Day 1 - Calories - Your Body’s Energy Engine 🚀
I know calories can make you anxious. You will say: it's complicated, boring, old-fashioned or even dangerous for mental health. There are fancy types of diets: interval fasting, intuitive, paleo, keto plant-based and so on - everything but not the principles of the scientific approach to food. The truth is that calories were invented as a tool, a measure of energy. I believe that basic understanding of how our metabolism works can help us achieve our goals more efficiently. That is why I want to teach you to understand how our energy metabolism works and to decide for yourself how much energy we need to use to achieve certain goals. 🟢Goal: understand your baseline calorie needs (BMR), active calorie expenditure, and how to calculate total daily energy expenditure (TDEE). 🟣Purpose: The foundation for setting calorie goals (weight loss/maintenance/gain). Maintaining energy balance, avoiding red-s (relative energy syndrome in sports), eliminate vitamin and mineral deficiencies. 👉Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)👈 So our bodies need energy mainly to keep us alive - breathing, blood circulation, body temperature, organ function and so on. The energy required for these processes is called basal metabolic rate. Our basal metabolic rate can be calculated using this formula: Mifflin-St Jeor Equation : - Men: BMR = (10 × weight in kg) + (6.25 × height in cm) – (5 × age) + 5 - Women: BMR = (10 × weight in kg) + (6.25 × height in cm) – (5 × age) – 161 My baseline metabolism : (10x59) + (6.25 x 168) - (5 x 31) - 161 = 1324 cal 🛌We have calculated the amount of energy our body needs even if we lie in bed all day.🛌 It is important to realise that we should never approach such low levels of energy intake when we are moving, walking, talking, exercising, as this would mean a severe energy deficit. However, when trying different diets to lose weight, people often limit themselves to consuming even less energy than they need to maintain their metabolism. ⛔