Podcast #28 – How Your Body Actually Uses Those Calories
Basal Metabolic Rate – Basic functioning, breathing, body temperature, organ function, brain, cell processing, muscle building, fat storage, muscle breakdown, muscle contraction.. This is what keeps you alive. 60-75% percent of your calories are spent here
Thermic Effect of Food – This is how many calories are burned in the digestion of food. This equates for about 5-10% of your daily caloric expenditure. The energy required to digest each macronutrient (its TEF) can be expressed as a percentage of the energy provided by this macronutrient:[4]
- Fat provides 9 food calories per gram, and its TEF is 0–3%.
- Carbohydrate provides 4 food calories per gram, and its TEF is 5–10%.
- Protein provides 4 food calories per gram, and its TEF is 20–30%.
Non-Exercise Active Thermogenesis – NEAT. This is the amount of energy you use with daily movement and activity. Yard work, moving, fidgeting, walking, typing… literally anything that isn’t exercise. This is 15-20% of total expenditure
Exercise Active Thermogenesis – Only 5-10% of total calories. Walking/Jogging a mile only burns about 100 calories.
Three big takeaways:
1) You cannot out work a bad diet. The math isn’t there. When you work out hard you’re more likely to be hungrier and eat that back. You’re more likely to feel tired and sore and cut down on your NEAT. Your will shut you down before you can work yourself to death – you can only loose so much body weight naturally in a day.
2) NEAT is the biggest swing factor. As you get older, metabolism does go down slightly, but the bigger factor Is your NEAT. You tend to move less, do less, fidget less as your get older and have a much smaller rate of calories loss because of it.
3) If you want to lose weight or gain weight, exercise plays a part, but it’s only a small part. People that struggle to lose weight almost always move less than they think they do and eat more than they think they do. People that struggle to gain weight almost always move more than they think they do and eat less than they think they do.
