Understanding energy balance
Balancing caloric intake and expenditure is crucial for achieving and maintaining a healthy weight. To achieve a healthy weight, the number of calories consumed must be balanced with the number of calories burned through physical activity and other daily activities.
Calories in
You add calories to your body each time you eat or drink something besides water.
Calories out
Your body naturally burns calories to survive and function properly, even when you are at rest. This is what is known as our basal metabolic rate or BMR. You learned about and calculated your BMR in the last lesson.
Examples of not being at rest are doing anything that isn’t sitting or lying around, such as going about our daily lives as
- walking around the house
- cleaning
- being physically active
- playing sports
- exercising
In short, if we are moving, we are losing. If we are not moving, we are losing, but only in the realms of having your body do what it needs to function and repair itself.
Energy balance
Your body’s energy balance is calculated by how you take in the same amount of calories you burn each day. You will not gain or lose weight if you maintain the same amount of energy you take in as you burn each day. However, if you eat and drink more calories than you burn, you will gain weight; you will lose weight if you eat and drink fewer calories than you burn.
By calculating your basal metabolic rate (BMR), you will understand how many calories your body naturally burns daily. You will calculate your in the next lesson.
I use two tools to understand my body’s energy balance: the FitBit app and the MyFitnessPal App. My Fitbit app follows how much my body burns from my BMR calculated by putting in my height and weight and how much my body burns each day through walking, running, and exercising. MyFitnessPal App tracks how much food I eat per day. Knowing both allows me to calculate whether I gain or weight or not by the calories I ate that day versus the calories I burn.
An example for understanding energy balance for weight loss
You are a 36-year-old male that is 5’10 and weighs 169.6 lbs. Thus, your basal metabolic rate equals 1,772. This means your body burns 1,772 calories if you do absolutely nothing by lying in bed all day or sitting around. If you calculate how much you burned today, you lost an additional 1,250 calories extra on top of that. Therefore, your body total has expended 3,022 calories each day.
But, you can not stop there. First, you have to consider the food 2,500 calories you ate today. If you add the calories to the calories you had lost, you are in a deficit of a negative energy balance of 522 calories, resulting in a little bit more than a pound lost each week.
Burning 500 calories each day will equal a pound over a week. A pound of fat is 3,500 calories.
*Side note: Calculating our weight loss isn’t simple, but that is the best approach. There are many variables that this simple measuring the calories in and out doesn’t consider. There are many other variables that we need to be considered to how fast or slow we lose weight, such as
-
- environmental and genetic factors
- metabolism speed
- types of food we consume (quality of food)
- hormonal responses to our everyday patterns of living and interactions we have
- stress
It is important to create a calorie deficit to balance caloric intake and expenditure, which means consuming fewer calories than the body burns if you want to lose weight. This can be achieved by reducing caloric intake, increasing physical activity, or combining both. To lose weight, try to lose about 500 calories daily through your nutrition plan and physical exercise. If you lose 500 calories daily, you will lose about a pound of fat per week.
If your goal is to build muscle and gain weight, you need to increase the number of calories more than your body burns daily. You can do this by calculating your basal metabolic rate, averaging how much you burn per day, and creating a meal plan over that amount of calories. My bodybuilding certification text recommended creating a meal plan that is 300 extra calories per day than you burn daily.
No matter what your nutrition and fitness goals are it is important not to feel deprived or hungry. Gradual changes to eating and activity habits are more likely to be sustainable and lead to long-term success. In addition, it is important to consume a balanced diet that includes a variety of nutrient-dense foods. This can help ensure that the body gets all the essential nutrients it needs while achieving and maintaining a healthy weight.
Balancing caloric intake and expenditure is essential for achieving and maintaining a healthy weight. Creating a sustainable calorie deficit through a combination of reducing caloric intake and increasing physical activity can help achieve this balance.
In the next lesson, we will summarize the key takeaways from this module and provide tips for achieving a healthy weight.