The Scoop

How we take in and use energy.

I learned some sort of old information in a new way last week and couldn’t wait to share it with you. It came through my husband (a research scientist) who learned it through a podcast. He constantly consumes information about everything and I love it when he shares what he learns with me.

This is basically the foundation of my fitness posts, Move It Or Lose It. In the very basic form our bodies use a certain amount of calories every day. For example say mine uses 1200 calores just to keep my body functioning. My body uses most of those calories to keep my organs functioning, to keep my muscles strong and to digest food, etc. The rest is used for moving around. If my body isn’t using those 1000 calories, my immune system says all hands on deck, lets help use those calories. That results in inflamation which is one of the worst things for our bodies. It is the root of so many diseases, discomfort and even cronic pain.

Also if you are not using your calories through movement, your body’s fight or flight goes into overdrive, and your hormonal system becomes imbalanced. These are all not good things. And they are hard to reverse if let go too long.

If we move enough to burn those colories not needed by our organs our immune system relaxes and waits for more important things to come along. Now if you eat more calories than your body needs to funtion, it becomes impossible for it to use all the calories and inflamation is even more of a problem. And exercise is not going to burn those extra calories.

That is the kicker here. Studies shows that in general people who are active all day long burn the same number of calories as those who sit all day long. Its the extra calories that distinguish those of a healhty weight from those who are over weight.

Balance is the key, eating healthy and consuming only the calories your body needs to function and moving enough to burn any extra calories. Don’t think you can eat all you want and just exercise more to burn it off. Not gonna work.

So this makes sense to me. I have stated for years that when I want to lose weight, no amount of exercise works. Only limiting my calories works. If I am over weight I have to eat less calories than I burn. The trick is finding out what your individaul body’s caloric needs are. I know mine from years of experience. You cannot generalize. We are all so different.

Now when I get to my healthy weight I don’t need to create that deficient. But if I eat more than I need the weight will come back on.

I have always been a high energy person. Even when I had a desk job I was up every 15 minutes running somewhere for some reason. I pace when I talk on the phone, the only time I sit still is when I am writing these posts. That is the kind of activity we should all be doing if possible, movement of any kind. As a result, my blood tests show I have no inflamation. This can change if I become overweight or consistently move less. I am very aware that as I get older, I move less. I have to think about moving more now than I did when I was younger with kids to raise and a career.

Exercise is so important though, not for losing weight but for staying strong so your organs, muscles, body in general use calories efficiently. The stronger your body, the more calories you burn and the healthier you are. Exercise also lowers stress so our fight or flight instincts are not kicking in mulitple times a day and it helps keep our hormones balanced. Simple right?

Here is the link to the podcast where we learned this information. I am really trying to summarize for simplicity and brevity. But it is facsinating!

Thanks for stopping by!

Peace!