Facts about Nutrition

Are you looking for the facts about nutrition? Wait…..what is nutrition anyway? Scientifically speaking, nutrition is the process by which the cells in your body get what they need to sustain them. This comes, of course, from the food that you eat.

If you’re interested in losing weight or getting a better-looking body, one of the most important facts about nutrition that you need to know is that our bodies have what is referred to as a ‘famine mode’. Famine mode is our body’s defense against starvation during times when food is scarce, and it’s the result of our evolution – for the vast majority of human history, food was not nearly as plentiful as it is for us today.

If your body detects that it’s not getting the calories it needs, famine mode is triggered, and your body starts to hoard the calories that it gets. It does this by dramatically reducing your metabolic rate (this is the rate at which your body burns calories while at rest). It also starts to convert muscle tissue into energy in order to make up the calorie deficit. This makes perfect sense, because muscle is ‘expensive’ (in terms of calories) to maintain, and much less important in times of famine that your body’s fat stores.

So why is this important? Because many diets that restrict the number of calories you eat every day will trigger your body’s famine response. This is doubly bad, because not only will this mean reduce your metabolic rate, but it also causes you to lose the very tissue that makes you look good and actually burns more calories – muscle.

In order to lose weight you DO need to eat less calories than you burn; that’s not a law of dieting, it’s a law of physics! However, remember the facts about nutrition – you don’t want to trigger your body’s famine response, and that means reducing your calorie intake incrementally rather than suddenly and massively. A differential of no more than 500 calories per day between calories burned and calories consumed is a good ballpark figure.

The other way to transform your body while avoiding famine mode is to incorporate resistance training into your exercise regime. Doing weights will prompt your body to direct calories that you eat into building muscle tissue rather than fat, and the more muscle you build, the more calories you’ll burn, even when you’re just resting.