Nutrition Basics
Energy balance
The key to sustainable and healthy weight management is all about balance. To be precise, energy balance.
The term energy balance is used to describe the relationship between the amount of energy consumed (calories from food) and the amount of energy actually used or expended (moving around, exercising, basically everything your body does!). Weight management is simply about knowing how much energy (in food) you are consuming and how much energy you are using up.
Very simply put, if you consume more energy than you use up you will gain weight, if you consume less energy than you use then you will lose weight!
Eating less calories than you burn is known as a negative energy balance or calorie deficit.
Eating more calories than you burn is known as a positive energy balance or calorie surplus.
Calories per day
At rest, the body will consume a certain number of calories, this is called your Basal Metabolic Rate or BMR. Your BMR is essentially the minimum amount of energy required by the body to sustain life.
You can very simply workout your BMR by using a calculator, I suggest using the diabetes online BMR calculator.
It is very unlikely you will be completely sedentary over a 24-hour period, so it is necessary to calculate their additional energy needs above their BMR.
For this we must now look at your total daily energy expenditure or TDEE.
Your TDEE is all on of the energy you expend a day on top of your BMR. This expenditure is everything from walking around, making a cup of tea or exercise.
The amount of expenditure you do will vary daily however we can use estimations to figure out how many calories you need based on your activity level.
By monitoring your weight weekly adjustments can be made to your calorie intake.
| Amount Of Exercise/Activity | Description | TDEE/BMR |
|---|---|---|
| Sedentary | Little to no exercise/ desk job | TDEE = 1.2 X BMR |
| Lightly Active | Little exercise or sport 1 - 3 days a week | TDEE = 1.375 x BMR |
| Moderatley Active | Moderate exercise or sports 3 - 5 days a week | TDEE = 1.55 x BMR |
| Very active | Heavy exercise 6 – 7 days a week | TDEE = 1.725 x BMR |
| Extremely Active | Very heavy, vigorous exercise/physical job/training twice a day | TDEE = 1.9 x BMR |
For example, a moderately active person with a BMR of 2,000 Kcals a day would have a TDEE of 3,100 Kcals a day or 1.55 x 2,000 = 3,100.
Please bear in mind all of this is purely a very good guess! These aren’t precise numbers however they are a very good place to start.
Now we have a general understanding of how many calories you need per day we must adjust this in order to lose weight and create that negative energy balance.
Weight Loss
I would suggest starting by taking away 400 Kcals from your TDEE.
Weight Gain
To gain weight you simply need to add 300-400 Kcals to your TDEE.