Happiness, Health, Wisdom and Wealth ^™

In the model above you can see that there is a 'pipe' labeled 'calorie intake' and a 'pipe' labeled 'calorie expenditure'. The arrows on the pipes indicate which way the calories flow in the pipe and each pipe has a little faucet on it that controls the flow of calories. This makes things quite a bit easier to understand. If 'calorie intake' is more than 'calorie expenditure' the amount by which it is greater will be stored in your body as fat. If 'calorie expenditure' is great than 'calorie intake' your body will burn calories stored as fat to make up the difference. If the inflow and outflow of calories are equal your stored fat will remain constant. Now let's look at where these calories come from and where they go.

As you can see we've added arrows to show how the faucets are controlled. The intake faucet has 3 controls, protein, carbohydrate, and fat. These three things are the only forms in which calories can enter your body. The expenditure faucet also has 3 controls, activity, basal metabolism, and digestion. No, going to the bathroom does not remove calories. That's what's left over after your body has removed all the calories.

Calories leave your body when you use your body for some activity. Whenever you do anything you need energy to do it and calories are a measure of the energy used. Yesterday I went for a leisurely 10 mile run. I was not running very fast but there were a lot of up and down hills. During that run I used about 1600 calories. About 800 calories per hour. Reading burns calories too. So does thinking. Everything you do requires energy so calories are burned.

Your body also burns calories just being. Your heart is beating, your lungs are breathing, your maintaining your body temperature. That all takes energy. Your body temperature is around 98.6 ° F. This room you are reading this in probably has a temperature of around 70 ° F. Where does the extra 28.6 ° F come from? Your body is burning energy to make this happen. All these basic maintenance functions are called basal metabolism. The calories your body uses just sitting there. I have a scale that reads out my basal metabolism. This morning mine was 1638 calories. That means I will burn 1638 calories a day doing nothing.

Finally, your body has to burn calories to digest your food. Some things are easier to digest than others. Grapefruit is low in calories and hard to digest, so hard in fact that it takes more calories to digest grapefruit than are contained in the grapefruit. Digested, they have negative calories. If you tried to live on grapefruit you'd die.

Now let's look at a still more complete model of calorie processing.

Now we can see where the calories are actually coming from. Every gram (about the weight of typical paper clip) of protein or carbohydrate we eat contains 4 calories of energy. Every gram of fat contains 9 calories of energy.

Activity can use highly variable amounts of energy. 300 calories per day would be very low, Mr. Couch Potato! Basal metabolism varies from person to person and can change over time. 1500 would be a relatively low basal metabolim. Digestion calories vary with the food consumed but a 150 calories per day would be a reasonable guess.

Now, what does all this tell us? Well, if Couch Potato Boy here eats an FDA recommended 2000 calories per day, his intake will exceed his expenditure by 50 calories per day. Now that may not sound like much and in absolute terms it's not. He would only gain about .014 pounds that day. But... if he kept this up he'd gain .014 pounds every day. Almost a tenth of a pound per week or almost 5 pounds per year. So 20 years later our friend will finally notice that he's now 100 pounds overweight. That's precisely how it creeps up on people.

What can our fat friend do now!! Well, if he doesn't want to take 20 years to lose it he'll have to create a much higher calorie difference than the one that created the problem. If he takes in 500 calories per day less than he burns he can do it in one tenth the time. But that still means it will take two years! Now, how does he create that difference, well, it doesn't matter. He can burn 500 more than he has been, he can eat 500 less than he has been or some combination of the two. I would recommend starting with a healthy exercise program, not to lose weight but to get healthy. Then I'd suggest a really healthy diet. Then take measurements and look at the model again. Adjust the intake and expenditure to create a 500 calorie per day deficit. If your first goal is health, fat management will be a lot easier.