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Your body continually consumes energy to sustain life.
Imagine yourself as a car perpetually running, even at idle. We gauge this energy through calories or kilojoules, mere indicators of the energy content in your food and the energy your body expends. When it comes to health, it's straightforward: your body utilizes a certain amount of energy just to maintain basic bodily functions. This is termed your basal metabolic rate (BMR), which fluctuates based on your muscle mass. Additionally, you expend energy through any form of movement, encompassing actions like standing, sitting, walking, or gesturing while speaking. This expenditure is termed your non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT). Interestingly, individuals who fidget can burn up to 300 more calories per day than those who remain sedentary.
Moreover, there are exercise-related calories, representing the energy expended during physical activity. Typically, this amount is modest, with a weight training session, for instance, averaging around 250 calories burned. Certain cardio exercises are more calorie-intensive, not necessarily due to intensity, but rather duration. Sports like Brazilian jiu-jitsu, wrestling, kickboxing, and swimming, which engage multiple muscle groups, tend to burn more calories than activities like cycling or running. Furthermore, team sports such as rugby, soccer, hockey, netball, and cricket can be particularly calorie-intensive due to their prolonged duration.
Calories are present in all foods, with varying amounts in different nutrients. Protein contains four calories per gram, fat contains nine calories per gram, and carbohydrates contain four calories per gram. Notably, alcohol also contributes calories, independent of any accompanying carbohydrates or mixers. Alcohol itself contains 7 calories per gram.
In terms of weight management, the equation is simple: calories consumed versus calories expended. If you consume more calories than you burn, you gain weight; if you consume fewer calories than you burn, you lose weight.
We all start some where. Here is my story about how I got to where I am today.
Everything we do around health and nutrition is based on some very simple principles.
The second principle we follow is: What you do to get healthy is what you need to do to stay healthy. This simply means that if you choose a paleo, keto, Mediterranean, vegan, intermittent fasting diet, you will have to stick to it long term in order to retain your progress. This is where most people screw up, they pick a restrictive diet, have some short term success, then return to their old way of eating and regain all that weight. Life is a lot longer and more complicated than a simple 12 week challenge. Even in a year, 12 weeks is only a quarter of the year, you have the next 40 weeks to undo all that hard work. This is why you see people do 12 week challenges every year without it ever seeming to stick. You need to come to terms with how you relate to food (see my last post), and how you best like to eat and exercise (more on that later). Look to establish simple habits and routines, rather than follow fixed rules. For example a common thing people do in order to lose weight is skip breakfast. If you however have spent most of your life eating breakfast, you will probably go back to that habit in the future, thereby adding calories back into your diet without realising. So sticking to a pattern of breakfast every day and changing its contents is much more sustainable.
Aim for mediocrity not perfection. This principle might seem counterintuitive at first glance, don't we all want to aim for perfection? But if you aim for what is the minimum rather than the maximum to still get results you create something much more sustainable for your long term health. For example, while training 5 times per week might be good, if the minimum needed to get stronger is just once every 7-10 days, you will be far less likely to fail, building 1 training into your routine. You can always add another session into your schedule at a later date, But if you start with 5 sessions then have to drop a couple due to being unsustainable you will feel like you are failing, despite still doing really well. A second part of this is to look for the next best option, not the perfect option. While a healthy home cooked lunch might be the best option you can have, if you forget to take lunch one morning, what is your next best choice, rather than completely messing up your food for the day. This means the best option available might be a steak pie from a bakery, because you know how many calories are in it, and it will stop you from using McDonald's as an all you can eat buffet. Now I am not saying you should be eating takeout regularly, but we all sleep in occasionally, or forget to buy groceries, so having a second best option for the times where you forget to plan is a great way to ensure you continue to have long term results. One last way this principle should be implemented in your life is the 90% rule when it comes to nutrition plans. I actively encourage people to take 1-2 meals per week off their nutrition plan. This doesn't mean an all you can eat binge at Pizza Hut, just eat something you like, that isn't in your plan. Because if you eat 3 meals per day, 21 per week, the 905 rule means you can have those 1-2 off and still make good progress. No one got fat from just one meal.
What even is healthy? There are all kinds of different metrics that people use, how they feel, fitting a certain clothing size, being a certain scale weight etc. But the most important, and most consistent is to measure and track body fat percentage. The healthy ranges for male and females are often up for debate, but as a guideline, men should be 15-20% and women 20-28%. This is simultaneously higher than most people think it would be, yet lower than most people seem willing to accept as healthy. The best way to measure this is using a simple tape measure. Look up a tape bodyfat calculator and enter the measurements. Within about 2 minutes you will have a decent idea of what your overall health is and how much work you need to do. A more accurate method is to use fat calipers, however this takes some practice to get right. Or you can book in for a full body scan at a health clinic. One thing to be aware of is the difference in quality of body scan devices, some simple measure bio-electrical impendence, others take into account the actual distribution of fat deposits in your body, it's worth checking before booking. However you choose to track, looking at bodyfat percentage instead of kilo bodyweight is a much better option for assessing health. This is because your weight fluctuates, depending on what you eat, how much water you drink, how much you exercise etc. But bodyfat takes a fair amount of time to shift, so it will give a much more consistent measure of what your health looks like.
Steve Johnstone
021 238 1081
021 051 2938
Mill Road, Bombay. Auckland.