Eat Move Recover Grow

How to Lose or Gain Weight: Calories In vs. Calories Out

CONCEPT: The First Law of Thermodynamics is a fundamental principle that governs changing your body weight. Since energy can only be converted to another form, the balance of energy entering and leaving the body must change. Thus, losing or gaining weight can be simplified into an equation based on calories in versus calories out.

What is a Calorie?

We hear the term calorie all the time. We hear it on the TV, we see it on advertisements and we read it on food labels. Sometimes we see something labelled high calorie or low calorie or even zero calorie. But what does a calorie really mean?

First, let’s establish a clear understanding.

A Calorie is the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius.

Thus, a calorie is measure of energy, nothing more and nothing less. It does not carry any intrinsic meaning about nutritional content (ie. the amount of carbohydrate, protein, fat, vitamins or minerals) or the ingredients present in the food. It is a universal measure of how much energy will be provided to the human body, when consumed. Since it is a measure of energy, we can also use it to determine the amount of energy expended during basic survival and different forms of activity and exercise.

So, regardless of whether you want to lose weight or gain weight or how you decide to achieve this goal, a change in energy entering or leaving the body must occur.

The First Law of Thermodynamics

The First Law of Thermodynamics developed by Julius Robert Mayer and James Prescott Joule states that “energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be converted from one form to another.”

You might be asking, “What does this mean? And how does it relate to changing your weight status?”

This fundamental law describes how energy does not just appear or disappear but transforms from one form to another. When we eat, we are adding energy into our body, it is either stored in various forms or broken down and converted to cellular energy. This energy, ATP, then gets utilized for numerous processes allowing us to think, move, and survive.

To help explain this concept imagine you have a big ball of Play-Doh. You can mold it and shape it into different forms. You might even break it apart, but no matter what forms it takes you always have the same amount of Play-Doh.

Similarly, the amount of energy we consume must be conserved, and so it is either used as cellular energy for bodily processes, is stored as fat, bone, muscle or other tissues, or is lost as heat as a byproduct of cellular reactions.

As a result, the total amount of energy stays the same. Just like how the total amount of Play-Doh doesn’t change regardless of what form it takes.

Therefore, in order to shift the balance of energy in our body to lose or gain weight, our decisions and behaviours need to foster an environment where the ratio of calories (energy) entering or exiting our body becomes unbalanced.

Calories In vs. Calories Out

At the most basic level to gain weight the amount of calories consumed needs to be more than the number of calories burned or lost. The opposite is true when the goal is to lose weight. Although, in theory this sounds simple, in reality the effort and actions required to make this happen become very complex, as the worlds of science, psychology and life collide.

‘Calories in versus calories out.’ Sounds easy doesn’t it. If you change your energy balance then the desired result should come. However, the reason this becomes hard is due to the infinite number of day-to-day decisions that need to be made to maintain this state.

In other words, behaviour change is really really hard. We are creatures of habit and in order to change our habits we need to deliberately devote conscious cerebral effort consistently over time. See, even that sentence makes it sound hard.

But, when armed with even a basic level of understanding and when we start small, it can make the process much more manageable. I learned this first hand when to my surprise after the COVID lockdowns in Australia I stepped on a scale to find that I had gained about 10 kilograms of weight. Now, at the time, I was quite confused as I have always been the skinny, scrawny kid who could eat as much as he wants. But, upon reflection it made perfect sense when considering energy balance and taking my habits into account.

Everything is an Equation

When applying the concept of energy balance to our daily lives, it is crucial to understand the individual factors that influence calories in and calories out. Picture a see-saw or scales. On one side you have calories in, which includes everything you consume; food and drinks. On the other side you have calories out, which can be best explained by Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE).

TDEE consists of 4 major components:

  1. Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR): Resting energy expenditure
  2. Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT): The energy of all physical activity not associated with exercise, sleeping or eating such as working, fidgeting and playing
  3. The Thermic Effect of Food (TEF): The increase in BMR required to digest and absorb food
  4. Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (EAT): The energy burned during volitional physical activity

Therefore, you can start to see how we can use these factors to create an equation to truly understand energy balance and use this equation to shift our habits to create a positive environment for weight gain or weight loss.

Through conscious and deliberate decisions we can pull 3 major levers to change our environment and shift the scales:

1) The QUANTITY and quality of food and drinks (Calories In)

2) Being more active through the day by moving more (NEAT)

3) Planned physical activity or exercise (EAT)

However, Calories In has an enormous effect. The order of magnitude between 1) and the other two is massive. For example, a cheeseburger, fries and a drink from McDonald’s is typically around 500-600 calories and most people can eat that in under 10 minutes. In order to burn off the equivalent amount of calories you would need to walk at a moderate pace for 3 hours or exercise very very hard for 30 minutes to 1 hour. Since, we are talking about equations, you do the math, which lever requires less work?

My Journey

Starting in early 2021, during the COVID period my daily habits changed significantly. Not only was I eating more after moving in with my Italian partners family (mamma mia), but I was sitting around at home for most of the day and was not engaging in any form of physical activity. As a result, the first part of the equation, calories in, had gone way up and the other side of the equation calories out, had gone way down. This environment remained consistent for the better part of a year. With my energy balance in a surplus, I ended up unintentionally gaining 10 kilograms of weight.

Shortly after I realized how my habits had been impacting me, in October 2021, I decided something needed to change and I started walking for 15-30 minutes in the morning and with the help of my partner, Carla, I got back into resistance training 2 days a week. For the next 6 months this became my routine, I started feeling better both physically and emotionally, even though the scale kept going up. Around this time, I changed my perspective and I was actually attempting to put more weight on. However, my goal was to increase my muscle mass while still trying to reduce my fat mass. In the end I put on a total of 15 kilograms.

Due to the improvement in my mental well-being during this time, I started deep diving into old lectures, physiology notes from my undergrad and podcasts like Huberman Lab and The Drive by Peter Attia to develop a holistic view of physical and emotional health. Armed with a wider breadth of knowledge, I started to improve my personal life by taking massive action and focusing on what I could control, my habits. I took a long hard look at the totality of my habits and actions and aligned them to the goal of improving my physical and emotional health in hopes of maximizing longevity.

Lots of changes occurred, but the end result was that I learned how to better eat, move, recover and grow, which has now become the basis for our blog and our health philosophy. These changes allowed me to consciously and deliberately manipulate the major levers. I improved my nutrition and started eating less, I increased my NEAT by sitting less, walking and moving more throughout the day, and eventually dedicated one hour each day, 5 days a week to exercise.

The culmination of these decisions created a massive shift in my energy balance, resulting in a significant calorie deficit. Within the following 8 months, by November 2022, I had lost all of the 15 kilograms I had gained.

It was hard, there was ups and downs, but it was worth it. And, it was much easier to be armed with the knowledge of energy balance and an equation to anchor my belief, that what I was doing would work. After all, it was just math. If I remained consistent and showed up every day to execute my planned behaviours then they would eventually become habits and the mental effort required to get into action would decrease. Now, I am able to maintain these daily habits because they are just that habits that have now become engrained into my daily routine.

If you are trying to gain or lose weight, you now have some knowledge. You can adjust the variables that you can control, your habits, to suit your personal circumstances and create either an energy surplus or an energy deficit. You too can change your weight status.

The hardest part is starting, I certainly didn’t start this journey completing all the habits consistently. It was a process and I learned a lot along the way. If you need a hand or some support starting your journey, please feel free to reach out.

References

Share to:

Posted

in

,

by

Sean Candler

Tags:

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,