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#5. Calorie counting Monday, June 27, 2020 Last week we talked about nutrition labels, and the "macros" they report. It is reasonable to have spent the intervening week wondering: "How many kcals should I be eating?" and "What should my macro targets be?" These are simple questions with complicated answers. It would be convenient if nutrition were a one-size-fits-all garment. But if you were to assign everyone the same, indiscriminate measurements ("50g of fat, 100g of protein, and 200g of carbs every day for everyone forever!"), the world would be clothed in some pretty unflattering apparel. Tailoring the uncut, nutritional fabric to fit your unique body requires some measurements to be taken first. In less abstract terms: figuring out an appropriate daily caloric intake, as well as the optimal percentages of carbohydrate, fat, and protein, depends on some you-specific variables. This week, let's focus on kcals (we'll get to macros later). You wake up in the morning (probably) and go to bed at night (also probably). During the in-between hours, your mouth feasts on some meats, fruits and veggies, perhaps some grains, and maybe some hard things made out of liquids that recently trickled from the nipples of an unrelated species (i.e., cheeses). All of those foods put together might total 1,500 kcals a day. Or maybe 3,000. Or more. Or less. How many kcals should those foods amount to, though? That's the question worth answering. And the one we'll be addressing for the rest of this blog. A brief interrogation is probably the best place to start. Just four questions. These: 1) How much do you exercise? 2) How much non-exercise physical activity are you doing? 3) How much lean mass do you have clumped around your bones? 4) What is your goal? Weight gain? Loss? Maintenance? The only difficult question here is the third one: how much lean mass do you have on board? So let's figure that out together. Step one: stand on a scale and notice the weight it reports. Easy enough. Step two: figure out the composition of that weight. Less easy. There are plenty of ways to calculate (or at least estimate) body composition: body mass index (i.e., BMI; it's a height-to-weight ratio), girth measurements (e.g., waist-to-hip ratio), skinfold caliper assessment (fancy kitchen tongs that pinch you in very specific places), bioelectrical impedance analysis (a cheap, electronic device that you hold or stand on and it reports an inaccurate number), Fit3D (stand naked on a really tiny merry-go-round that spins you in front of a camera; calculations, but not images are recorded), hydrostatic weighing (sit on a giant produce scale, dunk yourself under water, and then do some math about it), BOD POD (a single-seat, egg-shaped spaceship you sit in that measures your volume by how much air your bulk displaces), DEXA (low energy X-ray; it's like what TSA does to you as you go through airport security, except you get to lie down), and MRI (exactly what you think it is). Contact me if you'd like me to test you on any of them except BOD POD, DEXA, or MRI. Once you know your composition, it's time for the mathy step. Step three: math. While tests like DEXA and BOD POD display a body fat percentage as part of their normal output, other tests require some additional work on a calculator. For example, going from BMI (an exact ratio of height and weight) to bodyfat percent (the percentage of a body's mass that is composed of fat) requires some extra number crunching. Click here to see what the crunching of those digits entails. Once you have an estimation of your bodyfat percentage (the more accurate the better, obviously), you can figure out a healthy kcal target. This requires even more math. If you click here, I'll go over the relevant formulas. ...waiting for you to perform your calculations... Congratulations! You just figured out how to match your daily caloric intake to your health goals. Let's move on to the tips: Tip 1) Spend a week counting your kcals. Track them and figure out where you are. If a full week sounds like an enormous hassle, at least do two or three typical weekdays and both weekend days. That will give you an idea of what "typical" tastes like. How it chews in your mouth, churns in your stomach, settles on your body, and sums on the paper. The summation is the only part that seems to surprise most people. Tip 2) Unless you're getting ready for a bodybuilding stage or you're trying to squeeze into an unlikely weight class for a likely-lucrative endeavor, don't be a maniac about tabulating every crumb that enters your mouth. It's helpful to do for a brief period to become more familiar with the quantities of our indulgences. It's surprising how unfamiliar most of us are; assumptions don't often scale with reality here. But obsession isn't going to accomplish your goals Tip 3) Progress for weight change is a matter of subtlety. Want to gain weight? Eat a little bit more every day. Want to lose weight? Eat a little bit less every day. Huge caloric swings instigate a metabolic ruckus, and it's hard to keep your body tidy with that much internal roughhousing. So use this information to practice the harder-than-it-seems art of subtlety. 
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