ENERGY
AND YOUR BODY
PRECAUTION
The following applies only to people who have
normal lifestyles, normal exercise patterns and generally normal and good
health.
ENERGY
BUDGET
Your body has an energy budget which conforms to
the following equation.
Energy in =
energy used + energy stored
I use the term energy (and not the units used for
measuring it, eg Calories) because that is what it is.
Energy in means all the stuff going in through your
cakehole.
Energy used means what your body takes to function.
Energy stored means the energy your body has received but not
used.
I will now discuss each of these three in detail,
starting at the end, with energy stored
DISCUSSION
Energy
stored
By
far the most important way that your body stores energy is in the form of
fat. The body has two basic places for
storing fat: subcutaneously (under the skin) and around your organs, mostly in
your abdomen. Most people are aware of
subcutaneous fat – it gives you fat thighs, double chins, and so on. We see abdominal fat mostly in the form of
large bellies.
How
much fat is the right amount? For a
start, having too little fat is physiologically unwise, and can be extremely dangerous. Men need about one-sixth to one-fifth of
their body mass in fat, and women about one-fifth to one quarter of their body
mass. Less than this starts leading to
trouble with, for instance, hormone imbalances which then cause all sorts of
other malfunctions in the body.
Too
much fat means that the heart, lungs, muscles and joints, which are designed
for an optimal normal weight, have to work that much harder. They can maintain this overwork for only so
long before they give trouble. Thus,
overweight is bad for you, even if you don't agree with the fashion for having
slim, trim bodies.
How
do we measure our fat? This is the hard
part. When we weigh ourselves, we get
the lot – bones, blood, muscles, organs, fat and skin, and all the water in our
bodies. The trouble is that things like
muscle and blood weigh relatively more than fat! This means that if you lose a kilogram of
fat, it is a lot more than a litre, but a kilogram of blood is about a
litre. Take someone who says, “Yesterday
at the gym, I weighed myself before and after a huge workout, and I had lost
more than a kilogram!” Well, yes, my
dear – but that was mostly water, through your breath and perspiration. As soon as you have the smoothie and latte
you now crave, you make up the water, and you are back to square one.
We
measure some subcutaneous fat best by using measuring calipers. The BMI is helpful too. But this still doesn't give us the proportion
of our bodies that are fat. So scales
are less than helpful. Because fat
(being light) takes up so much room, the best way to check it is by your
clothes, or a measuring tape. Decide
what size clothes you think will be appropriate and aim for that, or choose a
set of measurements as a goal.
Most
of all remember how many days, months or years it took to build up the stored
energy (fat) – it is neither wise nor easy to undo all that damage in a
fraction of that time. People vary in
how easily their skin adapts to their new shape anyway, but a crash diet to
lose, say, fifty kilograms would cause badly sagging skin.
Energy
used
Your
body uses by far the most energy for its own physiological processes; making
and repairing cells, automatic functions like breathing and heartbeat,
absorbing and transforming nutrition, thinking, keeping warm. Exercises like walking to the fridge,
trotting to the cake shop, barking and running after cars, take much less
energy. Your body is designed to use
energy very efficiently (even sparingly).
This is why it is hard to exercise enough to keep slim. You have to run smartly for an hour to work
off the energy in a slice of bread.
Not
that exercise is a bad thing – it is a good way to keep muscles in trim, and to
build new muscles where needed. Your
body uses energy from its energy budget to build muscles. So do exercise, but don't see it as a way to
balance the budget.
It
is clear that your body is well in control of this part of the budget and you
can't change it much. It is true that
some people have faster (or slower) metabolisms. We can tweak our bodies' metabolism a little
(exercise often speeds it up a little) but we can't make big changes. You can't successfully fight your own body on
this front. It is better to make an ally
of it, as you will see a little further on.
Energy
in
Now
this is where we can make a difference.
Still not without the agreement of our bodies, but we can get some
cooperation here if we take it slowly.
If
your body budget is not balancing, and you are storing energy (getting fat),
then the best way to get some control is to adjust your energy input. In simple terms, eat less. But as anybody who has had any dealings with
diets and dieting knows, this is easily said.
The
first big hurdle, and most important aim, is to get your body to play
along. Don't frighten it – it evolved
to keep you alive through thick and thin.
If you suddenly start giving it much less energy than it is used to its
first response is, “Shut down the unnecessary factories! Conserve energy! Hold on to the fat stores! Famine is upon us!” Just what you don't want. This is why the yo-yo ups and downs of
dieting don't help. You and your body
are not on the same page.
The
first thing is to understand some basic facts of food and nutrition (they are
surprisingly misunderstood although books and magazines go on and on about
them). Not all foods are created equal. Especially not in these times of
over-abundant food (for some). If you
don't have enough food, you eat everything you can get, regardless of relative
nutritional value. We, the well-off, are
not so fortunate. We have to pick and
choose.
Because
we have to be choosy, it is useful to look at the food pyramid. The large base of the pyramid is taken up
with breads, cereals and starchy food. The
next, narrower, level up contains fruits and vegetables. Next come milk and dairy products, fish and
meat. And at the top is sugar and butter
and other fats. In general, this diagram
doesn't only give us the energy value of food (higher = more energy), but also
the relative nutritional value. Its
meaning is obvious: eat much more from
the bottom of the pyramid, and much less from the top. Remember, if you prepare food with butter or
sugar, you move it up in the pyramid.
Cookies, fatty pies and mayonnaise are in the top level.
So,
the first way to get our input energy down is to eat less energy intensive foods. Fortunately, also, the foods lower down in the pyramid are more
bulky. This is one way to fool the body
into feeling happy with the input it is getting.
The
second way is to eat differently. At
main meals you should eat enough, and eat satisfying foods. Otherwise you are simply soon going to be
hungry again, leading to the temptation of snacking. Almost invariably snacks are high-energy
foods from the wrong end of the pyramid.
Of course, if you snack on fruits and vegetables (within moderation),
you are winning.
The
key to getting your body happy with what you are doing to its energy budget is
to have decent main meals, however many you have. Some people need more than three for
physiological reasons.
Main
meals must consist of food that will stick to your gut, in other words, the
food must sustain you until about the next meal without undue hunger pains or
faintness. A little bit of hunger from
time to time is good for you. It means
that your body knows that it has permission to use a little of the stored
energy to keep itself going. But too
much hunger makes it batten down the hatches.
This is what I mean by getting a good understanding and working
relationship with your body.
The
kinds of food that sustain you do not get digested and absorbed too
quickly. A good example would be low GI
foodstuffs. For breakfast good old oats
would work. But don't add sugar and
butter; milk is adequately sweet and fatty.
Potato is another example, but keep the mayonnaise away! Bananas stick to the gut, too.
If
you feel full, the body is generally happy; so fool it with some filling but
very low energy foods. Popcorn without
butter, or plain old munching carrots will keep the overactive jaw going and
fill the grinding stomach until mealtime.
And, even better, if you always have a raging appetite, the carrots fool
you too!
One
key to getting this new regime going, and keeping it going, is not to be hard
on yourself. Don't cut any food out
completely. Don't say, “If I can't ever
eat chocolate cake again, I might as well shoot myself”. If you never snack on cookies when you are
alone, you have so much more leeway when you are at your best friend's birthday
tea, or granny's cocktail party. And
while we are there, don't forget that alcohol is a high-energy input (I
hesitate to call it a foodstuff). It's
near the top of the pyramid with the sugars.
And, lastly, watch out for foods with hidden sins, like sweet,
high-energy cooldrinks. And are you
aware for how many hours you'd have to run to work off a simple muffin?
This
makes it clear that the last battle to be won is the psychological assault you
will launch on yourself. The big risk is
that you will take your eye off the ball.
Write up your goals, your plans to reach those goals and your techniques
for avoiding the traps you might fall into along the way and paste them up in
those places in the house where they will have most effect. “You'll look good in clothing two sizes
smaller!” is a good one for the cookie jar.
Habit is
habit, and not to be thrown out of the window, but coaxed downstairs one step
at a time.
Mark Twain
