WHAT MATTERS MORE TO BURN CALORIES?

<a href='https://www.freepik.es/foto-gratis/aptitud-femenina-en-pantalones-negros-y-sujetador-deportivo-rosa-sosteniendo-pesas-rojas_1233499.htm'>Designed by Freepik</a>

When developing a fat and weight loss planning we usually give the greatest importance to the workouts we do, thinking that if we do not do hours and hours of cardiovascular workouts, our planning will be a disaster.

Today I bring good news, because after this reading you will have complementary strategies to achieve your weight loss goals and, best of all, you will do it without going to the gym or to your training center.

First, we must understand, in a simplistic way, that our loss or gain of weight meets the laws of thermodynamics. That is, the balance of calories that enter and leave our body.

Calories that enter (Food)> Calories that come out (Physical activity) = Weight gain

Calories that enter (Food) <Calories that come out (Physical activity) = Weight loss

However, not all calories come from the same macronutrients (proteins, fats and carbohydrates) and different distributions in your planning can lead to weight loss or gains due to muscle, fat, water, etc.

The success in weight loss of absurd and incomplete diets such as the diet of pineapple, strawberry, etc. it is simply due to this thermodynamic law. However, it does not give us information about the tissue that we lose and the consequences of such restrictive diets can be disastrous and irreversible at the health level.

Therefore, it is important not to base the success of our diet on our body weight and what the scale says. It will not help if you lose 10kg in a month if they come mainly from muscle tissue or bone mineral density and your amount of fat is still intact. That the scale does not tell you...

So far we can draw a conclusion:

Consuming fewer calories than we need will make us lose weight. However, the distribution of macronutrients that we propose, the aggressiveness of the diet and the type of training or activities used for this will mark that the loss is fat or other tissues such as muscle and bone.

Once this is understood, you will understand that the answer to questions such as ¿x food is fattening? How much can I eat x food? it will be DEPEND.

What does it depend on?

From your daily caloric balance. That is, the sum of all the daily foods will be what determines whether you are above or below your caloric expenditure and, therefore, your weight loss or gain. No food has the inherent property of weight gain or weight loss. You can eat 100% real food and get fat for an excess of calories and feed on junk food and lose weight for not reaching your caloric expenditure. However, it will be much easier to spend laps with ultra-processed food than with real food.

Therefore, if you have banned or restricted healthy and healthy foods with the argument that they fattened you have a good reason to distrust. If, in addition, you have recommended replacing them with "light" or "no calorie" industrial products, get away from their recommendations and doubt their basic knowledge.

At this point, the key question from which the objective of this article departs is the following:

WHAT HAS THE MOST IMPACT ON MY SPENDING OF CALORIES TO BE ABLE TO CREATE A NEGATIVE CALORIC BALANCE?

The biggest percentage has the simple fact of keeping us alive and performing all our vital functions. This is called the basal metabolic rate (BMR), it constitutes around 70% of the total daily caloric expenditure and we can modify it relatively little. Therefore, we will go to the points where we can influence to a greater extent.

Different possibilities open:

1. The expense derived from my workouts.

2. The expense derived from my external physical activity to the training.

3. The expense derived from the decomposition of the ingested food. Effectively, eating calories are also burned ... xD

The third would be ruled out, since it would be a bit absurd to try to lose weight by eating more ...

Surely, many of you consider more important and study more deeply that method, exercises or training modalities are more effective for your weight loss goals.

However, if we observe that the scientific literature says, some authors such as Trexler, E. et al. (2014) state that the expense derived from our daily physical activities external to physical exercise, better known as NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis), represents a percentage of caloric expenditure that is much higher than that generated in training. Specifically, we would be talking about 5% of the total daily caloric expenditure for training and 15% for the remaining physical activity or NEAT. It would be, therefore, three times as relevant.

It is important to note that through dietary modifications the impact on our calorie balance may be much more relevant, since in most cases, with small modifications can be achieved huge weekly deficits. For example: The elimination of bread in a person who consumes it in all meals will suppose a greater caloric deficit than the majority of conventional cardiovascular workouts analyzed by authors such as Skelly et al. (2014)

50 'bike at 70% FC max = 200 grams bread = 545 Kcal

545Kcal x 7 days = 3815 Kcal → Weekly deficit with exclusive elimination of bread ...

Besides helping you to increase your caloric deficit, it is not a particularly nutritious or satiating food and, even less, in its refined and non-integral variants. Therefore, do not worry about reducing it or eliminating it.

However, in this article I will focus on what will bring you the most out of your diet.

Increasing your daily physical activity outside of training will benefit you in many aspects: they are activities that will not fatigue you or suppose an excessive stress, on the contrary that could happen with the trainings, which can become heavier in times of lack of energy and calories . On the contrary, this NEAT can help you recover from your workouts, to relax, to increase your social relations, to enhance your feelings of well-being and vitality and to avoid the potential risks associated with sedentary lifestyle.

A practical and simple way to progressively increase this NEAT is the increase of daily steps easily quantifiable through smartphone, activity wristbands or watches. Among the best options is to go for a walk listening podcast on relevant topics in your daily life, which will double this activity. Other ways can be listening to music, taking a walk with friends, make a hiking or cycling route in a playful and quiet way, make a natural excursion on the weekend, etc.

On the other hand, and leaving out the walks, we would also have other options such as: doing housework, running errands, etc.

An effective strategy would be to dedicate most of the time to these activities on the days that you do not do trainings so that, in this way, you stay active every day and have time to fulfill your academic, work, social or family obligations.

If you want to deepen even more and know more precisely how much each of your daily activities is equivalent, I will link you to a pdf with approximate amounts:

http://www.cuinant.com/pdf/gasto_calorias.pdf

CONCLUSIONS:

• It seems that, within our possibilities of increasing daily caloric expenditure, physical activity external to training will have a greater impact than the expense generated in them, so it will be of vital importance to consider it within your planning. However, dietary aspects will be much more relevant, so a good synergy between both areas will be necessary.

• It is useless to take a perfect planning of your workouts if the remaining hours adopt sedentary lifestyle habits, you feed poorly and your physical activity is quite low.

• Despite having greater relevance, does not mean that increasing your NEAT will achieve your goals without training. The training, especially those of strength and high intensity, will prevent the loss of weight from muscle tissue.

• A good weight loss planning has to take into account both training, external physical activity and nutrition. The balance and complementation of the three aspects will be fundamental in the success of your planning and an excessive prominence of some of them may lead to the neglect of others.

REFERENCES:

Trexler, E. T., Smith-Ryan, A. E., & Norton, L. E. (2014). Metabolic adaptation to weight loss: implications for the athlete. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 11(1), 7.

Skelly, L. E., Andrews, P. C., Gillen, J. B., Martin, B. J., Percival, M. E., & Gibala, M. J. (2014). High-intensity interval exercise induces 24-h energy expenditure similar to traditional endurance exercise despite reduced time commitment. Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism, 39(7), 845-848.

<a href='https://www.freepik.es/foto-gratis/aptitud-femenina-en-pantalones-negros-y-sujetador-deportivo-rosa-sosteniendo-pesas-rojas_1233499.htm'>Designed by Freepik</a>