Category: Pyramid

Nutrition Pyramid Base

The Energy Balance Equation (Calories in v out) is the one aspect of your diet to master before you look at anything else. It is effectively the base of the pyramid that is your diet.

Calories in v. Calories out: You want these two things to be equal (to maintain your current weight) or for Energy Out to exceed Energy In (to lose weight).

Whether you eat nothing but crisps or nothing but vegetables if you eat more calories than you burn you will gain weight – regardless of what you eat, when you eat it or how you eat it.

Your Objective:

Understand how many calories you should be eating, how to work that out and why that’s important.

To workout how many calories to eat you need to know your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure). This gives you an idea of roughly how many calories you burn in a day INCLUDING your normal activity… this means that you don’t need to add on exercise calories to this number. That’s important because who has time to work out a different daily calorie expenditure? You want an overall figure you can use every day.

The equation is

M24/F22 X Bodyweight in KG = BMR

e.g.

24 X 90kg = 2160 calories per day.

This is the BMR – Base Metabolic Rate. The absolute minimum calories the body needs to wake up, do nothing all day except for breathe.

To find how many calories you should eat for your activity levels multiply this figure by 1.1/1.2/1.3/1.4

1.1 – lightly active – moderate exercise but sedentary job

1.2 – moderately – active intense exercise but sedentary job

1.3 – Very Active – Moderate exercise and active job

1.4 – Extra Active – intense exercise and active job

e.g.

2160 X 1.3 = 2808 calories per day

Now…If you are here for fat loss you need to get in a calorie deficit by around 10- 20% the sweet spot!

e.g.

2800 calories X 7 = 19,600 calories per week!

80% of this is 15,680 calories per week OR 2,240 calories per day.

If you want to lose weight this is the absolute foundation of doing so. Without this, anything else you do is a bit pointless as the foundations just aren’t there to support it.

Now it’s important to understand here that the figures above are rough numbers. Of course everyone’s bodies and metabolisms are different and this figure isn’t claiming to be exact. It does however provide a guide that you can use and adjust slightly as you go, and for the purposes of the average human provides a pretty good base to start with.

Calories Matter

I write a lot about calorie deficits to lose weight and how what you make those calories up of doesn’t matter in terms of dropping weight.

Of course that doesn’t mean that what you eat doesn’t matter. How you actually structure your diet to meet these calories will have an impact on how you feel.

The fact remains that you can eat foods in any combination, eat specific foods, eat at certain times. If you aren’t in a deficit you won’t lose weight, but once you’ve got the deficit thing nailed looking at what you actually eat can help you progress further and feel better with it.

Increasing your protein intake for instance, that can help you feel more satiated, which in turn makes calorie deficits feel easier.

Swapping out some of your sugary snacks for fruit will make you feel better over time and also reduce the calorie value of your snacks.

Looking to fill up on denser lower calorie foods (piling your veggies high for instance) will keep you full but also help stay within your calorie goal.

Focusing on eating homemade food with lots of salad and veg included will make you feel better than takeaways and grab a go sandwiches, probably be lower calorie (and reduce your spending).

So of course how you chose to make up those calories does have an effect.

Why do PTs tend to say calories matter more as a headline then?

Because it’s a pyramid and you need to have the foundations right before you build.

If you aren’t yet in a deficit then looking at changing everything about what you eat and worrying about the specifics of certain foods is going to feel overwhelming. Quite simply if you can hit a calorie deficit by cutting a snack out, reducing your portion size, changing your McDonalds order from Large to regular, making your takeaway coffee an Americano instead of a Pumpkin Spiced Late every day, well that’s going to make sticking to a calorie goal easier. Once you’ve adjusted to that then you can look at some more small changes bit by bit. Generally speaking we are better at adjusting to small changes over time rather than overhauling our life all in one go, we are much more likely to stick with small changes consistently and consistency is what is needed to reduce weight and keep it off.