Nutrition rules >>>> Energy and calorie expenditure

Energy and calorie expenditure.

Overweight problems force a person to count calories and cut back on their diet. And if sports loads are not included in the weight loss program, the diet is cut to a minimum. But this is the wrong tactic to reduce body weight. Despite the obvious unsportsmanlike life of an ordinary person, he nevertheless spends energy in sufficiently large quantities during the day of his life in accordance with his physical capabilities. The most energy-saving mode of life is a recumbent lifestyle or bed rest due to a person's painful condition. But even lying motionless, the body spends energy and, accordingly, the calories eaten.

To understand how many calories are spent per day and how to distribute the calorie intake according to these costs, it is necessary to draw up an individual table of energy and calorie consumption for all (absolutely all) activities during the day, taking into account time ranges.

How do you compare exercise and calories? What are the calories spent on during the day?

The day of the average person of moderate labor (not predominantly physical and not fully intellectual) consists of a variety of energy costs:

The third (or fourth) part of the day is spent on sleep - 15.5 calories per minute per 2.2 lb. of human body weight. Multiplying, for example, 6 hours of sleep (360 minutes) by 15.5 calories, we get 5580 calories, which for a person with 143 lb. of weight will be 362700 calories (or 362.7 Kcal). For comparison, one hundred-gram pork sausage is 332 Kcal in energy value. After eating a sausage and sleeping for six hours, we go to almost zero: the calories consumed by the sausage are almost equal to the energy spent on sleep.
Hygienic procedures are 29 calories per minute per 2.2 lb. of body weight in the form of energy consumption,
Making the bed - 32.9 calories 1 minute / 2.2 lb. ,
Intensive cleaning - 64.8 calories 1 minute / 2.2 lb. of weight,
Breakfast, lunch and dinner (oddly enough) the same has energy costs, since a person chews, swallows and digests food, which requires certain efforts and a certain temperature regime of the body and is 23.6 calories 1 minute / 2.2 lb. of weight,
Reading books, watching TV - 25 calories 1 minute / 2.2 lb. of weight,
Walking to the store and back, to work and back - 51 calories 1 minute / 2.2 lb. of weight,
Rest lying awake during the day - 18.3 calories 1 minute / 2.2 lb. of weight,
Changing clothes or shoes - 28.1 calories 1 minute / 2.2 lb. of weight,
Sexual life - 70 calories 1 minute / 2.2 lb. of weight,
Not physically strenuous work, but standing on your feet - 36 calories 1 minute / 2.2 lb. of weight,
Household labor - 57.5 calories 1 minute / 2.2 lb. of weight,
Moderate physical labor - 57 calories 1 minute / 2.2 lb. of weight,
Agricultural labor -110 calories 1 minute / 2.2 lb. of weight,
Intellectual moderate work activity - 25 calories 1 minute / 2.2 lb. of weight,
Intellectual activity during preparation for exams - 40 calories 1 minute / 2.2 lb. of weight.

Normal brain activity is 18 calories per minute per 2.2 lb. of weight. This is an expense of the nervous system for ordinary idleness. But strenuous intellectual activity increases the expenditure of calories. For example, preparation during the examination session, when a person spends several hours in a mode of intense mental activity, can spend the entire daily dose of calories from the usual diet. It is for this reason that during the period of intellectual fever (exams, submission of reports and developments in a short time), additional nutrition is required.

All energy costs are multiplied by time and body weight and added up. It turns out the figure of the main energy costs. This is the sum of calories vital to keep the body alive. Below this amount of costs, you cannot reduce the calorie content of food. In order not to gain weight, this amount of calculated energy costs should be equal to the calorie intake of the diet.

If sports exercises are added to the daily regimen, energy expenditures will increase, which, with an unchanging diet, will contribute to weight loss, but according to the principle of exhaustion, the body will use its internal reserves to maintain a given mode of activity, and soon it may simply not be able to cope with the loads. This is how the diseases develop anorexia, vitamin deficiency, muscle weakness, chronic fatigue syndrome and many endocrine disruptions, because hormones are substances obtained through complex sequential chemical reactions from eaten food.

To lose weight, the body is not given the opportunity to go over in calories, removing carbohydrates from the diet, but not fats, since the latter will serve as a depot for the formation of energy costs during physical exertion, which make the body spend more energy. Normal weight is a balance between energy expenditure during the day and nutrients eaten during the day.

Depending on the gender and age of a person, his energy costs differ. The body temperature of men is higher than that of women - more energy is required to maintain such a heat exchange regime, which means more food calories. The metabolic metabolism of a growing organism (children, adolescents) is orders of magnitude higher than that of an adult, and even more so for an elderly person. Aging is not accompanied by cellular renewal, so the body no longer needs to maintain high-speed metabolic processes. These factors must be taken into account when calculating energy costs, for this reason, relatively healthy, but sedentary people of old age do not need abundant nutrition, it adds weight to them. But if an elderly person leads an active lifestyle, moderately goes in for sports, walks a lot, works in physically or intellectually costly types of work, he needs to revise the diet in the direction of increasing the calorie content of food.

An exception to the rule is those categories of people whose overweight gain is associated with endocrine diseases. For them, physical activity does not change the state of affairs, so such people do not need to count calories, but to correct the hormonal background and the work of the endocrine glands.