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| Sat, 10-16-2004 - 9:15am |
This is an article from Dr. Mercola's site. It's the first of three parts and I want to encourage you to read it all the way through and really take in what this trainer is saying about calorie consumption, calorie counting, etc. I have experienced this myself and my body responds so much better when I eat and honor my hunger, rather than starve myself.
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The Art of Balancing Calorie Consumption and Calorie Expenditure
There are many fads and fallacies regarding fat loss. The bottom line is this: You will not lose fat if you dramatically cut calories. The only way you will lose body fat (and keep it off) is by burning calories through a combination of these two actions:
- Eating high-quality, whole foods in the correct proportions to your metabolic type
- Regular exercise
With the exception of those on serotonin reuptake inhibitor drugs (most antidepressants) and others that disrupt metabolism, it really is that simple.
Figure 1
Figure 2
The part that everyone finds so challenging (including the experts) is determining the balance of calorie consumption and calorie expenditure. For example, people don't know how many calories they should eat after a 2-mile walk, after rowing for 20 minutes, or after using a step machine for 30 minutes. To do this, you will have two hurdles to jump:
- Deprogram your mind of all the garbage information and hype from the media. This means being much more selective about believing what you hear from so-called health and nutrition experts on TV commercials, radio, magazine ads, books and even peer review journal articles.
Most of what you are being told by common media streams, industry scientists and many university professors consists of twisted or partial truths presented as scientific research, which is funded by food manufacturers, drug companies, product manufacturers and other big industry interests. If you take a closer look, you'll notice most of the "experts" are overweight, obese, out of shape, pre-diabetic or diabetic and rarely ever practice what they preach.
- Doing the work: Yes, you will have to look in the mirror and make a commitment to change. That may entail either doing more exercise than you've been doing, performing different exercises than you've been doing, or possibly even doing less if you've been over-doing it.
The bottom line is that I'll coach you as to how to get the fat off. And no, this coach isn't overweight. He has 8 percent body fat and is fit. (See Figure 1)
Counting Calories is a Dangerous Game
Today, you can see people running the streets, pounding away at their stepper or rowing away with little calorie-counting devices stuck to their arms and ankles, or nicely tucked away inside their exercise machines. Some make progress and then plateau, while others don't make any progress at all and stay frustratingly fat, in spite of displaying the discipline of a Marine core drill instructor.
Sadly, most people don't realize that eating an apple and two boiled eggs for breakfast (because their little gadget says they deserve 250 calories for the workout they just completed) is a sure-fire way to keep the diet industry booming. Refer to Figure 2, as we shed some much-needed light on this issue of counting calories.
Resting Metabolic Rate
First of all, what is generally overlooked by most people, yet highly important if you really want to change your body shape and be healthy in the process, is that just being alive costs you as much as 70 percent of your daily caloric expenditure. That's right, just living accounts for as much as 70 percent of the calories you burn every day.
The Cost of Digestion and Elimination
The next commonly overlooked caloric reality is that it costs between 5-15 percent of your daily caloric expenditure to simply digest and eliminate what you eat. Many people naively assume that as soon as they eat or drink something, it just jumps inside their cells and starts cleaning, organizing, energizing and eliminating similar to a well-trained handyman. This is simply not the case, as the process of digestion can use as many as 15 percent of your daily caloric expenditure.
Daily Activities
Up to this point, we've already accounted for 55-85 percent of our daily caloric expenditure (resting metabolic rate + cost of digestion and elimination), and we haven't even considered our caloric cost of our daily activities.
How then, can we expect those handy little calorie-counting gadgets to be even remotely accurate?
On the whole, the calories used from daily activities are not likely to be even close to the largest caloric expenditure of the day for most people. As you can see from the third tier down in (Figure 2), the range is from 100 calories used to perform what we would call activities of daily living (ADL), to the 1,000 calories a high-level athlete would expend by adding a hard day's training to the typical ADL.
The "X" Factor
At the very top, we have what performance nutrition expert John Berrardi calls the "X Factor"(1). As you can see in Figure 2 , the X factor of calculating daily caloric expenditure is produced by your individual metabolic efficiency, stress environment and your unique spontaneous activity. For example, someone who has a jumpy leg while they eat is expending X factor calories.
Many people are actually counting the calories they expend, and then develop their meal plan to contain slightly less calories in hopes of slimming down. Other people are being pushed into calorie reduction by their medical doctors. I have had patients with back pain referred to me by doctors after having put the patient on a medically supervised diet.
These medically supervised diets are often mostly liquid and I've never seen one over 1,000 calories a day. I can say with confidence after years of clinical experience of treating back pain patients, who had become overweight from inactivity secondary to pain, that diets don't work. All of the patients or athletes I've worked with in my career who have put themselves on diets or have been put on them by military nutritionists or medical doctors, gained back all the weight they lost and more within about three months following termination of the diet.
Put all of this together, with the realization that the United States Department of Agriculture standards, and you will find that 2,500 calories is the minimum amount of calories an adolescent or adult woman needs to get the minimum amounts of life-sustaining nutrients. (vitamins, enzymes, minerals and trace minerals, secondary factors, etc.)
Men need at least 2,800 calories a day due to their higher testosterone levels, higher metabolism and greater muscle mass (2). If you are sitting there saying, "Oh my God, if I ate all those calories I'd be fat for sure," you may be interested to know that the World Health Organization (WHO) has established that starvation begins under 2,100 calories per day (2) -- a figure determined from experience dealing with worldwide starvation.
Stay tuned for part 2 of this article in my free health e-newsletter, as Chek explores the concept of displacement foods and looks at a case history that exemplifies how exercise, in absence of sound eating principles, can make you fat.
Paul Chek is an internationally respected speaker and consultant in corrective and holistic exercise kinesiology and was the first person to introduce Swiss balls to a professional sports team in the United States (the Chicago Bulls in 1991) and abroad (the Canberra Raiders Rugby League team in Australia in 1995), as well as a host of other professional organizations. For information on Chek's Swiss ball of choice -- the DuraBall Pro -- his courses, videos, books and seminars, or the C.H.E.K Institute, call 800/552-8789 or 760/477-2620 (international) for your free catalog or visit the Web site.
References:
1. Berardi, John. "Massive Eating , Parts I and II" Online: www.johnberardi.com
2. Julia Ross, M.A. The Diet Cure (p.17) Viking, 1999
Love & hugs, Kristina
The opinions I have expressed here are from my own experience and are not intended as medical advice or to take the place of your own physician's advice.

Love & hugs, Kristina
The opinions I have expressed here are from my own experience and are not intended as medical advice or to take the place of your own physician's advice.
Love & hugs, Kristina
Kristina, thanks for posting this! How can I access the entire article...i.e. the other 2 parts?
thanks, Sherri
Sherri
expecting baby girl#4 on 9/9/09
mom to Savana (8), Trinity (5) and Miranda (3)
Hi Sherri,
The other two parts have not been posted yet. If you go to Mercola's website you can sign up for his newsletter. It comes via email every Wednesday and Saturday, so I assume the second part will be in the newsletter tomorrow. I am actually looking forward to teh article and always enjoy Mercola's newsletters in general.
I can't post his website here because he sells products, but if you can't find it with a search, you can send me an email at kotabuddy@yahoo.com and I will give you the link.
Love & hugs, Kristina
The opinions I have expressed here are from my own experience and are not intended as medical advice or to take the place of your own physician's advice.
Love & hugs, Kristina