A question I get from clients all the time is “Will all this food you have me eating make me fat?” Society, magazines, television, and those photo-shopped models have warped the average Americans perception on what a proper diet really looks like. My answer is always no. I recommend a certain number of calories based on a long list of different calculations. So many factors affect that number. Weight, age, lifestyle, body composition, certain diseases and conditions, how your body process and digests things. Everyone is different, so you will not eat the same amounts!
Calculating Calories
For active men the simple way to find your maintenance calories is to multiply your bodyweight by 17. For females that number is 13-14. That means that a 180 pound male would maintain that bodyweight at 3,060 calories. A 130 pound active female would be between 1,690-1820 calories per day. Now this is just a ballpark number. Some people have faster or slower metabolisms based on the factors that I listed above.
Have you ever compared 2,000 calories of whole nutritious foods, with that of fast food? This right here will blow your mind. I can fill up an entire table top with 5-6 meals of nutritious whole foods. But in just one whopper combo meal from Burger King with a large soda, that’s almost 2,000 calories right there in one sitting. Americans just have no clue how calorically dense these fast food items really are. Fat calories add up, and they do so very quickly if you are not conscious about what you are eating.
Insulin
Hormonal response is the mitigating factor in if you will really store body fat or not. Insulin is known as the storage hormone. The most significant factor in fat storage is the level of insulin in the blood. Insulin has many effects on the body. With respect to fat storage, insulin increases the storage of fat in fat cells and prevents fat cells from releasing fat for energy. This is such a key point for people to understand that I’ll repeat it: Insulin increases the storage of fat in fat cells and prevents the cells from releasing it for energy. Eight hormones stimulate fat utilization: epinephrine, norepinephrine, adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH), glucagon, thyroid-stimulating hormone, melanocyte-stimulating hormone, vasopressin and growth hormone.
When you eat sugary processed foods the amount of insulin in your bloodstreams increased astronomically. Examples of these are donuts, sugary sodas and teas, refined breads, candy bars, ice cream, cookies, and cakes. The list is really endless with all of the food options we have as Americans. To combat this you want to eat complex carbohydrates such as oatmeal, whole wheat items, sweet potato’s, cream of wheat, cream of rice, white and brown rice, and even bran and oat cereals. The longer that it takes for your body to digest and break these carbohydrates down, the lower your insulin levels will remain. The lower your insulin levels are, the less body fat you will store. If you do this long enough, coupled with weight training, and other types of exercise, your body will start to release those other fat utilizing hormones. That’s when the magic begins and you start to shed some pounds!
YOU WILL NOT GET FATTER
So when my clients ask me if all this food I have them eating will make them fat, I give them this answer. It’s more so about what types of foods you are eating as opposed the calories that you are consuming. That being said, if you binge and eat 3,500 calories of whole food and your maintenance is only 2,500, you will gain some fat weight. So you have to be intelligent with how much you are consuming. But from personal experience I can handle 500-600 calories more a day of whole nutritious foods as opposed to my maintenance level of junk foods. I am more satiated and I do not crave those sugary, processed foods. Getting someone on a proper nutritious diet is the first step. Dialing them in on calories and macronutrient percentages comes after they get the diet down. It’s a long process, but one that is worth your time if you decide to stick to it. Rome surely wasn’t built in a day, and neither were those cover models abs.