Dear Calorie Counter,
Good job, it’s not easy tracking your food and logging it in! Extra kudos if you are doing this manually. Food is fuel so knowing how many calories you eat, or how much fuel you put into your tank is helpful to know. Like a car, you should never pump more fuel than your tank can hold. But unlike a car, the human body doesn’t reject excessive amounts of food, we can actually turn that excess into fat and store it for later use.
There are great apps that you can use to help track calories, you simply put the food item and the quantity eaten and the app will tell you the calorie count and break down which category the calories fall into. These categories are called Macronutrients. Macronutrients are Carbohydrates, Protein, and Fat. These three things are the building blocks of life and is responsible for all bodily function from maintaining our body temperature, to pumping blood and oxygen around, to keeping our skin glowing and soft.
A well balanced diet should consist of approximately 50% carbohydrates, 25% protein, and 25% fat. These ranges vary depending on your goal and activity level.
What is your goal? If you’re trying to lose weight you will definitely have a different plan than someone trying to bulk up. If your goal is to correct a medical condition like diabetes, anemia, hypertension, etc, this too will make your calorie plan look very different.
I want to address those of you who are trying to lose weight. 80% of Americans at one time in their life went on a diet, or some kind of a plan to lose weight. Techniques to lose weight vary because there are hundred of plans out there that sell you on the notion that they can make you lean and healthy. If you used calorie counting as one of your tools, read this article carefully. And if you don’t count your calories but want to be mindful about your health, read up as well….
Here’s the deal, counting calories is not as easy as “calories-in equals calories-out.” This concept is rooted in the theory that you should eat less than the amount of calories you burn. The standard formula we were taught as health professionals is that if you eat 2000 calories per day, all you need to do is burn 2500. That nets a negative calorie count of 500. If you are in a calorie deficit of 500 calories per day and 3500 calories per week, that nets one pound of weight loss per week. One pound of fat is approximately 3500 calories. It’s actually pretty simple math.
This formula unfortunately doesn’t account for a few things:
Not all calories are expendable!
What if you stayed within your allotment of 2000 calories and burned 2500 calories but only ate ice cream? Would you still lose weight? Probably not because your body cannot digest 2000 calories of ice cream! This can be the same for broccoli. There is only so much that the body can digest. Anything eaten in excess will be stored as fat. The key here is to eat a diverse palate of food. Variety will ensure you are getting all the macro and micro nutrients your body needs to metabolize.
Stress breeds fat!
Your brain controls certain functions automatically, this comes from the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). One example of the ANS is digestion, you control what you eat, but you don’t control how the food metabolizes in your body, it just happens. The ANS also helps to maintain our core body temperature at approximately 96.8 degrees, circulates blood to our tissue, and much more.
There are two systems within the ANS, the Sympathetic Nervous System and the Parasympathetic Nervous System, some of you may know these to be our “Fight or Flight system” and “Rest and Digest system,” respectively. This is important to know because each system releases different hormones and hormones effect how we metabolize fat.
The Sympathetic Nervous System (Fight or Flight) is turned on when your body senses stress and fear. The hormones (mostly cortisol and epinephrine) released in this system helps to prepare the body for dangerous situations. Two hundred thousand years ago, we encountered dangerous situations like getting hunted by the wooly mammoth or like suffering from starvation and famine. When Flight or Flight kicks in, blood is moved to muscles to prepare the body to flee dangerous situations and digestion slows down due to the decreased blood flow to your digestive organs. It effects the ability to lose weight because cortisol holds onto food for fear that you may not get a chance to eat for awhile.
The Sympathetic Nervous System has kept our specie alive for a long time, however, we do not experience dangers like we did back then. Most of us are lucky enough to not be chased by a wooly mammoth anymore. The stress that most Americans experience today are things like running late to an important meeting or the cost of living continually rising. The physical dangers of life today is definitely not the same as it was two hundred thousand years ago. Unfortunately the brain has not accounted for modern agriculture and the accessibility of food.
Learning how to let go of stress will not only help with weight loss, it will help with so many other health related issues. Something as simple as taking a couple deep breaths will facilitate the removal of cortisol. Exhale!
Sleep Deprivation Breeds Fat too!
Lack of sleep keeps your body in the Sympathetic Nervous System and we know how bad that is for you when you are in this state constantly. To switch modes, try to get eight hours of sleep each night so you can stimulate the Parasympathetic Nervous System. In this system, the hormones released helps you rest and digest. The hormones ghrelin and leptin help to regulate hunger. When these hormones are out of balance, appetite suppression doesn’t exist and over eating happens. Also in this system, inflammation levels decrease, heart rate to go down, and blood flows from your muscles back to internal organs helping to improve metabolism.
Not all folks have the luxury of eight hours each night so as close to this as you can the better. A mid day nap or just closing your eyes for a couple minutes can help put you in the Parasympathetic Nervous System!
It’s not just what you eat, it’s when you eat that matters too!
Skimping on breakfast and lunch is usually not a good idea because by the time dinner time comes along, you’re famished. This will lead to making bad decisions because you’re so hungry that you end up eating more than you should and content that may not be nourishing.
Another thing to consider is how a late-night meal may effect your body. By dinner time, you usually wind down for the night. Most people’s metabolism and circadian rhythm naturally start to slow down. So why would you eat a large meal at night only to go to bed in a couple hours? Wouldn’t it make more sense to eat a large breakfast so you can use that fuel throughout your day?
The timing of your meals have been a hot topic recently with the popularity of Intermittent Fasting (IF). The theory of IF is to fast long enough to let your digestive system heal and to teach your body to use fat as a source of fuel. This type of eating has shown some promising results for weight loss. For more info about IF, click here. Before beginning an IF program, do your research and put together a realistic plan for yourself.
Here are the take aways….
Diversify your food intake. This will ensure you get all the proper macro and micro nutrients your body needs and will ensure you can digest that food properly.
Calories-in does not equal calories-out. I wish it were that easy when it comes to weight management. Unfortunately there are many factors that can effect your metabolism and how your body burns fat.
Hormones play a huge role in metabolism and since we cannot control our hormones, we must control the way we react to stressful situations. We can also control how much time we dedicate to sleep each night. Eight hours is recommended by most health experts but if that is not realistic, add a mid day nap or do something that brings you joy to help you relax.
Timing your food can help improve your metabolism. Think of food as fuel, there’s no reason to fill up your gas tank if you aren’t going anywhere.
Counting calories and knowing the caloric content of food is essential for a healthy lifestyle. Knowledge is power. And you have the power to control your life.
To you health,
Kim
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