What you need to know is total calorie intake at the end of the day, depending if you’re in a de cit or
surplus (losing weight or gaining weight), will determine if you stay lean or gain weight.
Now, that’s not to say that calories are the end all, be all, in a nutrition program.
In fact, Evans et al. Proved macronutrient (protein, carbohydrates, fats) ratios were very important during a calorie de cit
Dear Friend,
In this special report you’ll learn about calories, thermic effect of food and importance of macronutrients.
Calories are Where We Get Our Energy
The e calories we take in from food are where we get our energy, therefore we need calories for energy and to stay alive.
We know this may seem odd, but a helpful model for understanding types of energy has been used in cattle production, which relies upon the tracking of energy in order to maintain health, growth…
And reproduction.
It’s simple to understand and obvious humans are different from cows in certain aspects of digestion.
The general framework of food-derived energy use is surprisingly similar.
Here’s a graphic of the various fates of energy as it cows from the food source through the body of the animal.
What is a calorie?
A calorie is the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 kilogram of water by 1 degrees C.
The term calorie is synonymous with kilocalorie (abbreviated as kcal).
Less commonly, it’s referred to as a kilogram-calorie, or large calorie.
When the term is not capitalized, it technically represents one-thousandth of the value of a kcal.
In other words, it’s the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree C.
Th e non-capitalized term is less commonly called a gram-calorie.
Starting from the top of the chart above,gross energy is the starting point before ingestion; it’s the energy the food contains.
What’s le aer the fecal energy loss is considered digestible energy.
What remains aer energy losses through feces, urine, and gas is metabolized into energy.
Finally, net energy is what’s available for use (storage) aer losses through feces, urine, gas and heat increment.
Thermic Eff ect of Food is known as (TEF) which is the energy required to digest, transport, and deposit nutrients.
Macronutrients vary in their thermic e ffect, which ultimately infl uences net yield of energy available to the body.
For example, Jequier et al. suggested the thermic e ffect of protein (expressed as a percentage of energy content) is 25-30%, Carbohydrate is 6-8% and fat is 2-3%.
Gro et al. Suggested Protein is 20-25%, Fat is 3%, and Carbs 20-30%.
Flat et al. suggested the energy cost of digesting, absorbing, and metabolizing proteins (23%) is greater than that of either carbohydrates (6%) or fat (3%).
As you can see macronutrients vary in thermic e ffect and they play an important role when trying to make body composition changes.
Thermic E ffect of Food…
As you can see, from above why it’s not wise to solely depend on just counting calories.
Macronutrients are important due to what we discussed above regarding the thermic eff ect of food.
If you still aren’t buying it, we will reference an elegant study, where they did an isocaloric (meaning same calories) comparison of four diets:
- Normal protein, normal carbohydrate
- Normal protein, low carbohydrate
- High protein, normal carbohydrate
- High protein, low carbohydrate
The two higher protein conditions caused the greatest decreases in body fat.
Remember the TEF’s we talked about earlier?
So clearly macronutrients play a vital role in your nutrition program and should be programmed towards your goals, body type, metabolism, activity, etc.
As stated above, the amount of total daily calories also known as “Energy Balance” you take in at the end of the day will determine if you gain or lose weight…
Yes, it’s just one piece of the very large puzzle and you must not count out the importance and role macronutrients play in body composition changes.