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The Calorie Theory - An Important Key to Overall Health · Doctor Turned Health Coach

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  Welcome to the Doctor Turned Health Coach Podcast. My name is Dr.
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  Ashwari, family medicine physician turned health coach.
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  And today's podcast episode is about the calorie theory.
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  Now, the calorie theory, of course, is not just for weight loss.
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  And I know that's the most popular place that it comes up in.
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  But when we have a patient in the ICU, when we have a young child that is not
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  growing according to their growth chart,
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  those are the times that we point to the calorie theory and come up with strategies
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  to help offset some of those health issues.
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  For most of us, for us adults living in these advanced nations where we have
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  great access to public health,
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  where we have access to medications and safe food, plenty of food,
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  The calorie theory is important because it is often at the heart of some of
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  the metabolic issues that we have.
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  And by metabolic issues, I mean often it's a problem of excess calories that
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  then cause problems with our insulin, with our glucose,
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  then lead to excess fat, visceral fat, obesity,
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  prediabetes, diabetes, and so on.
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  Is this of course none of these none of this stuff is meant to scare
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  you guys i my my goal as a health coach
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  is to help you design the kind of life that you'd love that you enjoy that you
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  feel confident in navigating your overall health that's always been my goal
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  and i really love that job that's a precious job to me honestly uh so what can
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  we take away from the calorie theory theory.
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  The calorie theory tells us that the human body is balanced.
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  Its metabolic health, its cardiometabolic health.
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  Body composition, from muscle to fat to water, is managed through the incoming
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  amount of calories and the exiting amount of calories.
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  The excess calorie that we accumulate can usually and will turn into fat.
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  It'll turn into excess glucose. It'll turn into fat in the liver.
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  It'll turn into fat in around the heart, subcutaneous tissue,
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  and sometimes we can burn it off.
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  For example, somebody who is an athlete, somebody who does a lot of exercises,
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  actually has to take in excess calories before their activity so that they have energy to burn.
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  Usually because they're already a little bit on the leaner, fitter side,
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  they're not going to have a lot of glucose in storage, and they certainly are
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  not going to be able to metabolize a lot of fat during their activities.
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  That takes maybe during a very long run they could, but not during a hardcore activity.
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  I know me, I go rock climbing three days a week, sometimes four days a week,
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  and one or two of those sessions are my limit sessions.
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  What I mean by limit sessions is they're very, very intense.
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  I need every bit of calorie in my body. And if I don't, I will hit the proverbial wall.
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  So when we think about how much calories we should be eating,
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  we can approach it in two ways.
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  One, what society tells us, and that's unfortunately not always the best because.
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  They'll say you should drink a lot of milk, right?
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  Society says we should, or at least some food pyramids say we should have a
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  lot of protein, we should have a lot of meat, we should have a lot of this, a lot of that.
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  And it'll vacillate over the years.
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  Food pyramids and food recommendations will change. And unfortunately,
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  with it, our health will change. So that's probably not the best source.
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  Alternatively, we could just rely on our human instinct. OK,
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  I should know how much calorie to take in.
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  Well, it is true that the human instinct is very effective at telling us when to eat,
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  when not to eat, how many calories to take in babies
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  are actually very good about that the problem is
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  number one that instinct has
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  to be developed and some of us most of us i
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  would say haven't really developed that instinct we haven't really
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  honed that instinct um it's like when you're street wise right some people have
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  street smarts and some people don't but you can develop it right it's not a
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  skill that's impossible to And the second factor is that food these days is
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  made so palatable, so tasty, so rich,
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  so calorie dense, not as nutrient dense, that it becomes a little bit difficult
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  to even trust or rely on our senses.
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  And so for those reasons, I think it's good to have that as a strategy,
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  but also have a backup strategy.
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  For many of my health coaching clients, their weight is a great marker of whether
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  they are in calorie surplus or calorie deficient.
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  Now, with weight comes the added problem of what about water?
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  Our body weight can fluctuate at 3 pounds, 4 pounds, and if you weigh a lot
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  more, it can fluctuate 10 to 12 pounds, and even 30 pounds actually for some
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  of my health coaching clients who weigh quite a lot.
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  It's because water gets stored in
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  muscle and fat and it can fluctuate quite a
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  bit so we can rely on fat and muscle
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  and water weight going up and down by a certain percentage depending on our
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  body weight in general it's never going to be more than a couple percent so
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  i weigh about 160 pounds and so for me it's not going to be more than one or
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  two pounds that's usually the way i like to describe it.
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  If you weigh 200 pounds, it's probably going to be about two to three pounds, and so on.
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  And if we can do that plus or minus extra weight, we can use our weight as a
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  way to determine if our calorie intake is too much or too little.
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  Now, it's a whole other discussion to talk about calorie restriction.
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  That's usually not something that's successful in my opinion.
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  So restricting calories is not a good idea, but balancing our calories by focusing
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  on more nutrient-dense foods as opposed to calorie-dense foods is a very effective strategy.
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  So we talked a little bit about the intake of calories.
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  The burning of calories can be handled in many different ways.
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  Now remember that it only takes a tablespoon of olive oil to go well above your calorie needs.
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  It only takes an egg to go well above your calorie needs.
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  And we forget that. our calories are actually our
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  bodies are very very fine-tuned machines 100
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  extra calories here or 50 extra calories
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  there is all it takes to increase
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  our weight i know that because as a rock climber at 160 some pounds 161 162
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  pounds if i'm at about 167 168 pounds my climbing changes my center of gravity
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  changes the way i pull changes so i kind of balance that out i think about that.
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  And so I can generally play around with maybe one extra piece of bread here,
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  a little bit more almond butter there, done.
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  I can get up to 167 pretty quickly when I need to, right?
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  When I know I'm not trying to perform really well and so I can go up a few pounds.
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  And then when I want to come down, usually...
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  Just one less apple, one less, I don't know, piece of bread again,
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  and there, I'm back at 162.
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  Not every person responds the same way. Some of us respond very quickly to these calorie shifts.
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  Some of us don't. And the bigger the calorie shift, if you suddenly drop 800
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  calories, unfortunately, the body's
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  metabolism also drops, which means you probably are going to have a net.
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  Neutral effect. You won't lose any weight.
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  But if the calories is very subtle and you do it for a long enough time,
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  a few weeks, a few months, usually the response is great.
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  And of course, what we eat will make a big difference. If I already had a very
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  high carb, high sugar diet and I was playing around with Twinkies and Twix,
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  well, it would probably not have a huge result because having a lot of high
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  carb stuff generally will also increase your insulin, which increases fat deposition.
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  So what we eat, how we adjust these calories is also an important factor.
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  On the calorie burning side, as I mentioned, we can just do more exercises.
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  We can do more activities.
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  We can just generally be less sedentary.
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  Right now, I'm going for a walk, listening to these beautiful birds in the background,
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  I could do the same podcast while sitting at my desk.
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  The sounds would be better, I probably would be less out of breath,
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  but it wouldn't be as enjoyable and I probably wouldn't get the same activity level that I like.
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  And it's the same thing, it's like your bank account.
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  It's 15 calories here, 20 calories there, 100 calories here,
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  25 calories there, it all adds up.
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  Now, unfortunately, what's important to note is that the absorption of the calories
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  that we get is also very individual.
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  One person will eat 150 calories of olive oil, which is like,
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  what, I don't know, a tablespoon and a half, maybe not actually probably just
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  a tablespoon, and they'll absorb every last bit of it.
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  Somebody else, with a different bacterial load, different gut microflora in
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  their intestine might only absorb 75% of that.
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  One person is going to have a diet that's mostly fruits and vegetables.
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  Well, just the burning of those calories, just the digestion of those fruits
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  and vegetables is probably going to cost them quite a lot of calories.
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  So they're not going to absorb all of the calories of that.
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  But if somebody else is more like bread heavy and pasta heavy in their diet,
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  not only will they gain that, not only will they gain all those calories,
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  but those calories are also going to be turned into a little bit more fat, water weight, etc.
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  Paying attention to these little subtleties is quite important.
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  In personal finance, and I know this seems unrelated, but in personal finance,
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  when somebody wants to achieve a good financial situation,
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  it's rare that they're buying three cars a year and two homes a year,
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  and that's what's, you know, putting them in the red.
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  No, it's probably that they're buying a little bit, they're buying too many coffees.
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  They are spending a little bit too much on pizza. They're going out for drinks
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  too much. every time they go out with their partner, they're probably ordering
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  drinks, which is the most expensive stuff.
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  Maybe they're ordering a big appetizer that they don't need when they're really
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  just going out to have a good time and enjoy the meal.
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  So we often tell somebody in personal finance space to just cut a little bit
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  here, cut a little bit there, put a little bit more money in your savings.
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  100 bucks a year, 20 bucks there, 15 bucks a year. It all adds up.
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  It That is exactly how the human body works. The human body is meant to work
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  in these small increments that is additive over time.
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  And it is an incredibly effective tool.
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  So I know this was a long podcast episode, but the calorie theory is one of
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  the most fascinating concepts of the human body.
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  And it's something that we can manipulate to help us achieve our ideal body
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  composition, whatever that body composition might mean to you.
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  Check out the show descriptions for more information if you'd like to work with
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  me you can book a call free introductory call and we can chat and i can help
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  you with your health healthy aging goals thank you for listening today have a wonderful day.