Nutrition, Especially the Carbohydrate - Part 1

Weight management.  It can get complicated, overly scientific, and advice can be misleading or completely false.  However, there are really only two guidelines to understand and manage your body weight.  Read on to be entertained and informed by a true dandy of a video, followed by my related comments and analysis.

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​Below is an excellent (6:00 minute) video explaining pretty much all you will ever need to know about nutrition.

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This video is extremely entertaining, although some would say the humor is rather coarse and insensitive...   So, if you are offended by excessive use of the F-word or a couple of crude jokes, please skip the video and proceed directly to my slightly less colorful but much more socially-permissible recap/analysis.

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Hopefully you enjoyed that video.  If you’re ever wondering something about nutrition, what you should be eating, and how to manage your weight, think back to that video.  I don’t agree with everything he said (such as that a meal always includes a meat.  A meal does not always have to, and actually should not, always include a meat).  But most of his serious points were spot on.   As simple as he made it sound, he pretty much covered everything.


To me, there are 2 particularly important points to take away from the video.

1. Weight Management = Energy Input - Energy Output
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2. Your carbohydrate intake should be varied each day to meet your energy output for the day.

If you are comfortable with these two points, then stop reading, proceed with your day and enjoy your newfound mastery of weight management.

If you would like further explanation, read on.

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1. Weight management = Energy Input - Energy Output

where:
- ‘Weight Management’ means if you are gaining or losing weight.
- ‘Energy Input’ means how much food you are eating (measured in calories).
- ‘Energy Output’ means how much energy you ‘burn’ in a day (also measured in calories).

This equation applies on, approximately, a daily scale.  If you are active on a particular day, eat more.  If you spent the whole day driving your car and watching football, eat less on that day (unless it’s Thanksgiving.  80/20 rule.  Be good 80% of the time.  Let it rip 20% of the time).

If you do not approximate match your daily caloric intake and your daily energy expenditure, you will have a positive (gain weight) or negative (lose weight) weight balance.  Having a positive or negative weight balance on a given day is fine, don’t drive yourself crazy.  But do try to get close on a daily basis.

This all may sound obvious.  But it is critical to keep in mind this relationship between energy input and output.  If you are losing weight or gaining weight, this is the equation that is controlling it and you can only stop losing or gaining weight by adjusting one of the two variables - either by changing your energy input or by changing your energy output.

Taking some cool pill won’t work to help you manage your weight, and neither will eating only carbohydrates, eating no carbohydrates, or eating like a caveman.  On their own, none of these will cause you to gain or lose weight.  Weight can only be managed through changing your energy input or energy output.

What matters significantly, and the only way to lose weight, is to intake less calories than you burn, or conversely, to burn more calories than you intake.  Eat less while doing the same amount of exercise, or exercise more without eating more.  Boom.  Simple as that.​

Energy Input = Any calories you eat or drink (so everything besides water)

​Energy Output* = Basal Metabolic Rate (constant) + Muscular Work
​*Energy output also includes thermogenesis of food (calories you burn in order to digest your food), but this can largely be ignored.

Your basal metabolic rate is difficult to change, but it is useful to know its value.  Your basal metabolic rate is the calories you burn to keep your blood flowing, diaphragm pumping, brain functioning, etc. It is genetically determined, as well as determined by age, body composition, and a number of other factors.

Here is a link to a calculator to approximate your basal metabolic rate:
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 ​http://www.calculator.net/bmr-calculator.html 
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While you cannot do much to change your basal metabolic rate, you can significantly increase or decrease your muscular work - Exercise.

Exercise increases muscular work to the point that it can become a significant portion, or even the majority, of your total energy output.  An hour of walking burns at least 300 calories.  A two hour hike burns at least 600 calories.  That’s equivalent to the energy content of an entire (reasonably portioned) meal.  Running or swimming for just 20 minutes can burn a few hundred calories.  Point is, you can easily increase your daily energy output by doing a bit of exercise.

Keep in mind, however, that only exercising more and therefore increasing your energy output will not cause you to lose weight.  Like I said earlier, the only way to lose weight is to intake less calories than you burn, or conversely, to burn more calories than you intake.  Eat less while doing the same amount of exercise, or exercise more without eating more. 

Don’t walk around hangry (hungry-angry), but in order to lose weight, you must ensure that your energy intake is below your energy output on the majority of days.

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​2. Your carbohydrate intake should be varied each day to meet your energy output for the day.

“If your car’s gas tank is already full, you don’t drive it to the gas station to fill it up.”

Carbohydrates are like your body’s gasoline.  An extremely active day uses up energy, and your body needs to be refueled with carbohydrates (bread, rice, potatoes, pasta, cereal, beer, bananas, fruit juice, etc).  Similar to if your car sits in the garage all day,  if you don’t exert yourself in any way throughout the day, no refueling is required.

High Energy Output Day --- Eat More Carbohydrates
Low Energy Output Day --- Eat Less Carbohydrates

Constant - every day, maintain your intake of protein sources, fat sources, fruits, vegetables, etc. - the kind of stuff shown below.

Variable - vary your carbohydrate intake to match your activity level.  Carbohydrates include bread, rice, potatoes, pasta, cereal, etc.

So in order to lose weight, I can just eat less calories than I burn?  And I can eat less calories by eating less carbs?  Yes, this is true.  But I am not saying that carbs are bad.  Not at all.  It’s just that you need to eat more or less carbs, day-to-day, based on your activity level that day.

On some high energy output days I will eat 3,000-4,000+ calories exclusively from carbs.  Gatorade, cookies, bread, rice, potatoes, beer, clif bars, pancakes, cereal, etc.  That’s what I will eat all day long.  Those are days that I have huge amounts of activity.  I burned several thousand calories throughout the day, and, correspondingly, I ate cake and rice all day.  My energy input matched my energy output.  Therefore, I will go into the next day at the same weight as the previous day.

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Thanks for reading.  To summarize:

​1. Weight Management = Energy Input - Energy Output
2. Your carbohydrate intake should be varied each day to meet your energy output for the day.

Follow these two ideas and you will reap huge benefits.  You will feel good.  Your energy levels will be stable throughout the day and from day-to-day.  You will perform better (your brain function and athletic performance).  Your body composition will be leaner.  You will carry less fat and will be more comfortable in airplane seats.  And carrying less fat will also decrease your risk of diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

Pretty simple two rules for all of those benefits, and for a topic that often gets so complicated.