Nutrition 101

I'm a numbers person. Math is very logical to me... When you work with numbers there is always a logical answer. I'm not a math geek or anything but it is something that just works for me.

Nutrition was a bit of a mystery to me until I broke down the numbers. I thought I'd share the mystery...

First thing that I needed to learn was who the players were...

A Calorie is a unit of energy. One calorie is the amount of energy required to heat one gram of water one degree. In general, your body burns approximately 1200 calories a day just completing normal metabolic things like breathing, beating and digesting. A patient in a coma will require 1200 calories to maintain body mass. This can vary based on metabolic rates, but I'll use it as a ball park.

Ingesting less than 1200 calories per day will trigger a starvation protection in your body causing your metabolism to slow down. Your body will start to store fat to protect itself and start burning muscle mass. Remembering that the heart is muscle mass, this explains just the beginning of health hazards of anorexia.

Food is broken down into 3 components... protein, carbohydrates and fat. One gram of protein contains 4 calories, one gram of carbohydrates contains 4 calories and one gram of fat contains 9 calories. Protein should make up 10-35% of your diet, Carbohydrates 45-65% and Fats 20-35%.

Protein is needed for building tissuing and repairing tissue. It produces enzymes, hormones, and other substances the body uses. It regulates body processes, such as water balancing, transporting nutrients, and making muscles contract. Protein keeps the body healthy by resisting diseases that are common to malnourished people. Prevents one from becoming easily fatigued by producing stamina and energy.

The daily recommended amount of protein is 0.8 grams per 1 kg of body weight. Even in my metric world, I don't know my weight in kilograms so I need to convert my weight from pounds to kg by dividing my weight by 2.2. I should be ingesting 60-ish grams of protein a day... at 4 calories a gram, this makes up 240 calories that I should be ingesting each day. Too much protein will be stored as fat.

Carbohydrates are fuel, it enters our bodies ready to provide energy. There are 4 kinds of carbohydrates... sugars, starches, fibers and gum. Carbohydrates are produced by plants. Sugars are... well anything that makes something sweet. Starches are just long chains of sugars. Our bodies can't digest fibers but it slows the speed our bodies absorb nutritents keeping the grumbly belly quiet longer. And gum is well, food filler than just passes through our digestive systems untouched.

Carbohydrates are extremely important as the gas to our internal engines. The problem is when we over-indulge in sweet treats, soda pop and other processed sugars. Unburned energy is converted into storage. Our bodies store energy as fat.

Fats have a bad rap. They have an important role in the make up of our bodies. If there is no fat in your diet, you will starve to death regardless of the other food you put into your body. This is called Rabbit Starvation.

There are good fats and bad fats. My best description of a bad fat is one that is solid at room temperature but that barely scratches the surface. Fats are a big subject so I'll just provide a link.

I know all that was pretty dry and to make it drier... here's the math.

Based on metabolic rates and activities level, I need approximately 2200 calories a day to maintain my current weight. 1 Pound is 454 grams. If I want to lose 1 pound, I need to burn off 454 grams of fat at 9 calories a gram which is 4086 calories. Clearly this can't be done in one day. To lose 1 pound in a week, I need to restrict my diet to 1600 calories per day for the week. I need to remove 600 calories each day for for one pound per week without dropping below 1200 calories. If I restricted myself to a 1200 calories per day diet, I would lose 7 lbs in one month.

Now to put this into real-life terms...

A Big Mac Combo... Big Mac, Medium Fries and a Medium Cola is 1000 calories.

A Whopper... no fries or cola... 670 calories.

A Subway wrap... not a sandwich, just the wrap all by itself is 310 calories before you even put on the good stuff.

One Boston Cream donut at Tim Hortons is 250 calories.

One plain 5.3 oz potato has 100 calories.

On a 1200 calorie a day diet, I could have a Big Mac Combo and most of a donut and NOTHING else for the entire day or I could eat 12 plain potatoes. It's a little boring but I wonder which one would keep the grumbly belly quiet longer?