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[From comment thread 17 on Dec 10 2011.]
You can do a calculation based on height, weight, age, sex and activity level (or illness/inflammation level for hospitalized patients) to get a really rough picture of how many calories you need, but even this calculation varies widely from person to person – I’ve heard figures of as much as 20-30% more or less can be needed than the calculation states, given the individual.
Your stomach, small intestine, pancreas, fat cells, muscle cells and liver are a far better calculator of calories than that equation will ever be, and they will tell you to eat more or less through your hunger, if you let them.
Hunger signals can disappear if you ignore them or don’t consistently respect them. Also, some days you WILL be hungrier than others, because every day is different, and you expend more energy some days than others – and to complicate matters more, you might not even get compensatory hunger for those expenditures until a day or two later – so you may feel like you’re “inappropriately” hungry on a really restful day, or not very hungry on a super active day – when, in fact, your body is working out its own nutritional agenda based on the big picture, not on today, or this meal, or how many calories you used by moving around at the gym this morning. And to go one step further, calorie expenditure happens not just through physical activity, but through hundreds of different body processes, all happening in the background, that you will be totally unconscious of – and these may change your needs from day to day.
If you have more energy on the days you eat more, then it’s probably because you need that food. Calories are energy, literally.
[-Michelle]
via:Tumblr http://ift.tt/1hqtDku
You can do a calculation based on height, weight, age, sex and activity level (or illness/inflammation level for hospitalized patients) to get a really rough picture of how many calories you need, but even this calculation varies widely from person to person – I’ve heard figures of as much as 20-30% more or less can be needed than the calculation states, given the individual.
Your stomach, small intestine, pancreas, fat cells, muscle cells and liver are a far better calculator of calories than that equation will ever be, and they will tell you to eat more or less through your hunger, if you let them.
Hunger signals can disappear if you ignore them or don’t consistently respect them. Also, some days you WILL be hungrier than others, because every day is different, and you expend more energy some days than others – and to complicate matters more, you might not even get compensatory hunger for those expenditures until a day or two later – so you may feel like you’re “inappropriately” hungry on a really restful day, or not very hungry on a super active day – when, in fact, your body is working out its own nutritional agenda based on the big picture, not on today, or this meal, or how many calories you used by moving around at the gym this morning. And to go one step further, calorie expenditure happens not just through physical activity, but through hundreds of different body processes, all happening in the background, that you will be totally unconscious of – and these may change your needs from day to day.
If you have more energy on the days you eat more, then it’s probably because you need that food. Calories are energy, literally.
[-Michelle]
via:Tumblr http://ift.tt/1hqtDku
