So I have this thing...it's kind of a big thing.
I'm clinically diagnosed with Obessive Compulsive Disorder, which means that I hyperfixate on things. Sometimes it's numbers, other times it is routines...but mostly, I focus on information. I need to know ALL THE THINGS about any topic that happens to captivate my attention at any given time.
Given that I am on a weight loss/health journey, that topic has capture my extreme attention this year. So through all my pouring over medical journals, articles, magazines and videos, I have learned A LOT about how the body works when it comes to calories and weight loss.
I wrote some of this information down as a 'primer' for a few friends of mine who were interested in learning more about the physiological side of weight loss, and Coach Andrea thought it might be helpful here too.
So, for those who are interested:
FITNESS 101 CHEAT SHEET
Calories
First off, calories are the energy in your food. They are like gas for your car. They are absolutely a fundamentally important part of your weight loss plan.
Proteins, sugars, and carbs have about 4 calories per gram (roughly). Fats have about 9 calories per gram (roughly). This is why higher fat items are typically higher calorie items, compared to just high protein (lean meats) and/or high carb and low fat (veggies and fruits).
Like with a car, you don’t want to run on fumes. Your body will break down. That’s why the old fad diets that kept you under 1000 calories were really dangerous and harmful. They also failed in that if your body believes that it is starting, it drops your metabolic rate so that you burn less calories than you would if you had eaten.
So food is good. Calories are good. Even high calories can be good, as long as they are within context of an overall healthy lifestyle.
INPUT/OUTPUT
So you take in calories (input) and you burn off calories (output) pretty much all the time. In order to lose fat, you ultimately have to burn off more calories than you take in. In order to lose weight, you need to burn off more calories than you take in on a consistent basis.
Where are you actually at, fitness wise?
Experts say that one of the biggest mistakes people make when it comes to health and fitness is overestimating their overall activity levels. While it is great to do one big work out a day (burning between 300-800 calories/hour), this may not have the overall results you want if it is the only change you make. Because your body will be more hungry following exercise, you are likely to subtly increase your calorie intake without even realizing it, neutralizing the input/output relationship. And unless you make over all changes to diet and every day fitness, the gap between input/output is much smaller, making it much harder to maintain on a consistent basis.
Activity lifestyles are typically classified in 3 categories:
Sedentary-Lightly Active: Typically, little amounts of sweat inducing cardio activity a week. (less than 1 hour for sedentary and 2.5 hours for Light), and a generally low movement level (Sedentary is less than 5K steps a day, Light is between 5K – 7.5K steps a day)
Moderately Active: At least 2.5 hours of sweat inducing cardio activity a week, broken into at least 3 sessions, and an average of 7.5-10K steps a day.
Active/Very Active: 2.5+ hours of sweat inducing cardio activity a week, broken into at least three sessions, and an average of 10K steps per day (averaging above 15K tends to be classified as “very” or “highly” active)
Steps: Step count is a great way to keep track of how active you are in a day, above and beyond your workouts. 10K steps is the base goal. This is equivalent to about 4.8 miles (7.6KM). You can include steps acquired during your workout in your overall step count. If you want to include other activities like swimming into your step count, there’s a good chart here. (I rarely do that, simply because I am too ocd to not actually need them to show up on my pedometer :P: http://www.10k-steps.com/content/pedometer.aspx?owt=1)
It is the combination of the overall activity level (step counts are a good way of tracking this) and the cardio activity levels (minutes spent in exercise induced sweat-bearing activity) that determines your total fitness level. Doing one or the other may not be enough. (Ie: If you do a work out for 30 minutes a day, but spent the rest of your day at a desk, you will likely struggle to lose weight as your input/output relationship is too close together since you don’t burn enough calories throughout the day to make up for what you intake. In that case, to lose weight, you would need to significantly reduce your calories.)
Remember that whatever your baseline is (your fitness starting point), unless you are currently in a gaining weight phase, you have already achieved a statis- a point where you input and output are pretty balanced with each other. Which means that you will need to actively decrease your input (eat less calories) or increase your output (burn more calories) in order to make any significant changes. A waitress who walks ten hours a day likely won’t lose weight just by tracking how much she walks. She will need to actually change her exercise and eating routine, while maintaining the current activity level she already had.
What is your ideal input?
Your ideal calorie input depends on many factors. How tall you are, how much you weigh are the two main ones. Activity level is another factor that is often included. Things like breastfeeding (for the first six months- to one-year only- once the baby is on solids for most of their meals, you should not have to supplement your input for breastfeeding since your baby does not require the same amount of calories. Basically add on 250-500 calories to your every day routine for breastfeeding.) also require some adjustment.
There are several different systems for calculating exactly how many calories you need, but they all come back to around the same thing. I just use this guy: http://www.calculator.net/calorie-calculator.html to get an overall idea.
I don’t generally calculate calories as I have not really changed my diet since I started working out, but have significantly increased my activity level. My diet is pretty clean since we eat virtually nothing but lean meats and vegetables with only occasional dairy and grains (ah, the joy of paleo), so cutting there wasn’t my answer.
I do however supplement with a protein shake because I am burning off so many calories that I require extra protein to keep my muscles fed (which I will explain after)
If you are going to count calories, you must use a scale. Estimating is extremely bad for you, as people have a tendency to under estimate the size of food servings. That can add up to hundreds of extra calories a day that you don’t know you are eating- and is one of the main reasons people ‘can’t lose weight’.
Also, drink your water. Without it, you won’t lose weight.
The long and the short of it: 3500 Calories = approximately 1 lb of fat.
So, to burn off 1 lb of fat a week, you need to input 3500 calories less than you output. That averages out to 500 calories a day for a week. To lose at a rate of 2lbs a week, you would need that number to be closer to 7000 (or 1000 calories a day). Experts recommend not attempting to lose more than 2.5 pounds per week (10,000 calories) because it is dangerous and unsustainable, and could send your body into starvation mode.
Muscle/Weight relationship
In my opinion, even more important that knowing your calorie count is knowing your protein count. Protein is what feeds your muscles and helps them grow.
You’ve probably heard that muscle weighs more than fat, which can make some people think that muscle gaining is a bad thing.. Well, it does weigh more, but that’s a good thing. But muscle also burns calories than fat. Muscle also has a smaller volume than fat does, so you will appear smaller and more trim regardless of whether you weigh more. (This is why I have dropped dress sizes and look way smaller than I was, but have not dropped weight on the scale. It’s also why I abandoned the scale a while ago and only check in once a month or so)
To feed your muscle, and to burn calories at the most efficient weight, you want a significant portion of your input to be muscle-food: Protein.
The way to calculate your ideal protein intake is simple: If you are actively trying to lose weight or increase your overall activity level, you want to aim for 0.8-1.2 grams of protein per pound of body weight. That’s a LOT of protein! This why many people (myself included) supplement with a protein shake. Note that if you follow this schedule, you protein intake will account for anywhere from 40-60% of your total calories for the day. The rest should be made up from as many fruits, veggies, as possible, with limited starches and complex carbs which are full of sugars but offer very little nutritional value otherwise. Remember: 1 gram of protein is 4 calories.
Heart Rate/Calories relationship
Final tip that I have to offer on calories and fitness, is that the intensity of a work out is as important (if not more important) than the length.
The easiest way to gage a work out’s intensity level is with your heart rate. Getting a heart monitor can be really helpful, but you can also just gage for yourself how you think you are doing heart rate wise or you can do a quick heart rate check mid work out. (Though I really do recommend a monitor. It’s much easier and keeps things in check for you.)
The formulas for calories burned by heart rate vary as well, but you can use a simple online calculator. Or you can plug in the formula and do it manually:
C = (0.4472 x H – 0.05741 x W + 0.074 x A – 20.4022) x T / 4.184.
C is the number of calories that you burned, H is your average heart rate, W is your weight, A is your age and T is the length of your exercise session in minutes.
The relationship between how quickly you burn calories and how fast your heart is beating is exponential. You want to keep your heart rate high to maximize your work out
Target Heart Rates
These are the recommendations of the American Heart Association:
Resting: 60-80 HB per minute
Maximum heart rate: 220 (minus) your age. So mine is 187, as I am 33.
Targets: Ideally you want to stay within the 50-85% range of your max heart rate while working out. Going above this can injure your heart. So, for me, I try to stay between 140 and 159 BPM when I am doing cardio, remembering that the longer I stay in the 150 range, the more my body is optimizing the calorie burning.
If you are just starting out with an intense cardio regime, keep yourself between 50-60% for the first few weeks and work your way up to avoid doing damage to your muscles and heart.
Got tips, more information or corrections? Feel free to add them :) Zita