When Losing Weight, Calories May Be King, but Composition will be Queen

Love them or hate them, calories and counting them are an essential part of any weight loss journey. But not all calories are created equal. The concept of 'calories in versus calories out' is simple on the surface, yet it does not fully account for how different types of foods affect our bodies. 

Do you really believe that 100 calories from a doughnut won’t have a different impact on your body than 100 calories from a serving of broccoli? The reality is that most people and “experts” out there preach that simply following a calorie deficit will result in significant weight loss. And it will, but they’re missing something: calorie composition plays a crucial role. Let us explain why.

The Basics of Calories 

So, starting with some of the basics of calories, which you may know already; all food and drinks we consume - other than water - contain calories. And those calories are units of energy which provide us with the fuel we need to function and live our lives.

How Many Calories Do You Need a Day?

Now, the exact amount of calories we personally need to consume on a daily basis to stay exactly the weight we are and to have the required energy to function, like breathing, circulation, and cell production, is termed our basal metabolic rate (BMR). And this rate is dictated by many factors, the major ones being your starting body weight, your age, your height, your gender and your daily level of activity. People sometimes think that exercise is how we burn the most calories, but it is actually our BMR that accounts for the majority of total calorie expenditure. It is then followed by physical activity and the energy we use to digest our food.

Finding Your Basal Metabolic Rate

But trying to find your exact basal metabolic rate is actually extremely challenging. It can be done in lab conditions, but even then, it’s likely to change each day, primarily because it is based on your different levels of daily activity. 

The good news is that finding your predicted figure is less challenging. While not perfectly accurate, it will be perfectly adequate to try to lose weight. Because, once you have a rough idea of your daily calorie requirement in numbers, going over that figure will lead to weight gain, and going under it will lead to weight loss (or being in a calorie deficit, as it is commonly known).

Putting it in simple maths as an example, if your BMR was 2,000 calories a day but you only consumed 1,500 calories, you would have a numerical saving of 500 calories per day. Over a week, that’s a total of 3,500 calories (7 x 500) - the same number of calories in one pound of fat. So, within seven days, you’d have lost one pound of fat. 

Losing Weight with the Right Calorie Composition

Now, with this in mind, it’s true to say that regardless of what foods you’re eating if you stay under your daily BMR requirement, you will lose weight. However, it’s also true to say that not all calories are created equally, and this composition of calories plays a huge part in the effectiveness of a diet and the length of time it takes you to lose weight. But why?

The Different Types of Calorie Compositions

While a calorie as a unit of energy is the same regardless of the food type consumed, what happens at a bimolecular level is vastly different. What does this mean? Well, there is a lot going on internally at a biochemical level, so let’s try to keep it simple again. Certain foods are hard for the body to break down and digest, and then some are all too easy…  

Slow to Break Down Foods

When you consume certain foods, like proteins and complex carbohydrates, the body processes them slowly, meaning the energy is released to you over a longer period of time, allowing you to go about all your daily tasks while drawing on those calories as needed. 

Fast to Break Down Foods

Other foods - primarily sugars - are very easily absorbed, and the body has only two choices: use them immediately or store them as body fat. It has no other option as your blood sugar level will start to rise, which is extremely dangerous to us. So, the body reduces your blood sugar level by releasing insulin, which converts the sugar into body fat. Once this sugar is stored in body fat, it’s no longer an easily accessible energy source for us, and cannot be drawn on throughout the day; hence, those people who eat lots of calories but have no energy. 

Now, the vast majority of these sugars come from processed foods. Think breakfast cereals, breads, biscuits, cake, sugary drinks and alcohol, to name but a few. These foods are nearly entirely sugars, and consuming them, unless you’re very active, is going to leave your body with no choice but to store them as fat, leaving you constantly feeling fatigued, and ultimately, stacking up the pounds. 

But, imagine you eat a diet closer to our natural diet which was made up of fresh foods like fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, and eggs. The body can deal with this diet in a more natural way, allowing you to both improve and speed up your weight loss results whilst giving you more energy. 

The Calorie Deficit and Composition Connection

We’ve discussed what a basic calorie deficit is, and how being in one will result in weight loss. But, when you’re in a calorie deficit, it is the composition of your diet, the level of nutrition you receive, that is important as it allows you to be on a lower calorie regime but still feel well and healthy as you go about your daily life. 

Your body has less need for a specific calorific number and more of a need for good nutrients on a daily basis. And the good news is that healthy foods that are low in calories also happen to be the most nutritious. Think of it from this perspective:

• You got up in the morning and had a bowl of porridge (oatmeal) with skimmed milk and artificial sweetener.

• For lunch, you had a salad with a breast of chicken fillet or tin of tuna mixed with lettuce, spinach, cucumber, onion, grated carrots, celery, sweetcorn, and tomatoes (pretty much any natural salad ingredient you chose); you dress it with salt, pepper, lemon, vinegar and balsamic to taste. 

• For dinner, you had a salmon darne or fillet steak, a fist-size portion of baby boiled potatoes and asparagus tips, cauliflower or broccoli.

• During the day, if you miss the odd snack, how about an apple and two mandarin orange? Then, just for a treat in the evening or a little supper, two rice cakes. 

All the above is approximately 1,000 calories, or you could have a 200g bar of chocolate first thing in the morning. The problem is that you will have 1,200 calories consumed within only a few minutes. You still have the rest of the day to get through so you always end up eating more, ingesting way more calories than you actually need. 

So which would you rather? Feel satiated, energised all day and good, or feel a burst of energy in the morning, fatigued all day and ultimately consume 3,000 plus calories? We know what we would choose, but the reality is most people are choosing the latter option, vastly overconsuming calories that have little to no nutritional value and ending up overweight as a result. 

Nutrition’s Role in Your Diet

Bread, cakes, biscuits, sweets, fizzy drinks, beer, and sugary breakfast cereals, all have calories, some with numbers similar to the likes of proteins and carbohydrates, but they have little nutrients. This is why people have such low energy levels; they’re consuming calories but starving their bodies of nutrition. 

Depending on your diet (and we’ll just pick a random calorie amount of, say, 2,500 calories), it’s possible to be consuming that and providing your body with less than 500 calories of nutrition in a day, and that’s half of what the above diet of just 1,000 calories would provide. 

That sample day is a perfect example of how it’s possible to eat the right low-calorie foods to provide all the body’s nutrition requirements and enable weight loss whilst still feeling healthy and well. People who loudly comment that calorie deficits provided by weight loss companies are too low and we should be on higher overall calories are displaying a severe lack of understanding of the role of nutrition. They will say you have to pick a number and can eat whatever you want within it. To take their argument to a logical conclusion, they are essentially suggesting that the above diet is less healthy than if you only consumed four pints of beer or only ate a very large bar of chocolate or a plate of biscuits. 

BodySlims Takes Calorie Composition Into Account 

At BodySlims, we believe everybody should get to pick their own journey and what they feel will best suit them. We encourage people as much as we can to move to a more natural-based diet, but always give the option of the express train or the normal-paced train. This is all about the composition of the diet, and then we let people decide which journey they want. It’s important to say that staying within a calorie deficit will produce weight loss regardless of the composition, but the correct composition will speed up the journey. 

When you sign up for BodySlims, we help you understand the best food swaps, provide you with nutritional recipes, and make sure you’re allotted the right calorie count for the best weight loss transformation we know you can achieve. So, sign up for our next programme intake today!