Nutrition Without Politics

The subject of nutrition can appear vast and insurmountable. Just go into any book store or online shop and you’ll see hundreds upon hundreds of books talking about nutrition. The most popular ones nowadays are keto, low-carb, paleo, vegan, vegetarian, the all-meat diet, and intermittent fasting, just to name a few. The most interesting thing that you’ll notice about all of these books is their claim that their way of eating has been shown to improve health more than any other diet plan. If there are a thousand different books out there all claiming nutritional superiority, then they can’t all be right.

Almost all of these nutritional plans center around the idea of good and bad foods. These particular foods are allowed while these other foods are prohibited. For example, the paleo diet allows lean meats but doesn’t allow legumes. A vegan diet allows fruits but not meat. The all-meat diet, as its name implies, is just all meat and nothing else. The big take away is that there are some foods that are really fantastic for your body while others are virtually poisonous.

I disagree.

Human beings are omnivores. Properly defined, an omnivore is a creature that can survive on plant and animal matter. We are neither carnivores nor herbivores. Mother Nature has designed us to be able to exist on both meat and plant materials. Based on that evolutionary axiom, it’s hard to argue that meat itself is inherently dangerous to the health of humans if we have evolved to eat it. Likewise, it’s hard to argue that fruits and vegetables are dangerous for the human body when we have evolved to consume these kinds of foods. This general idea is why I’m not a believer that humans should just consume one particular kind of food to the exclusion of all others.

Instead of focusing so intently on eating particular types of foods, I’m going to argue that it’s more important to focus on the “energy” of the food that you’re consuming and the total amount of energy you’re feeding your body each day. You see, if you follow the Paleo diet, the book will tell you exactly what to eat but in almost every instance not address caloric requirements. The same is true with the Atkins diet, Mediterranean diet, etc.

But here’s the thing: calories are the most important factor to look at when it comes to losing weight. When you lose weight (body fat) your health also improves. That is why among the vast array of diets, if someone loses weight, their health parameters improve.

Let’s take weight loss as an example. When someone says weight loss they’re usually referring to the loss of body fat. Body fat is fundamentally an inert substance. It’s function is to provide a source of calories/energy in times of famine. It’s a survival mechanism that the human body developed over time. In our modern times, we typically view body fat as something that is unattractive or a negative but five thousand years ago, if you were going to a period of famine, that excess fat would’ve allowed you to survive…or at least survive longer than someone else without the excess fat. Almost all anthropologists acknowledge that ancient humans went through periods of famine and being able to tap into that body fat during times of starvation was essential. To build that reserve of body fat, a human would have to go through a period of eating an abundance of food. When you eat more food that what your body needs, you store that food as body fat. It’s that simple and it’s an evolutionary trait that helped us survive.

The problem now is that we live in a perpetual state of feast.

For the majority of Americans, food is plentiful. A lot of us live just minutes away from a major grocery store. Contrast that to thousands or hundreds of years ago where you may’ve had to spend your entire day just to find enough food to survive. Now we hop in our car and make that trip to the grocery store which has thousands of delicious items in it. There is no longer any physical effort involved in acquiring that food.

Added to that, most foods that taste good to us are high in calories - pizza, cheeseburgers, cookies, are just a few. Our calorie requirements are far less than what they used to be because we live mostly sedentary lives. You can easily see how in our modern lifestyle, it’s exceedingly easy to gain excess body fat. Too little physical activity coupled with calorie-dense foods (that happen to taste great to our tastebuds).

In order to fix this problem you have to address - fundamentally - how many calories (i.e., energy from food) you need each day. Smaller people tend to need fewer calories per day compared to someone with a larger body mass. Here is a link to a find out what your requirements are.

In order to lose body fat, you’re going to have to create a caloric deficit. In other words, if your daily caloric requirements are 2,000 a day, you’re going to have to aim for a number that is below 2,000. That can be done in a variety of ways: eating fewer calories, exercising more, or eating fewer calories along with exercise. All we are aiming for here is NET calories per day. As an example, if we were trying to shoot for 1,700 calories per day, you could eat that many calories or alternatively, you could eat 2,000 calories in a day but exercise enough to burn 300 calories. 2,000 - 300 calories give a net total of 1,700.

If you’re trying to lose weight at a faster pace, you can make your calorie deficit even larger, but many people start off this way and then abandon it because they have unrealistic goals. An example would be someone saying that their goal per day is to have a net of 700 calories. Eating so little for any duration is a recipe for disaster. Sure, eating so few calories will lead to dramatic body fat loss but it will also lead to dramatic hunger and lead most people to binge often. This is also the primary reason people don’t stick to diets or lifestyle changes: they attempt to be far too aggressive and set the bar too high, too fast and then fail. Keep this in mind: you can’t make every day a painful battle against your body. Gently nudge your body a certain direction and you’ll get the results that you want. It just may take a little more time than you expected but you will get results.

And don’t think that willpower will help you. It won’t. If you give your body far too few calories per day it will revolt against you. You will wake up at Midnight and gorge on whatever is in the pantry. The body has a mind of its own and will seek to consume more calories at all costs.

Here’s an example that I like to use to show how effective calorie-counting is: observe what competitive bodybuilders do to get ready for a show. In almost no instance do these people follow a particular kind of eating plan without putting their calories at the top of that list. Sure, some may follow a low-carb, Paleo, or vegetarian diet but they all - without question - count their daily calorie intake. You may find a bunch of them eat nothing but grilled chicken, brown rice, and vegetables but you can bet that they know their daily total intake of calories. If they happen to be losing muscle or weight too fast, they attempt to do less exercise or they increase their daily calories by a bit. If they find that they’re not losing enough fat fast enough, they cut their daily calories by a bit, to speed up the fat loss, or they increase their calorie expenditure via exercise (or both).

There may be some out there who read this and proceed to eat just a single slice of pizza, have a single chocolate chip cookie, and drink two liters of cola daily. After all, I did say that calories are what count, right? While this is true, one must still adhere to what scientists consider a healthy diet. The scientific data, while always being updated, is the best place to look for these guidelines. I generally recommend that you don’t look for authors, bloggers, or people with ulterior motives to give you this info. Look at the science. Eat adequate amounts of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean meats, nuts, and seeds. One should limit meat intake to lean meats (note: lean meat naturally has fewer calories than fatty meat) and keep products with added sugar to a minimum. Most processed food offers little nutrition and tend to promote overeating so you should try to limit the processed foods in your diet as well. If you follow these guidelines, you’ll avoid vitamin and mineral deficiencies and also ensure that you have the needed energy to exercise and do your daily activities.

So if your goal is to drop body fat and also improve your health, keep your eyes on the amount of calories that you’re eating and also expending. If you hit a plateau, slightly reduce your daily calories and/or increase your physical activity so that you’re burning more calories. This will ensure that you’re on a continuous path to accomplishing your goals.

This is nutrition without politics.