Nutrition's Role in Weight Management

Many people find themselves going to a new gym or simply researching  exercise online because of a common goal; Weight Loss.
​
Exercise should be an important part of the equation if you’re interested in losing a little weight. However, exercise is not the only variable in the equation.

Nutrition may be our best ally when it comes to attaining a certain body weight. With proper nutrition, we can fuel our bodies for a physically fatiguing exercise session or simply for our day-today life. If we choose to track our food and the calories it contains, we can objectively create a plan for weight management. Weight loss, or gain if that was your goal, can be broken down simply into some easy to calculate equations.

Really, for most of us equations, calculations, and tracking can be quite boring, but I will go over that later in the blog.

In my opinion, rather than tracking all of your calories and food intake from the very beginning, I think it is easier to make some small tweaks to your diet that may not be as difficult as day-in-day-out calculating.

Remember, all realistic goals that you have set for yourself, can be accomplished through small habit changes that add up over an extended time.

Let’s take for example a person who is quite normal. Maybe your neighbor, a loved one, yourself. They have a goal to lose 20 lbs. Assuming this person has the composition and prerequisite health factors to lose the 20 lbs, it can be seemingly painless. With some time, this person can accomplish their goal of losing 20 lbs, not by logging all of their calories, crash dieting, or “sweating it out”, but instead by making one healthy habit change every week or two.

For example, this person that we all know, may drink soda. They drink ONE soda everyday. A simple habit change may be to reduce that soda consumption to ONE soda every other day. Or maybe to no soda during weekdays. Most people have better success from reducing a less than healthy habit, rather than “going cold turkey.”

Some examples of weekly or biweekly habit changes I’ve seen people have success with are:

• Drinking more water
• Desert only on the weekends
• No sugary drinks
• Reduce the coffee creamer intake
• No snacks before lunch
• Intermittent fasting
• Add a salad to every lunch
• Increase the number of “chews” with each bite

The list goes on. Get creative. Small habit changes add up over time to big results. Every week or two, pick a new habit. Keep the previous healthy habits, but continue to add to your success.
Okay, great, but how do the habits actually help?

Simply, most of these habits reduce the number of calories you consume. Calories are important for all of our biological processes from cognitive function to playing basketball and everything in between. We need calories, but we get into trouble when they are in excess. Our bodies store calories, as we often see as fat, for times of need such as famine. Fortunately, for most of us reading this blog, famine is unlikely. Our bodies’ abilities to store energy for use later isn’t so important to us in the fortunate world.

By limiting the number of calories we consume, we can keep our bodies at a fine balance between usage and storage.

Now, here is some science.

There are three basic macronutrients we will concern ourselves with today: Fat, Protein, and Carbohydrate. Each is important for our bodies’ functions. Of course, there are other substances in our foods such as vitamins and minerals, but we’ll keep it to the Big Three today.

Fat, Protein, and Carbohydrate all yield calories. Fat is the most nutrient dense with 9 kcal/gram. Protein has 4 kcal/gram. Carbohydrates also have 4 kcal/gram. For example, if we ate a food that was 10 grams of exclusively fat, we would consume 90 calories (10g x 9 kcal = 90 calories).
In reality, most foods are a combination of fat, protein, and carbohydrates. For example, a serving of peanut butter may have 15g of fat, 6g of protein, and 5g of carbohydrate.
​
The break down is:
Fat 15g x 9 kcal/g = 135 calories
Protein 6g x 4kcal/g = 24 calories
Carbohydrate 5g x 4kcal/g = 20 calories
Total all of the calories and get 179 calories per serving.

With these numbers, an estimate of how many calories we should consume each day, and the knowledge that 3500 excess calories yields ONE pound of fat on our bodies, we can create a plan to consume less calories for weight loss or consume more calories for weight gain.
These is tedious and most of us aren’t going to do this for every food we eat. Let’s be honest, we all have better things to do than measure, weigh, and calculate how many calories are in grandma’s jello salad.

Fortunately, there are some fantastic websites that make this incredibly easy. Two that I have used and recommend are,
MyFitnessPal
Chronometer

For now, that is as far as we will go on the subject of nutrition and weight management. We can keep it simple and add healthy habits that help us reduce our calories naturally, or we can count all of our calories. When done correctly, both can reduce calories. Therefore, weight management can simply be a game of calories-in vs calories-out.

Lastly, don’t be afraid to let people know what you’re trying to do. Don’t showboat, but get some people in your corner. Tell family members that you want to eat less deserts. Let your coworkers know you’re trying to reduce your snacking. Tell me! I’ll support you. Good habits compound on each other.