Part 2: Calories
The very first step to setting up a nutrition plan is to try to understand calories. Now by definition calories are a measurement of energy. Or more specifically the amount of energy required to heat 1g of water by 1 degree Celsius.
When we look at a certain number of calories e.g., 200 calories. Whether that be 200 calories from meat, vegetables or lollies it is still 200 calories. However, the amount of volume of food you have to eat of meat vs vegetables vs lollies will be very different. Keeping that in mind if you were to ingest meat, veggies or lollies you’re going to get very different amounts of fibre, macronutrients and micronutrients. But for all intense and purposes as it all breaks down into calories it is still 200 calories.
An area we want to try to understand and address, is tracking calories and along side that we want to understand that there are many variables that play into how many calories we actually eat and how many calories we burn in any given day. Even though we have nutrition labels and we can track our calories it may still not be 100% accurate.
When we’re looking at food prep or seasonal variations in fresh produce like fruit and vegetables. These are 2 factors that play a role into how many calories you’re getting from food or how many calories are really in that given food source. There are also different genetic, digestive and hormonal factors that may play a role into how many calories you take in from the food you eat, and how many calories you burn.
(E.g., A woman going through her menstrual cycle. As she reaches certain stages of her menstrual cycle, her metabolism may boost up and she’ll end up burning more calories than she would normally throughout the month.)
We also have to consider sleep and stress. These are going to be two very important factors that will play a huge role into how many calories you burn throughout a day. Possibly even how well we are able to extract the energy from the food we consume.
All of these factors point towards the facts that calories are always going to be a moving target. When we look at trying to track our calories, we will always be taking an educated guess. It is helpful to keep this in mind when it comes to trying to track calories as close as possible. Things will always be largely inaccurate. But this doesn’t matter as long as we’re as consistent as possible when it comes to the food that we eat. In the long run we will still be getting the results we want.
