Calories Versus Nutrition

The Calorie Confusion

For as long as I have paid attention to dieting advice, every diet plan (or fad) seems to boil down to one magical word… CALORIES!

Everyone has heard the mantra, “Calories in versus calories out” or “Eat less, move more”.  We buy into that catchphrase because it makes perfect sense.  Eating more calories than we use will obviously cause weight gain.  Burning more calories than we eat will obviously cause weight loss.  Our brains are happy with simple logic that is easy to follow.

However most people seem to overlook one critical element in what determines our weight.  HORMONES!!!

Hormones are the reason why some people seem to gain 10 pounds with just one slice of pizza.  Or how other people can apparently eat an elephant without gaining an ounce!

Hormones play a vital role in how much fat we store or burn!  Insulin, glucagon, ghrelin, leptin, growth hormone, thyroid hormone, estrogen, and testosterone.  These hormones are further regulated by proper sleep, adequate hydration, exercise, and everything else you heard is healthy for you!  The message from all this is simple:  We are complicated LIVING BEINGS!

We are NOT automatons that walk around and rigidly calculate “Calories in versus calories out”.  And yet we insist on calculating every calorie we ingest because the best health gurus say we need to watch our calorie intake.  And I agree… Sort of.

Just not for the reason you might think.  Because I look for something more important than calories.  I want NUTRIENTS!  I NEED nutrients to make sure that all my body’s complicated processes are working smoothly and efficiently.  When I made this shift, I found myself counting Calories ONLY to make sure that I got enough!  Why?  Because calories fall into place by themselves when you pay attention to your nutrition.

What is a Calorie?

I have often heard that the average man needs about 1700 Calories per day and the average woman about 1400 Calories per day.  But do we know WHY?  To answer that question, we first must know WHAT a Calorie is.

Most people (myself included) get confused about what a Calorie is supposed to be.  I can tell you that a Calorie is a unit of heat energy.  But that seems ambiguous.  Why not just stick to Fahrenheit or Celsius to know how hot it is?  Although we know that our body temperature is 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 37 degrees Celsius, this does not mean that we are burning 98.6 or 37 Calories!  A Calorie measures a different aspect of heat.  It measures the energy WITHIN the heat.  Let me try to explain.

Imagine a cube of water.  Every side of that cube is only 1 centimeter long (a little less than half an inch).  Now you have something like a small Rubik’s cube that is a centimeter long on every side!  Only this time, THIS Rubik’s cube is made of pure water!

So here’s the question:  If you want to raise the temperature of that cube of water by 1 degree Celsius (about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit), how much energy do you need?

Thankfully other scientists figured this out!  But you might have guessed that you need exactly 1 calorie of energy!

Simply put, a calorie is only a unit of energy based on how we heat up some water!  That is a very crude conclusion.

But I want you to realize that a Calorie is not some arbitrary number that is plastered on the back of every food product.  When you read the Calories on a food product, it basically tells you ONE THING!  If I burned this food to heat up a cube of water, how hot will that water get?

So with this knowledge, I have to ask myself, “Do I care how hot water can get if I use this food like logs in a campfire?  Or do I care about my health?”

Why the Typical Calorie-Focused Diet DOES NOT WORK

I felt as though I was fighting a losing battle when I counted calories!

At first it would work and I could successfully shed a few pounds.  “Calories in versus calories out” was a great mantra as long as I could keep gaining a flatter tummy!  BUT I eventually hit a wall.  I stopped losing weight.  And what’s worse?  I actually began GAINING weight even though I stuck with my low calorie diet religiously!  So how can this be?

I was focused on the wrong thing.  I was focused on CALORIES!  The problem was that depriving my body of calories caused it to slow down its metabolism!  For example, I ate 500 fewer calories a day.  This is a modest goal to achieve 1 pound of fat loss by the end of the week.  This worked for a week or two.  But then my body sensed DANGER!

Your body is designed to sense danger to it’s well-being and respond to those threats in order to survive!  A long time ago we ran away from tigers and other things that would eat us!  In the modern day, we are more aware of chronic stress and its effects on our bodies.  But the body also senses danger from fewer calories than normal.

Our bodies notice the drop in calories and eventually perceives this as a threat to survival.  After all, the body is STARVING!  Therefore a whole new physiology takes over the body!  It’s like the body is going on red alert and rationing its reserves.  So it will stop burning the same amount of calories as before the red alert.  The body will match its own energy OUTput with the CURRENT energy INput in an effort to survive for the long-term!

PAY ATTENTION to that last sentence!  It basically tells us that the body operates IN THE PRESENT.  Your body balances the food you eat with the energy it puts out!  All your fat stores will not matter!  Your body might tap into it a little bit.  But when the body enters starvation mode, ALL reserves are on lock-down and used only when absolutely required!  And what is the magical switch that activates this mode?  Our intricately designed hormones change with our good intentions to shave off just a few hundred calories per day!

Therefore while a decreased calorie diet might work in the short term, your body will sense this drop as a threat to survival and burn only the same amount of calories you’re CURRENTLY taking in.  This will slow your weight loss progress.  When you become disheartened by the lack of results, you give up and go back to your original diet without realizing that your body is STILL in starvation mode!

We had NO CLUE that we turned on a switch in the beginning!  So we don’t realize that we have to turn it back off!

As a result, we get fatter from a calorie based diet and relegate our latest diet attempt as another failure.  Then we justify it by saying we had no will power.

This is NOT TRUE.  We just proved 2 VERY important things:

1. We HAVE will power!  Otherwise, we would not have bothered to do something wonderful for ourselves and for our health!
2. Our bodies are operating beautifully under the pressures of starvation!  We simply focused on the wrong thing.  CALORIES.

Now let’s focus on the RIGHT thing!

Refocusing on Nutrition

You may have heard the question, “Which is heavier?  A pound of bricks or a pound of feathers?”  Do you know the answer?

They both weigh the SAME because you have a pound of each!  But the psychological trick is that bricks are DENSER than feathers.  Therefore we FEEL that bricks should be heavier!

Now let’s rephrase the question.  Which is more nutritious?  1000 calories of of Kale or 1000 calories of sugar?

This question is kind of wrong!  It is not the right question to ask because we cannot compare nutrition with calories!  Just like we could not compare weight with density.  It’s like comparing apples to oranges!

Calories are superficial, but nutrition gives food its substance.

Do NOT make the mistake in believing that your body is not starving if you meet your caloric requirements for the day.  Why?  Because a calorie of sugar is not the same as a calorie of kale.  A calorie of potato chips is not the same as a calorie of sweet potatoes.  And a calorie of bologna is not the same as a calorie of wild-caught fish.  I’m not just talking about macro-nutrients (fats, carbohydrates, and proteins).  I’m talking about the vitamins and minerals available in whole foods versus processed foods.  So how can this be?  We have entered the realm of nutrition.

The Cycle of Nutrients

Everything on this planet participates in the cycle of nutrients!

Wild plants and animals have the greatest density of nutrients in their cells.  The plants absorb light from the sun and minerals from the ground.  The animals consume the plants and therefore acquire its nutrients, but also fertilizes the ground so the soil is rich with nutrients for seedlings to flourish.  This symbiotic cycle of life forces the animal and plant kingdoms (and even the remaining kingdoms) to be interdependent upon one another for survival!

So why does this realization matter to us and how does it contribute to our health?

It matters because we seem to have divorced ourselves from the symbiotic cycle of nutrients!  And in so doing, we have also divorced ourselves from our health and vitality!

How did this happen?  We certainly did not do this intentionally.  Everyone wants to be vital and to feel alive from the inside out!

However with the advent of the industrial food production, companies have done their best to supply us with more food.  They are pressured to provide more food with greater efficiency while dropping the cost of the product!  I am sure this is not easy!  But it comes at a cost.

The quality of our food seems to suffer due to the level of processing required to meet our demands.

We must recognize the nature of our animal bodies and the symbiotic role it plays with other animals, plants, fungi, and even bacteria!  Then we can begin to realign ourselves with the nutrition cycle and balance our bodies with the nutrients it requires!

So when you consider food options, I want you to ask the question, “Which is more nutritious?  A bag of chips or a bag of fresh vegetables?”

You instinctively know the answer!

How to Get Started with Training Wheels for Success

1. Stick to whole foods at first!
   • Anything that looks like you could have picked it from the Earth itself is an excellent place to start!
   • Vegetables, fruits, seeds are wonderful!
   • These are the least processed foods in the store.  This usually means there will be no gluten, no additives, no dyes, and no gums because processing plants did not have to alter the food in any way.
   • Most people stand to benefit from more produce in their diets!  It’s not only heart-healthy.  Your WHOLE BODY will change for the better!  As a result, you may notice that you have clearer thoughts, recover from exercise or injury quicker, and generally feel better!
2. Familiarize yourself with the meats
   • Of course, this only applies to people willing to eat meat.
   • Meats have important vitamins and minerals necessary for our optimum health.
     • Vitamin B12 is a great example since a deficiency can result in neurological problems with the spinal cord.
     • Despite its benefits, most people in the conventional western diet (high in meats and fats while low in fiber) can benefit from lowering their meat intake and improving the quality of meat they eat!
   • If you think something is weird or off or just wrong, trust your instincts!
     • You may notice that the chicken breast is bigger than normal, the salmon seems a little too red, or your eggs consistently have two yolks inside rather than just one.  Question why these changes are taking place!  With more information, you can make a more educated decision about the quality of food you allow into your body.
3.  Oils and Fats
   • Contrary to popular belief, oils and fats are GOOD for you!  BUT they are not all created equal!
   • Oils and fats are one of the main building blocks of every single cell in your body because they are incorporated in the cell’s membrane!  This is important for a cell to be pliable.  However the wrong types of fats can make it brittle.
   • Trans fats wreak havoc on your body!  Why?  Because our bodies have no way of processing that kind of fat!
   • If we cannot process it, then we cannot use it for energy and we cannot eliminate it.  With both of these avenues closed to us, this kind of fat will simply clog our arteries!
   • I opt for plant oils like Olive oil, Coconut oil, Sesame seed oil, and Peanut oil because they are unsaturated and help keep blood vessels pliable and flexible.
4. How much sugar is in that?
   • If it’s packaged, I ALWAYS check for sugar!  READ THOSE NUTRITION FACTS!
   • Sugar almost never offers any nutritional benefit to you!  It is just there to sweeten the food and make you want to buy more!
   • There should not be any added sugar to the foods you put into your body.  The BEST way to ensure this is to eat whole foods that have not been processed or packaged (take a look at Tip #1).
   • You will be surprised where sugar can hide.  And what’s worse, it goes by many names!
     • Some examples include fructose, high fructose corn syrup, mannitol, aspartame, dextrose, maltodextrin, sucrose, sucralose, lactose and the list just keeps going!
     • I will be posting on the different kinds of sugars and sweeteners.  Until then, the best way to educate yourself is to start reading that Ingredients List!
5.  READ!!!
   • I pay NO attention to the front label.  Many words there are thrown around loosely.  However the Ingredients List and Nutrition Facts are an accurate source of information as a matter of law!
   • I view Ingredients List and Nutrition Facts as required reading!
   • For information about how to read the Nutrition Facts, read my Guide here!
   • For information about how to read the Ingredients List, you can check out my Tips here!

The Last Thing You Need to Know about Calories and Nutrition

Calories are only there to give you a rough estimate of how much food you have on your plate.  This gives you no appreciation for the nutrition you need from your food!

So continue reading past the Calories at the top of the Nutrition Facts!

You will learn more about the substance of that product such as what vitamins and minerals it has to offer you!

If that is too complicated, you can stick to whole foods for now and check out my guides.  But the IMPORTANT thing is that you start READING!

There is no better education than the one you ACTIVELY search for yourself!

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