‘Calories’ or ‘kcal’ is a unit to quantify energy. Just like ‘kg or lbs’ is to quantify weight. Energy is required for all tasks in the human body i.e. moving around, blood circulation, breathing etc. Because of this, we burn a certain amount of calories each day. If we eat more than this, we will gain weight. If we eat less than this, we will lose weight.
Calorie distribution
Around 70% of our calorie expenditure comes from our metabolic rate. Our body’s energy requirement to function properly in a rested state. Around 25% of our calorie expenditure comes from daily movement and exercise. Your daily activity and exercise obviously influences this factor. The last 5-ish% comes from the thermal effect of food. see image below.
What are your maintenance calories?
There are multiple ways to find out what your calorie expenditure is. One way is to use a calorie calculator online (i.e. https://www.calculator.net/calorie-calculator.html). Note that these calculators will give you estimates. A more precise way of finding out is to track your calories and weigh yourself multiple days a week. If after two weeks you see that you’re maintaining your body weight, you know that the calorie amount you’re consuming are your maintenance calories. If you’ve gained weight, you’ve been consuming more calories than you’ve been burning. Same goes when losing weight. Let’s take an example; Jimmy’s maintenance calories are 2200kcal. If he starts consuming 1900kcal a day, he’ll be losing weight over time. If he starts consuming 2500kcal a day, he’ll be gaining weight over time.
Take home points
If we’d like to lose body fat, we need to be consuming less calories than we’re burning. If we’d like to gain muscle mass, we need to be consuming more calories than we’re burning. That’s the simple part of the story. Calories are made out of macronutrients; protein, carbohydrates and fats. The distribution of the macronutrients will determine what type of weight you’re losing or gaining. ie are you losing fat or are you losing muscle?
Stay tuned for the Nutrition basics: protein carbs and fats article in the near future, where we’ll dive deeper into the macronutrient part of the story.
Brandon Dudley
IG: brandon_dudley_
