Balance Your Calories
Hey Guys!!
I hope the past days were good for your health and you were able to cash on the tips I gave to you all earlier in working towards a more trimmer you. 🙂 Keep it going!!! Want a recall? Click here for Part I and Part II.
Sorry to keep you waiting longer this time 😦 Here is the last part of this series, where I will talk about the calories balancing act.
Creating and sticking to a balanced diet is difficult enough. Turns out the best way to live healthy and control appetite is to bring a little balance to your day. Simply put, you can achieve that balance by increasing your caloric expenditure through various activities than caloric intake through food. The food we eat enriches us with calories, and everything we do uses calories. This includes sleeping, breathing, digesting food, and moving around. Eat too many calories without burning them off and they will get converted to fat (stored in adipose tissue) and leave you overweight. So how many calories do you need to keep yourself going?
The numbers vary based on height, weight, age, and activity level. You can use the Mifflin & Jeor Equation to determine your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), and the closely related resting metabolic rate (RMR), that is the amount of energy expended while at rest in a neutrally temperate environment, in the post-absorptive state (meaning that the digestive system is inactive, which requires about twelve hours of fasting in humans). Basal metabolism is usually by far the largest component of total caloric expenditure. The measures of basal metabolic rate and resting metabolic rate are becoming essential tools for maintaining a healthy body weight.
BMR calculation formula:
where s is +5 for males and −161 for females.
Here P is total heat production at complete rest, m is the weight, h is the height, and a is the age, and with the difference in BMR for men and women being mainly due to differences in body weight.
The number you get is the minimum number of calories you should be eating daily. Remember: this is only an estimate of the calories needed just to function; you must exceed this number to live an active lifestyle healthfully.
So now that you are aware about your body’s caloric requirements in the normal physiologic state, let us move forward to caloric expenditure. About 70% of a human’s total energy expenditure is due to the basal life processes within the organs of the body (see table). About 20% of one’s energy expenditure comes from physical activity and another 10% from digestion of food. Knowing what the body burns at rest or through exercise yields (via heart rate monitoring) a targeted program of energy utilization based on metabolic performance.
| Energy expenditure breakdown | |
|---|---|
| liver | 27% |
| brain | 19% |
| heart | 7% |
| kidneys | 10% |
| skeletal muscle | 18% |
| other organs | 19% |
Physical activity is as vital as consumption of “healthy” foods to maintain a fit body. Physical activity is important for physical health, emotional well-being, and achieving a healthy weight. Exercise is physical activity that is intentional and purposefully designed to improve some aspect(s) of fitness or health. Physical activity may help you control your weight by using excess calories that would otherwise be stored as fat.
Calories in Food > Calories Used = Weight Gain
Calories in Food < Calories Used = Weight Loss
Calories in Food = Calories Used = Weight Control
Keep Moving!
So how much physical activity do you need for general health? Experts recommend at least 150 minutes (2 hours and 30 minutes) of moderate-intensity physical activity, or 75 minutes (1 hour and 15 minutes) of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity per week. This amount of physical activity may reduce your risk for some chronic diseases. Aerobic physical activities make your heart beat faster for a sustained period of time. They also require your body to use more oxygen (and thus more calories). Physical activity may include structured activities such as walking, running, basketball, or other sports. It may also include daily activities such as household chores, yard work, or walking the dog. Pick a combination of structured and daily activities that fit your schedule.
Workout For Better Health
You do not need to do all of your exercise at once to be physically active. In fact, experts recommend spreading physical activity throughout the week.
- I recommend at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity on most, if not all, days of the week.
- To achieve and maintain a healthy weight, particularly after you have lost a large amount of weight, you may need to do 60 minutes or more of moderate-intensity physical activity each day.
- If you have been inactive for a while, start slowly and work up to 30 minutes a day at a pace that is comfortable for you.
- If you are unable to be active for 30 minutes at one time, accumulate activity over the course of the day in 10- to 15-minute sessions. Moderate- or vigorous-intensity physical activities that last for at least 10 minutes count toward meeting the weekly recommendation.
- Strength training is another way for you to meet the recommended minimum of 30 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity each day. Strength training will also help you burn extra calories and build strong muscles, bones, and joints.
Will physical activity help you shed those extra Kilos? The perspective is: when exercise is combined with dietary restriction the proportion of weight lost as fat is greater than dieting alone. This is because exercise conserves or even develops muscle tissue, particularly if strength (weight) training is used. Maintenance of muscle mass by exercise helps to preserve or increase metabolic rate and in turn consumption of more calories. In addition, exercise helps the individual who is losing weight feel firmer and more toned than if the weight loss is through diet alone, when the body is more likely to feel saggy and baggy. This can have a positive effect on motivation and body image and perhaps improve long-term outcomes. There are clear benefits of regular exercise for people trying to lose weight. But here I would like to point out one thing that muscle tissue has more mass than fat tissues and hence for physically active persons, exercise may not result in initial weight loss 😦 (as weight = muscle mass + fat tissues + bones) instead a firmer and more toned you! But this should not put you off; keep going, get strong. 🙂 In order to maintain a healthy weight after weight loss, you may need to further increase your physical activity.
Regular physical activity will help you feel, move, and look better. Whether your goal is to achieve and maintain a healthy weight or improve your health, becoming physically active is a step in the right direction. Take advantage of the health benefits of physical activity and make it a part of your life.
Count Calories!
The number of calories you eat is important. In addition to being physically active, you ought to follow a healthy eating plan. Try to consume fewer calories than you burn each day. Remember that your weight may be affected by the balance of “calories-in” and “calories-out.” Choose a variety of “Healthy” and nutritious foods every day, such as whole-grain breads and cereals, lean meats, low-fat or fat-free milk and milk products, and a variety of fruits and vegetables, like apples, berries, carrots, and kale. Healthful foods will give you the energy you need to be active. Technically speaking, a “healthy” food is any food item that delivers a dose of macronutrients, vitamins, and/or minerals, and fibers without delivering an imbalanced proportion of empty calories (energy delivered without other vital nutrients) or toxins to the body. These are foods that when consumed regularly offer physiological or psychological benefits beyond simply providing nutrients to the individual, i.e. foods that have been shown to fight/prevent chronic illness. By definition, almost any food can be considered healthy when it is consumed in proper proportion to other foods. Click here to know how to make a food health enriched. Contrary to popular belief, no one nutrient makes you fat. Too much of any nutrient leads to weight gain and obesity the same way too little leads to illness and death. Sugar, despite lo-carb claims to the contrary, is only converted into fat when excesses are not burned off; the same is true for fats or proteins. All are essential to maintain healthy function within the body.
The recommended daily intakes for macronutrients are as follows:
- 50-65 percent from carbohydrates
- 15-25 percent from proteins
- 15-25 percent from fats (no more than 10% in the form of saturated fats)
I believe, all these guidelines can now help you customize your caloric requirements taking in account your weight, activity levels, BMR and dietary needs and help you TRIM THAT FAT!!! 😛
See you next time, bie!!
FOODSENSE 