How do I know if I’m eating the right amount of calories for my health goals?
The number of calories we eat and the amount of nutrition we are getting to fuel our lives are not the same thing. Calories are a unit of energy that is determined by placing food in a bomb calorimeter - a tiny machine that measures how much heat is given off when you literally blow up the food in a sealed container. Despite how we might feel after bad chili fries, our bodies are not lighting on fire from the inside and we do not obtain nutrients by blowing up food in our intestines.
Nutrition is the combination of energy from macromolecules (protein, fat, carbohydrates) and the vitamins and minerals we need to keep our bodies working. Vitamins and minerals are called “cofactors” by biochemists because they are a factor that cooperates with your enzymes. Your enzymes are the molecular machines that perform all of the chemical reactions in your body; their collective action is your “metabolism”. If a person is not getting enough vitamins and minerals in their diet, they can certainly be undernourished while they consume more calories than they need for energy.
Let me repeat that: A person can be undernourished even while they consume excess calories and gain weight.
Your total calorie count is not the same as your nutrition plan.
We eat for the nutrition, as well as for the experience. Sharing a meal, making a favorite recipe, and enjoying our food are all part of eating. You won’t (and shouldn’t) stick to a meal plan that you don’t enjoy, just as much as you won’t stick to a meal plan that is overly involved or time-consuming and doesn’t fit into your lifestyle.
So how can we make sure our nutrition plan actually feeds all our needs? We have to start with the basics: our diets should have a minimum of 25 grams of fiber (a complex carbohydrate) and 0.34-0.55 grams of protein per pound body weight. The total protein can be adjusted to meet your specific goals. If we build a diet that hits those two points at a minimum, we’ll be getting our required vitamins and minerals for proper enzyme function.
After that, we can adjust the amount of simple carbohydrates around how much physical exertion we do and/or weight gain we want to achieve (don’t gasp, a lot of people have very good reasons for wanting to gain weight - hello, lifters! hello those of us recovering from a condition that caused unwanted/unhealthy weight loss! welcome to your recovery.)
Below is a Nutrition Decision tree that walks through how to put together a fulfilling food plan. The decision tree starts with how to know if you’re eating too many calories - but too little nutrition - since that is what I see with most people who are trying to improve their fitness. The steps you would take to make a plan for gaining weight are exactly the same as the ones you take for losing weight: you still estimate grams of protein and total calories using your goal weight, you still need 25 grams of fiber, you still need to eat delicious foods that you enjoy.
Build a strong foundation first, add adjustments later. This Nutrition Decision tree walks you through the basics. Once you have these down (and maybe you already do! congrats!), you can make adjustments like timing when to eat simple carbohydrates, in addition to how much simple carbs to eat. Please remember that these adjustments will increase your rate of progress but they will not make up for a poor foundation! You can stay hydrated, not eat 3 hrs before bed, and take fish oil supplements until you burp up a Gloucester fisherman, and this will not make up for starting with a poor foundation.
Need help figuring out how to apply the basics to your actual food habits? Have the foundation nailed and want to talk about which adjustments are going to give you the biggest return on your effort investments? Send me an email or make an appointment to level up your metabolism.
