I'm back, it's been a while since my last post, but the book is nearing completion. A big factor in writing it has been the birth of my baby daughter Daisy, she is the reason I reevaluated my dietary knowledge. I wanted to make sure she was healthy, learned to enjoy food and wasn't constrained by a life long fear of food, or desire to limit her intake. I also wanted to be sure that my wife ate food, both to feed Daisy and nourish herself. To be honest, I became appalled at the current view of dietary intake from the general public, the media and so called 'health' specialists.
Apparently you may be hungry after exercising. Who'd of thought it! The Pennington Biomedical Research Centre think you should ignore this and buy inedible things instead.
To aid in my book writing I asked some of you to lend me your diet data so that I may use it in my book (a winner will be selected shortly and a new completion using myfitnesspal will be announced). I wanted to include some data from my own diet, whilst I don't think it is hugely important (i.e I don't want anyone reading into it and just copying what I eat), it is a question that I get asked a lot. As usual the simple act of collecting some data left me with more than I expected, so the book has expanded even more. For my data collection some of you asked to submit your myfitnesspal data which helped a lot. I've also picked up some followers who seem to be doing the total opposite which has helped back up my ideas even more.
I've been given me the data of someone who aims to eat 1200 kcal a day. Now the obvious thing here is that after a set period of strong willpower, they would crash and burn. And crash and burn they did, with a lofty figure of 4000+ kcal. In my logical brain it seems obvious that this was the only possible conclusion...a starved body needs to survive and, unless you cultivate an eating disorder as suggested in the picture above, your brain will win and you will eat and survive. Our body should be applauded for overcoming such hostile treatment, even the storage of fat is a fascinating insight into our body ensuring it has supplies to cope with the poor treatment it gets when malnourished.
Anyhow, after many weeks of watching, I have relented and proffered some advice. I figured they followed me so maybe they maybe won't mind me interfering. This led me to wondering how much Daisy eats in an average day, which is what can be seen in the picture at the top. At 1345 kcal she is consuming more than my adult follower attempts to consume, and much more than those on lighter life, herbalife, and various other low calorie diets which is scary.
Having a rough look around google it seems anywhere between 900 kcal and 1300 kcal is normal for a 1 year old. We honestly aren't counting other than today out of curiosity. Daisy has her normal daily meals and snacks which we increase if she asks for more food. There are many formulas for caloric intake, but as most of you know my long term favourite is;
I've been given me the data of someone who aims to eat 1200 kcal a day. Now the obvious thing here is that after a set period of strong willpower, they would crash and burn. And crash and burn they did, with a lofty figure of 4000+ kcal. In my logical brain it seems obvious that this was the only possible conclusion...a starved body needs to survive and, unless you cultivate an eating disorder as suggested in the picture above, your brain will win and you will eat and survive. Our body should be applauded for overcoming such hostile treatment, even the storage of fat is a fascinating insight into our body ensuring it has supplies to cope with the poor treatment it gets when malnourished.
Anyhow, after many weeks of watching, I have relented and proffered some advice. I figured they followed me so maybe they maybe won't mind me interfering. This led me to wondering how much Daisy eats in an average day, which is what can be seen in the picture at the top. At 1345 kcal she is consuming more than my adult follower attempts to consume, and much more than those on lighter life, herbalife, and various other low calorie diets which is scary.
Having a rough look around google it seems anywhere between 900 kcal and 1300 kcal is normal for a 1 year old. We honestly aren't counting other than today out of curiosity. Daisy has her normal daily meals and snacks which we increase if she asks for more food. There are many formulas for caloric intake, but as most of you know my long term favourite is;
If we imagine that Daisy were 10 kg (not weighed her for ages) then we could say that an inactive (like that will happen) Daisy would need 250 kcals a day, which is absurd. If we times that by 1.9 (a formula used for the very active) then the 75 kg man would now need 3562.5 kcals a day and Daisy would need 475 kcal.
I know most 75 kg men are nowhere near as active as Daisy but its a good way to look at it. Typically I cope best at 3600 kcal when I am moderately active, I maintain pulse, temp, am pain free, and suffer less from emotion issues (stress, anger, anxiety, depression etc). I'm currently on a 2800 kcal experiment and I'm struggling to maintain my temp, pulse and everything aches. So, 3600 kcal works best for me when I'm at best moderatly active, but what does that mean for my calorie intake if I were to match Daisy's output.
If we work Daisy's figures into the original formula then we get something really interesting.
1345 kcal / 1.9 = 707.89 kcal RMR (resting metabolic rate)
707.89 kcal / 10 kg bodyweight = 70.78 kcals per kg of bodyweight.
So if we round this up to 70 kcals and place it in the original formula for the 75 kg man;
75 kg x 70 kcal = 5250 kcal and then times this by 1.9 to match Daisy's activity we get 9975 kcals per day.
Whilst this may seem like masive figure, bear in mind that when I tracked my output at a recent extreme competition I did I used over 13,000 kcal in a day.
As before when I wrote about eating 6000 calories a day, I'm not suggesting that you do eat this much. A damaged metabolism needs time to repair and its probably much more sensible to work slowly rather than freak yourself out with huge amounts. So, take it with a pinch of salt (maybe a pinch of sugar as well), especially the maths as its late at night and I'll be back to check it tomorrow. The intention is to make you think about how much you really need to eat and why.
Are you cold?
Are you hungry?
Are you constantly avoiding food or feeling guilty when you give in to survival?
Daisy is always warm, has a good pulse, is never fatigued other than when its bed time or food time, and has no worries about food or her weight. At what point did all these things change for you? Maybe when you gave up your baby diet!!
Apologies for the lack of blog posts, the book will be done shortly and I'll be back to normal ranting about diets, in the meantime thanks for all your kind comments and keep in touch.
I know most 75 kg men are nowhere near as active as Daisy but its a good way to look at it. Typically I cope best at 3600 kcal when I am moderately active, I maintain pulse, temp, am pain free, and suffer less from emotion issues (stress, anger, anxiety, depression etc). I'm currently on a 2800 kcal experiment and I'm struggling to maintain my temp, pulse and everything aches. So, 3600 kcal works best for me when I'm at best moderatly active, but what does that mean for my calorie intake if I were to match Daisy's output.
If we work Daisy's figures into the original formula then we get something really interesting.
1345 kcal / 1.9 = 707.89 kcal RMR (resting metabolic rate)
707.89 kcal / 10 kg bodyweight = 70.78 kcals per kg of bodyweight.
So if we round this up to 70 kcals and place it in the original formula for the 75 kg man;
75 kg x 70 kcal = 5250 kcal and then times this by 1.9 to match Daisy's activity we get 9975 kcals per day.
Whilst this may seem like masive figure, bear in mind that when I tracked my output at a recent extreme competition I did I used over 13,000 kcal in a day.
As before when I wrote about eating 6000 calories a day, I'm not suggesting that you do eat this much. A damaged metabolism needs time to repair and its probably much more sensible to work slowly rather than freak yourself out with huge amounts. So, take it with a pinch of salt (maybe a pinch of sugar as well), especially the maths as its late at night and I'll be back to check it tomorrow. The intention is to make you think about how much you really need to eat and why.
Are you cold?
Are you hungry?
Are you constantly avoiding food or feeling guilty when you give in to survival?
Daisy is always warm, has a good pulse, is never fatigued other than when its bed time or food time, and has no worries about food or her weight. At what point did all these things change for you? Maybe when you gave up your baby diet!!
Apologies for the lack of blog posts, the book will be done shortly and I'll be back to normal ranting about diets, in the meantime thanks for all your kind comments and keep in touch.
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