Long one stolen from Jennifer NutritionTransition!! Okay, this needs to be said, then the topic needs to be laid to rest!! Everyone is familiar with the calories in/calories out concept, right? Ive seen a few posts where folk have been fretting about calories. If you eat more calories than you burn you will lose weight blah, blah, blah! Warriors. You need to be CAREFUL. You are not trying to lose weight. You are TRAINING to get LEAN. There is SUCH a MASSIVE DIFFERENCE!! Yes it is true that if you dramatically cut down the amount of calories you eat, you will lose WEIGHT in the short term, but this does not equate to becoming LEAN the long term. The very idea that your body runs specifically on nothing but the basic combustible energy conceived by man and otherwise known as calories, is laughable! This formula for energy in vs. energy out was first hypothesized in the 1700’s by a chemist named Lavoisier, he established that life is a chemical function and foods are combustibles. This materialistic mechanical view which is still maddeningly used today was very simple...OVER simple in fact!! To retain balance, put in enough food with the right amount of food calories to match the bodies output requirements. The next logicl step is the reduce incoming and retain/increase outgoing to create a deficit. Over time, foods were tested in labs to find out how much power they delivered. The human body was also tested in a lab, to see how much energy was displaced when movement was performed. Those two balances were then aligned and correlational. They are however, for the most part, not. Unfortunately this idea was long before the discovery that food has additional factors such as proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, micronutrients, subtle hormone activators, alkaloids, phytonutrients, enzyme inhibitors and other usable materials. It also COMPLETELY ignores the factor of human hormone ratios that reduce and increase in constant ebbing and flowing symphonies and THEIR impact upon energy extraction, utilisation and/or storage. These factors totally overwhelm and annihilate the over-simple idea that all we need to worry about is calories, for starters not all calories have equal interpretations within the body, for instance carbohydrates in the simple form of sugar are supposedly extremely to use as energy, but HOW the body absorbs, converts into energy and/or stores as fat is massively impacted by the hormones present in a body. Eg: if a body is STRESSED and is awash with an inappropriate ratio of cortisol, a person will likely store a greater amount of “calories” as body fat, than a person who does not possess that particular skewed ratio. If a person has damaged their muscular receptiveness and/or capacity on a cellular level and has altered their insulin sensitivity and/or down-regulated their insulin receptor sites…then that person will be UNABLE to store or intake even a very base line amount of carbohydrates without gaining fat. Whether those carbohydrates were within “the first 1200-1800 calories” that person ate in a day OR NOT! The juxtaposition is, that a person who has developed (self-inflicted usually) a metabolic down-regulation such as that, will need to repair it, using CHALLENGING WEIGHT TRAINING!! Now, if you expect a body to perform to a high intensity (lift weights, and recover from lifting weights, whilst consuming a LOW carb diet (because their carb tolerance without fat gain is verylow…) then you will simply place your body INTO a STRESSED environment. Cue more metabolic down-regulation. (this is also very much the case if you are under-consuming calories in general, in comparison to the level of calories your body is previously used to intaking) Dont even get me started on counting calories from junk food. Because junk foods actually don’t supply any nutrients to the body, they actually just take enzymes, vitamins and minerals from the body to break them down as they get broken down and digested, they will actually decrease energy levels in the long run and reduce metabolism if you consume them chronically because the body will be running in an under nutritioned less efficient state. This is why “clean” cake, is much better than “shit cake” but it still doesn’t mean that if you’re currently down-regulated (which most people are, because at SOME point in their lives…(or for their whole lives…!!) they have cut down their calories when they didn’t need to.) that you can eat unlimited and untracked clean food at will, because of COURSE your body is going to perceive an incoming bounty of food, and within its state of self-preservation that you have induced as a result of over-dramatic calorie counting or reduction, it will hoard like a m*thafcuka. • NUTRIENTS Build Cells. • Cells form Tissues • Tissues form Organs • Organs form Systems (like the digestive system, the lymphatic system, the endocrine system, the nervous system....EACH ONE OF THESE and more impacts your ability to lose fat!!) • Systems are managed and function optimally as a direct result of robust cells, effective hormonal communication and well balanced neurotransmitters. The basic combustible unit of energy known as a CALORIE provides “a closed machine” with a measurable form of incoming energy which is completely logical as part of a predictable and consistent thermodynamic model of energy balance. However… YOU are not a machine of measurable input/output, YOU are not predictable and consistent, YOU are a collection of many many complicated and variable intricate algorithms which CHANGE in response to the many many changeable influencing external and internal factors present at any one given point in time, and in time as a compound collective also. So how can YOU The body’s ability to use energy is purely based on what level of nutrients it has, Your Nutrient Bank Balance HAS to be in credit in order for your body to lose fat. IF your body is in a state of nutrient starvation, it WILL perceive a threat and hold onto its stored fat for “emergency”. CALORIES do not contribute to your nutritional bank account. In fact, when you consume nutritionally void foodstuffs, your body actually has to expend nutrition in order to digest that mass. Not only are you not contributing to your account balance, you are making a withdrawal. A double whammy leaving you depleted. To think that such a complex biochemical machine only needs the simple calories from food to survive is insane, the human body actually has very little interest in the amount of calories it consumes, but more in acquiring the optimal level of nutrients to maintain homeostasis (health) because if you are deficient in even one mineral by 100% you’re dead or at least suffering physical and mental symptoms of deficiency (eczema/psoriasis/depression/schizophrenia ), so making sure you consume enough antioxidants, minerals, vitamins, enzymes, and everything else is much more important to the body than calories, we can all survive on a calorie reduced diet, but not for very long on a minerally void diet. Further more, just like when you lift weights and become stronger (able to lift heavier kilos) your body can be TRAINED to intake more food (be able to consume higher calories)! But just because you do it once, by accident, by 500-1000cals in one day, and this makes you gain a few lbs, doesn’t mean that you couldn’t train your body to accept 1000 cals a day more than you can eat now, by training it to do so. Nobody deadlifts 300kg the first day they try. Another counter-argument to the myth of calories in vs. out is people need to realise you do not only obtain energy from food! If you do not drink enough water, you will be low on energy because the body needs water for energy production and if you don’t get enough sunlight you will go pale, feel fatigued and become ill and again affect your metabolism and health for the worse because sunlight regulates over 2,000 genes in the body. If you are stressed, your body cannot effectively metabolise fat. How many calories does water have? None. How many calories does sunlight have? None. How many calories does stress have? NONE! But they ALL affect your level of bodyfat. For long term sustained fat-loss you need to FIRST gain a high level of health with good levels of all the nutrients your body needs, including sunlight, oxygen, water and every nutrient in the food we eat. And establish AS HIGH a “calorie” intake as you CAN (which permits the excess consumption of nutrition, AND affords you a buffer to diet back down again within, whilst never then needing to dip below your bodies daily energy/nutritional requirements in order to create “a deficit”.) THEN feel free to mess about with the details of macronutrients (the consistency and appropriate consumption of which matter, not necessarily the AMOUNT). The more you tinker about with things you don’t understand, the more damage you will incur and the longer it will take the sort out in the future, if ever. Trust me, I’m speaking from experience. Now. With that in mind, can we all stop going BONKERS about MyFitnessPal app and comparing what you eat to others...or comparing what you are currently eating to these guidelines issued by the government (since when did they want you to look good naked??) or found on the internet (written by WHO??) as these bear no relevance to YOU and YOUR training and YOUR diet-history either. Thanks so much x
Posted on: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 12:17:24 +0000
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