Questioning the "calories that you need each day" idea of western culture

[Javfly33]

Why we take as blind faith that women need between 1600 and 2400 calories and males need between 2000 and 3000?

I work from home and some days I don't even walk 100 meters. How the heck my body is going to need +2000 calories? It's ridiculous! Eating that amount of food for me (or even more) some days that I don't move a finger its an insult for people that actually are starving in third-world countries. 

It's just not the difference between the nutrients of the food grown on rich soil vs food grown on poor or high-pesticide soil. The way you eat will nourish you more or less. The way you mix certain foods will impact if their nutrients/vitamins will be absorbed or not. And so on.

With so much nuanced with nutrition and how complex the human body is, I think it's safe to say that the motto of 'x calories a day' its just one more part of the very limited robotic materialistic scientific view of western culture that has obviously influenced nutrition.

If fasting has told me something, is that 95% of time we don't have hunger because of the body actually needing nutrients at that moment (when we experience 'hunger') but rather 1) Psychological conditioning, 2) Chasing dopamine through food and eating.

If eating junk food tells us something Is that humans will literally only eat because of the dopamine/pleasure, and not because needing that junk food.

 

Edited January 22, 2023 by Javfly33

[Leo Gura]

9 hours ago, Javfly33 said:

women need between 1600 and 2400 calories and males need between 2000 and 3000?

Those numbers sound about right to me.

You can easily calculate your base metabolic calorie requirements using an online chart given your height, weight, age.

This isn't some great mystery.

Edited January 23, 2023 by Leo Gura

[BipolarGrowth]

The calorie model of looking at nutrition has a lot of value. You’re just quantifying energy. Obviously chilling at home requires less energy. It is more nuanced than a simple number though. Online calculators will give a decent ball park, but the only way to accurately know your metabolic rate is to track everything meticulously and do calculations based of the weight change that occurs. 
 

Some people will have drastically different metabolic rates than those common numbers you mentioned or what online calculators will spit out. 

[vishnusavestheday]

Sitting up in a chair burns about 60 calories an hour. Sleeping burns about 50 an hour. Even if you didn't move, you'd be burning 1200 calories a day.

 

It's really THAT crazy to concede all the movement you do isn't approximately 800 more calories in a day?

 

11 hours ago, Javfly33 said:

It's ridiculous! Eating that amount of food for me (or even more) some days that I don't move a finger its an insult for people that actually are starving in third-world countries.

Also, it'd be good if you didn't drain your entire body's caloric storage just through daily exercise btw. Your body is like an ion battery. Remember from school how it's not good for a battery to continuously be drained low? Your body is the same, but on a larger scale and operating multiple autonomic systems at once. Let the body be fed, dude.

 

It's really an insult if you don't eat, really. You have really no need to starve yourself. It's a disrespect to starving people to starve with them or for them. They would easily eat if they could, why would they respect you for not eating? If their respect doesn't matter to you, why bring them up?

[josemar]

10+ years ago when I was into researching nutrition and exercise, I maintained my body weight for the given activity level I had by eating 2800 Calories every day. For weeks and months on end.

When I was eating less than that (averaged over a week), I would lose weight. When eating more, I would gain weight.

Magic!

[Javfly33]

2 hours ago, josemar said:

10+ years ago when I was into researching nutrition and exercise, I maintained my body weight for the given activity level I had by eating 2800 Calories every day. For weeks and months on end.

When I was eating less than that (averaged over a week), I would lose weight. When eating more, I would gain weight.

Magic!

It's just nonsense all that calorie quantity stuff.

There have been times in life that I´ve eaten easily double of what I normally eat and still have the same weight and muscle.

9 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Those numbers sound about right to me.

You can easily calculate your base metabolic calorie requirements using an online chart given your height, weight, age.

This isn't some great mystery.

Why you now have blindly faith on all that science Leo? I expected more skepticism from you in this regard.

7 hours ago, BipolarGrowth said:

The calorie model of looking at nutrition has a lot of value. You’re just quantifying energy. 

Of course. And a lot of people just waste energy.

If you reduce half the calories of someone who has anxiety and its running around chugging coffee like a madman all day, I guarantee you he/she will be way less neurotic and be more grounded.

The body its just overfed with food due to eating from compulsion, not from conscious election.

And note im taking about reducing calories, not nutrients or nourishment.

If you consciously eat a banana from a rich soil that has 250calories your body might get from that than a plate of pasta of 1000calories of low vibration food.

You guys are just completely missing the energetic aspect of food and nuances of absorbing food.

Edited January 23, 2023 by Javfly33

[UDT]

Problems are not the kcal idea, its the application. 

1) you can only estimate how much kcal are in the food

2) bioavailability and absorption depend on your GI health and hormone-status

3) basal metabolic rate varies with said hormones

4) activity based metabolic rate varies accoring to movement but also brain activity!


But generally you need food, ok? 

[josemar]

46 minutes ago, Javfly33 said:

It's just nonsense all that calorie quantity stuff.

There have been times in life that I´ve eaten easily double of what I normally eat and still have the same weight and muscle.

Careful you're not falling in the trap of not accepting valid science, along with "well if science cannot explain consciousness, then any other results are incorrect".

If you haven't  measured what you're eating, "easily double" is easily misreported. For how long did you eat "double"? 1 meal, 1 day, 1 week? And after, did you eat "easily half"? but you didn't care so eating less didn't register in your non-scientific experiment.

I actually measured what I was eating for months.

Was on holidays with some friends, where a guy maintained that he can eat "whatever he wants" and not gain weight. I mean sure, if whatever he wanted was at maintenance calories, that is true. However, when he tried to eat whatever I was eating, he was full by the second pancake...

But sure, calories are nonsense 

[Michael569]

21 hours ago, Javfly33 said:

I think it's safe to say that the motto of 'x calories a day' its just one more part of the very limited robotic materialistic scientific view of western culture that has obviously influenced nutrition.

As with everything else....it depends. 

 

General caloric recommendations are a statistical average that changes slightly as people age. 

For babies, calories equal basic survival. 

For young children, these targets are essential to prevent delayed growth and avoid poor bone & muscle development. 

For teenagers, they are essential to ensure that puberty can run smoothly and that there are no delays to sexual maturation. 

In later life, caloric requirements help people delay early onset of cognitive decline, sarcopenia, osteoporosis and general signs of rapid ageing.  

obviously, they are also key during pregnancy, lactation and also when planning pregnancy. 

Patients undergoing various therapies (such as chemo) need to pay extreme attention to their caloric intake as it can protect from cachexia

In the age of our prime (25-40) - we can get away with variations (I assume this is what you are talking about) - we can tolerate more calories or even less calories for quite some time. In this age deviations from the standard are unlikely to cause problems, unless you go into extremes (major overeating or major undereating). 

Only past your prime will first symptoms become apparent. 

All in all, caloric measures are there for a reason. As a young male in your prime years you can defy all of it, certainly but for those in risk groups (e.g. the above) caloric maintenance is quite essential. 

 

Edited January 23, 2023 by Michael569

[Leo Gura]

2 hours ago, Javfly33 said:

Why you now have blindly faith on all that science Leo? I expected more skepticism from you in this regard

See video: False vs True Skepticism

[Michal__]

If you really want to know 

a) weigh yourself everyday for months

b) count your calories

c) find out what's easiest to digest for you (for some it's keto, for others vegan, for me personally anything that aligns with this https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/food-combining#TOC_TITLE_HDR_2 works well)

Likely you'll find out that the number is well within the range, maybe not.

Most of the time people can't really guess how many calories they're consuming.

Edited January 24, 2023 by Michal__

[BipolarGrowth]

16 hours ago, Javfly33 said:

It's just nonsense all that calorie quantity stuff.

There have been times in life that I´ve eaten easily double of what I normally eat and still have the same weight and muscle.

Why you now have blindly faith on all that science Leo? I expected more skepticism from you in this regard.

Of course. And a lot of people just waste energy.

If you reduce half the calories of someone who has anxiety and its running around chugging coffee like a madman all day, I guarantee you he/she will be way less neurotic and be more grounded.

The body its just overfed with food due to eating from compulsion, not from conscious election.

And note im taking about reducing calories, not nutrients or nourishment.

If you consciously eat a banana from a rich soil that has 250calories your body might get from that than a plate of pasta of 1000calories of low vibration food.

You guys are just completely missing the energetic aspect of food and nuances of absorbing food.

Calories are literally measuring the energetic aspect of food. 
 

The calorie model doesn’t focus on micronutrients, so why is your criticism of it that it doesn’t track micronutrients? That’s not the intention behind that model. Of course micronutrients are important. No one is saying otherwise. 
 

Anxiety is going to be triggered more when someone isn’t eating enough. You’re far more likely to be operating in a sympathetic nervous system mode while underfed. Consuming caffeine has nothing to do with calories. 

[lisindel]

Nutrients are far more important than calories.