Permanent Fitness

To start my weight loss programme, I will first answer a fundamental question: Why do people get fat? That’s easy you’ll say – anyone can answer that: because they eat a lot of fat foods and sweets which have many calories!!! Perfect! – but what does it mean? What do calories do? What exactly makes you fat? I’ll start my search for this answer with getting a good understanding of what calories really are.

What are calories?

Basically there are 2 different types of calories:

• Calories as measure of energy in physics
• Food Calories and measure of energy contained in food

We, of course, will focus on the second type. A definition of food calories found on Wikipedia states that:

• Food energy is the amount of energy in food that is available through digestion. The values for food energy are expressed in kilojoules (kJ) or food Calories (kcal).
• One food Calorie (1 kcal or 1,000 calories) is the amount of digestively available food energy (heat) that will raise the temperature of one kilogram of water one degree Celsius.
• One food Calorie is equal to approximately 4.1868 kJ
• One gram (g) of most proteins or carbohydrates has about 4kcal (17kJ)
• One gram of fat has approximately 9kcal (38kJ)
• One gram of pure alcohol (ethanol) – 7kcal (30kJ)

Calories measure the amount of energy which is available from digestion of particular food. Almost all grocery products have information about their energetic characteristics displayed on their packages. It is given in calories (kcal) or kilojoules (kJ) per 100 grams (g) of the food.

So there it is – that’s what calories are – a measure of energy. Going further, let’s see what does the organism do with the energy it receives from food.

Our bodies and energy

Our bodies need energy to live. Muscles use energy with each body movement, we need energy to breathe, our hearts need energy to pump blood, each of or our organs uses energy at every single moment in time. Even maintaining body temperature at a constant level requires significant amounts of energy.

As we already know, this energy comes from food. Our organisms, in many chemical processes, digest food, ‘extract’ energy contained in it, and use it to maintain our life functions. It all works perfectly as long as the amount of energy provided is equal to the amount of energy used. When the energy intake starts to exceed the amount required, the body has to do something with the excess which it doesn’t use. It stores it in specially designed for the purpose cells, which are commonly know as ‘fat cells’. These cells can grow exponentially to accommodate excess lipids (a scientific term for fats). When they grow, we get fat.

This excess energy is stored as a backup resource for times, when the body doesn’t receive energy supplies it requires. It then releases the collected energy and uses it to cover the deficit. When the fat cells release the energy, they are getting smaller – we are getting thinner.

We owe this design to the evolution. For thousands of years humankind suffered rather of scarceness of food than its excess. Our organisms, in order to help us survive, have learned to catch and store all available energy. It was never known, when the next meal is going to be so any storage was usually used quite quickly. This mechanism was evolving for thousands of years when humankind fought for survival in the wilderness, competing with nature and various predators. Today’s situation, where most of us have access to abundance of food is very new – just a blink of an eye for the evolution. Our bodies did not have time to adjust to it. Maybe someday humankind will adjust to the changed circumstances, but that will take hundreds of generations. We here, are stuck with what we’ve got:)

Anyway, coming back to the topic of this post…

Want to get thin – maintain an energy deficit

The conclusion from the above considerations is obvious: If we want to lose weight, we need to provide our bodies with amounts of calories, below their requirements. They will then start to burn energy stored in the fat cells, which in turn will reduce their sizes and… we will get thinner.

That’s so easy!!

The only thing we need to learn now is how much calories do our organism require?

Daily calorie needs (DCN)

Depending on age, sex and weight our bodies need various amounts of calories. For weight loss purposes, the best method is to calculate you daily caloric needs, which indicates approximate, average amount of calories your body uses every day. This is done in two steps:

1. Calculate your BMR (basal metabolic rate)

Basal metabolic rate (also called a Resting Metabolic Rate) is an amount of calories your body uses to maintain your life functions. That would be the amount of calories you would burn every day if you stayed in bed for a whole day, not moved at all and also did not engage into any significant brain activity.

Wikipedia comes in handy to describe how to calculate the BMR. Below is the equation, which is supposed to be the most accurate:

BMR = (9.99 x W + 6.25 x H – 4.92 x A + S), where:

• W is weight in kilograms
• H is height in centimeters
• A is age in years
• S is sex – for male S equals +5 and for female S equals -161

If you are not into kilograms and centimeters or just want to make it easy for yourself, you can use an online calculator.

Using it, I can calculate my BMR as 2015.

Now to the second step.

2. Adjust your BMR according to your activity level

Most of us don’t stay in bed all day. We work, walk, talk and engage in various activities – all of which require additional energy. To reflect that, we have to adjust our BMRs. This is done by multiplying the BMR by a factor which depends on how active we are. And so:

• if you are not doing any sports and have a sitting job, you multiply the BMR by 1.2.
• if you do sports 2-3 times a week and have a sitting job, you can multiply it by 1.4.
• those who do sports 5 times a week and are generally pretty active, can use a 1.7 factor,
• and finally athletes should use a factor of 2.

I for example, as a person with a desk job, doing sports 2-3 times a week, will use a factor of 1.4. That means that every day, my organism uses about 2015 x 1.4 = 2821 calories. To lose weight I should eat meals, which have a cumulative total amount of calories lower that 2821. My organism will then use the energy which is stored in my fat and I will lose weight.

How much should we lower our caloric intakes to get thin?

There are many different views as to how much lower the caloric intake should be in relation to the daily caloric needs. Nutrition experts agree, however, that intake shouldn’t fall below 1000 calories a day. This could prove harmful to our bodies.

The best approach is to keep the caloric intake 30% – 35% below the daily calorie needs. It is sufficient to generate effects, but not serious enough to put your body at risk. My daily intake of calories will therefore be around 1900. That is the goal I am setting for myself:

I will keep my daily caloric intake at 1900.

If you want to lose weight you should calculate your daily calorie needs and adjust intake of calories accordingly. Remember also that as you lose weight, your DCN also lowers, so you have to also adjust caloric intake. If you do that, you will get thinner.

That is all. I will keep you updated on my progress.

Questions or doubts, any thoughts? – let me know or drop me a comment