Nutrition: Calorie Balance is the most important principle

Last week we talked about the “physical activity multipliers” and the need to increase your calories on the days that you exercise.  I know a lot of people will be thinking this is not the best way to lose weight and tone up, but honestly it is.  Forget everything you think you know about nutrition and weight loss, if it was as simple as moving more and eating less we would all be ripped.

This week I’m going to try and explain why this is the case and hopefully encourage you to eat well, especially on the days that you train.  

Calorie balance is one of the most important principles of any nutrition plan and this single principle has by far the largest impact on your body composition.  A hyper-caloric diet , eating more food, can result in muscle gain and/or fat gain, and a hypo-caloric diet, eating less food, can result in muscle and/or fat loss.  The rate at which we increase or decrease the calorie intake is CRITICAL to the success of the diet.  Reducing calories significantly, not eating enough food, places a huge amount of stress on the body and can actually causes us to store more body fat.  This is one reason why so many people see a yo-yo effect when they go on a diet and cut too many calories. 

Calorie balance is the ratio between calories-in-and-calories-out and is therefor an individual thing.  We all have individual lifestyle that require a unique balance of calories.  A calorie is a form of energy measurement and our bodies use (burn) calories to produce movement, to think, to breath, to keep your heat beating, to fight off sickness and disease, to recover for exercise, to make hormones and other body functions important to stay healthy.  When you have a rest day from the gym you body is still burning calories to stay alive. to recovery, and to function, hence it is important to eat and fuel the machine.

We are ALWAYS in one of 3 possible state of calorie balance:

1. 1. Calories are balanced when an individual’s intake of calories via food and drink is the same as his/her expenditure on activity and body processes. When an individuals calories are balances his/her body weight will typically stay the same, however body composition (lean muscle:fat ratio) can change.  The balance of calories allows the body to function optimally, increase metabolic processes and allows the individual to work and train hard.
2. 2. Calories are positively balanced (hyper-caloric) when an individual’s intake of calories is being increased to produce an increase body weight.  The excess consumption of calories are stored in either the fat cells, muscle cells, or as glycogen.  This positive calorie balance will always result in tissue weight gain.  Where the GAINZ are stored all depends on the hormone balance, the macronutrient intake and style/volume of training.
3. 3. Calories are negatively balanced (hypo-caloric) when an individual’s expenditure of calories  (body maintenance, recovery, and movement) is HIGHER than the calories consumed.  The calorie being used to produce energy are not sufficiently supplied by food intake alone and various stored energy (from fat and muscle tissue) must be burned to make up the difference.  Because the difference comes for the breakdown of body tissue, negative calorie balance can result in weight loss.  Generally we want to maintain muscle mass and burn body fat, the hypo-caloric balance needs to be calculated correctly to achieve this goal.  Breaking down lean muscle mass has a negative impact on metabolism and all the hard work you are trying to do in the gym.

Hopeful you can now see why calorie balance is one of the most important principles of a successful nutrition plan?  It has the greatest impact on how much muscle you can gain and how much fat you can lose over any period of time.  Calories from all three macronutrients (protein, fats and carbs) literally compose your body tissues.  Before lean muscle can be built or maintained the energy for the calories you eat need to be correctly balanced as essential building blocks to a healthy body composition. If the body does not have the resources to maintain lean muscle mass then you will become under-muscled and fat.

The energy from fat cells can be used to help build and maintain muscle tissue if calories are managed correctly.  This means that muscle can be built and fat can be burned at the same time, without needing to switch between a positive calorie balance and a negative calorie balance.  This process only works well under specific circumstances, when someone has the additional body fat (energy stores) that can be used to fuel muscle growth.  This process becomes less practical when an individual becomes leaner, as the leaner individual required and increase in calories to maintain a lean body composition. Yes, the rules are different for those who are already lean as these individuals can benefit from eating ice-cream and milkshakes….

This is the tricky part, as the negative calorie balance is often misunderstood and crazy ideas like intermittent fasting and detoxing confuse the topic even further.  Everyone is looking for the shortcuts and the fastest way form point A to point B, and the “more is better approach” is not always the case.  

Many of us incorrectly start thinking that cutting more calories is going to help use get leaner faster, and this is simply not true. A low calorie diet can help you lose weight, but this is going to be at the cost of both lean muscle mass and body fat.  Always remember that lean muscle is metabolic and helps your metabolism run hot and allows us to stay strong and healthy.  A reduction in lean muscle mass will slow down the metabolism and impact hormones and bodily functions.  Nobody can sustain a low calorie diet for a long period of time without falling sick, impacting health markers, increasing stress levels, having mood swings and feeling pretty shitty.  As soon as you return to a “normal calorie balance” your body will quickly gain back the weight you have lost and most of this will be stored as body fat, not lean muscle. This becomes a negative-feedback loop as the body is attempting to get back to homeostasis but insufficient calories make it almost impossible to do so. 

Rarely should a hypo-caloric state be created by diet alone, but rather a combination of diet and exercise will see better results if managed correctly.  Starving the body is not the answer.  This is why you need to understand BMR and you need to understand the physical activity multipliers.  It is impossible to manage your calorie intake correctly,  you need to start to appreciate the volume of calories your body needs to work, rest and play.

Homework

If you have not calculated your BMR or your physical activity demands you need to go and do this now.  Once you’ve done this you can start to compare your daily and weekly calorie intake to determine where you are at.  This is the first thing I do with all of my weightless clients, what are you doing now?  A baseline needs to be established and an understanding of the required volume of food is paramount.  

After a week of logging you food and comparing the intake of calories on training days and non-training days you can then start to modify your nutrition targets. Stop pissing into the wind an hoping not to get your feet wet.  If you want to start making changes to you nutrition this is the starting point, no diet, no supplements, no amount of exercise is going to have the same impact as understanding your calorific intake and demands.

Can you eat a balanced calorific diet for 1 week?  In the next blog post I’ll talk about the best calorie balance you should be aiming for to improve your body composition.