Caloric Intake

Optimizing Caloric Intake

Caloric intake refers to the amount of calories one intakes over a certain time period, typically one day. It is a crucial metric that can be leveraged to create desired outcomes in health and appearance. Within this review, we will outline the major considerations one must take with regards to caloric intake, dependent upon their goals.

Why Leverage Caloric Intake

In order to understand why one would want to leverage caloric intake, an important concept must first be introduced: energy balance. Energy balance refers to the intake and output of energy in the human body. Since calories are a measure of energy, they serve as the main metric through which energy intake can be determined. Exercise, growth and development, and metabolism, are among the many ways through which the human body can output said energy.

Additionally, an energy balance can be said to be positive or negative. A positive energy balance describes a net influx of energy, meaning that more energy is being taken in than is being expended out. A negative energy balance describes the opposite-more energy is being expended than is being taken in. In states of positive energy balance, the human body has adapted to store this food derived energy in the form of fat, or adipose tissue. In times of negative energy balance, these adipose reserves can be used to temporarily supply the body with energy, ensuring that cells of the body do not lack sufficient energy in order to carry out tasks.

Now, it becomes increasingly clear as to why caloric intake is so important. It is the main determiner of whether we gain or lose weight. Our body weight, and furthermore our body fat percentage (defined as the percentage of our body weight that is attributed to adipose tissue), are crucially important variables to be able to alter, as it is both linked to a variety of chronic illnesses and impacts on quality of life. Being able to successfully control caloric intake allows one to minimize risk of developing these illnesses and to maximize their quality of life.

Body fat percentage also plays a significant role in determining the attractiveness of an individual, which can have various impacts on their life. Attractiveness is an important attribute in finding and securing romantic relationships. While the importance of attractiveness varies from person to person, it generally is considered a significant factor one looks for in a partner. Secondly, studies suggest that people deemed more attractive typically get treated better and are respected more.


Leveraging Caloric Intake to Lose Fat

In order to lower body fat percentage, a negative energy balance must be achieved. This will cause the body to expend its adipose stores in order to provide itself with sufficient energy to function. However, there are a variety of facets to be considered before one can plan out a weight loss phase, or "cut".

Firstly, the impacts of differing magnitudes of negative energy balance must be explored. During phases of extreme cutting, the body adapts by decreasing metabolism. This is counter productive to weight loss, as expending more calories will provide a greater net negative energy balance. This, combined with the fact that such extreme cutting phases can induce fatigue and hunger. Chronic fatigue while attempting to lose weight can impact the consistency of the weight loss routine, and can also result in a lower energy expenditure as it may cause less calories to be burned through NEAT (Non-exercise activity thermogenesis). NEAT is essentially the summation of all the activity one does in a day that excludes intentional exercise.

The importance of all these adaptive changes due to decreases in caloric intake ultimately sum up to one major point: keep your deficits small. The literature suggests that smaller deficits over longer period of times, as opposed to larger deficits over shorter period times, is a more effective strategy of weight loss. As for the exact deficit, this can be dependent on both the initial weight and body fat percentage. Therefore, it is common to use percentages of body weight lost per week as a metric for optimal weight loss rate. Typically, fat loss rates should be limited to 0.5-1% of total body weight per week. This minimizes muscle loss, and the more moderate deficit will cause less adaptive changes within your body and maintain your consistency.


Increase Output or Decrease Input?


Now that the optimal caloric deficit has been determined, the method of achieving said deficit can be discussed. There are two overarching methods of achieving such a deficit: either increase the calories you expend, or decrease the calories you intake. Current literature suggests that a mix of both is optimal, and that slowly tapering down your calories is typically the most successful approach.

Firstly, large decreases in the amount of calories inputted should be avoided. This is mainly because by limiting the intake of food, you also limit your intake of both micronutrients and macronutrients. Maintaining optimal micronutrient levels during a cut is important in order to allow for lipolytic processes to proceed correctly. Additionally, the beneficial impacts on mood and energy can have a indirect impact on both your long-term consistency and your energy output. Therefore, it is apparent that keeping caloric intake high can have beneficial effects for maintaining a caloric deficit.

However, when one looks towards increasing energetic output as the sole means of creating a caloric deficit, multiple problems appear. Firstly, it is relatively difficult for an average person to commit to such amounts of exercise on a regular basis. Secondly, vast amounts of exercise, commonly cardiovascular training of some form, can be detrimental to lean body mass. If one directs their attention to the differing amounts of lean body mass present in olympic long-distance runners versus olympic cyclers, this concept is readily observable.

A final consideration for both of these points is that the body is adaptive. It will readily respond to the creation of a caloric deficit via down-regulating metabolism and NEAT. Therefore, in order to stay in a caloric deficit for sustained periods of time, one must slowly taper down their calories or increase their caloric expenditure.

Therefore, striking a balance between increasing energy output and decreasing energy input seems to be the most viable option for reducing body fat percentage and achieving weight loss. Starting with a slight caloric deficit, such as 300-500 calories, coming from both a reduction in caloric intake and an increase in exercise, and then slowly increasing that number as time progresses and weight loss stalls, seems to be optimal. As previously mentioned, try to stay within that range of 0.5%-1.0% of total body weight lost per week. Experimentation will most likely be required to determine your caloric needs. An online TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) calculator can give you a baseline for what your maintenance calories, or the calories required to sustain an even energy balance, are. Taking an average of multiple calculators estimates, and then observing changes in body weight when eating at said estimates is where one should start. From there, once their maintenance calories have been determined, plan to be somewhere between 300-500 calories under that. From there, monitor weight loss to ensure it is within the optimal range, and when it stalls, further increase your deficit.

Is a Calorie a Calorie?

One final consideration is the quality of food you are intaking. Weight loss is ultimately dependent on energy balance. With that being said, optimizing both macronutrients and micronutrients will ensure that numerous factors, such as mood, energy, lean body mass, satiation, and thermogenic effect of food all remain at desirable levels that will assist weight-loss.

In Summary

  1. Determine your TDEE or maintenance calories via averaging online TDEE calculators and experimentation.

  2. Subtract 300-500 calories from this number: this is your daily caloric goal. Try to shoot for 0.5%-1.0% of total body weight lost per week.

  3. Ensure that this deficit is a combination of both exercise and dieting, and leave room to increase this deficit.

  4. Monitor weight loss stalls, and when it does, increase caloric deficit by roughly 100 calories, or enough to reenter the 0.5%-1.0% range.

  5. Optimal macronutrient and micronutrient intake is technically not required to lose weight. However, it can be heavily advantageous to maintain optimal ranges of both.

References