim guy and probably very active” and you'd be right. However, with my second 5,000-calorie self-experiment, I ate exactly the same amount of calories and exercised exactly the same amount over the 21 days, but this time ate a high-carb low-fat diet of ‘fake foods’ such as cereal, bread, pasta and 0% fat yoghurt. During this experiment, I ended up gaining 7.1kg in weight and 9.25cm on my waist circumference. Quite a substantial difference between the two experiments despite the same amount of calories eaten and exercised.

“The reason there was such a difference between the two diets is because of the different biochemical reactions to the different foods in my body, and this is what the past 15 years of nutrition research have shown in over 20 randomised controlled trials. To quote cardiologist and one of our scientific ambassadors, Dr Aseem Malhotra: “We've been told for years that eating fat will make you fat because it contains twice the calories that are in carbohydrates. That is to misunderstand how fat storage works.” The reason that we gain or lose body fat is entirely down to our body's biochemical reactions to the foods that we eat, not the total amount of calories that we consume. This isn't a license to gorge on as much steak as you can – 100 calories of steak will have a smaller biochemical effect than 1,000 calories – but what it does mean is that when it comes to fat loss, biochemistry leads and physics follows.”

To find out more about Sam’s 5,000-calorie self-experiments head over to his blog available here.

If you want to help people to eat well and 'fight the flab' then why not check out our Personal Training Courses you can be on your way to helping people with their diet and exercise in as little as six weeks!

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