Factors Affecting Calorie Needs

This week I was in the depth’s of a Tik Tok binge 🙁 and it led me onto a quite nice study on calculating energy needs. The research was able to estimate how much each organ in your body demands to do it’s job. You can see the results in the table down the page, surprisingly for me it was liver that came in number one rather than your brain. This makes sense really as the liver is continually working even when asleep, while your brain and heart can relax a little while resting. 

How many calories each organ demands all comes under your basal metabolic rate, which is the total number of calories you need to exist if you just sat in bed all day. This does not get too much attention in fitness conversations because you cannot really influence it. The only practical advice you could follow to increase it to any great extent is to lower the temperature of your environment. As much fun as it would be to spend all day in a cold house shivering. it is far easier to adjust your food intake or increase movement levels. 

Another interesting part of the study was looking at the energy burn of muscle vs body fat. Muscle was expending 13 calories per Kg which was three times more than body fat which expends 4.5 cals per Kg. I think most people know that muscle needs more energy than fat but I think people still view stored body fat (adipose tissue) as a dead weight, like a lump of lard. It is well known that body fat is an active tissue which contirbutes to the hormonal system, can store toxins and requires some energy to maintain it. 

While gaining huge amounts of muscle is both rare and very slow. It is common to have many kg’s of excess body fat that adds to your basal metabolic rate. It is the loss of such kg’s during a body transformation that contributes to why you need to adjust your energy balance as you lose more weight. It also explains why most overweight people who take a calorie expenditure test find they do not actually have a slow metabolism. Like when this actress did it here>>. 

What Does This Mean For You?

The key take away from this information should be that your metabolism is probably working just fine. If you are struggling to change your body it is probably because of behaviours and psychology rather than metabolism and physiology. 

For me, I feel we waste too much time and energy worrying around issues such as if your metabolism is slow, if you can lose body fat now that you are older or how your health issue affects results. There is nothing you can do to change these even if they are true. It also skirts around the fact that if a famine hit our society, every single person would lose body fat. While some may lose more than others, no-one’s body fat is going up when food is sparse.   

If it is not your body per se that is the issue then how do can you put in place the needed behaviours to get results? This may have to factor in things such as medication increasing your hunger, stress decreasing your energy levels or working around injuries you have picked up now that you are older. These issues exist and can be accounted for. 

This is how I work with people every day. I have helped turn around so many ‘lost causes’ over the years because I start right at the crux of the problem. Which is creating a plan that will change your underlying behaviours and habits while increasing your skills and knowledge so it becomes easy to get in shape. This of course factors in your metabolism but it goes way beyond just counting calories, which for most people is totally the wrong approach to use long term. It also does not involve hiding away from bad foods, removing all taste form your meals or suffering long boring exercise sessions. There is a much more strategic and enjoyable way to getting results.    

Photo –  Results from the study showing calorie needs within the body, including the organs, see here>>

Need Support Getting In Shape?

Changing your body on your own without support or an effective system usually ends in failure sadly. To avoid this outcome you can become one of my coaching clients either online or in person. I provide Holistic, Healthy & Sustainable Body Transformations. Contact me to discuss your goals further or see below for more details and the options available to you based on your location / preferences:

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