I am so Hungry!!!!

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I hear people cry this all the time, my answer: "Then Eat!" The vast majority of people don't eat enough. Flat out, if your average Joe the Plumber guy (licensed and insured) were to log every calorie he has eaten in any given day I would bet my monkey wrench that he would find out that he ate about 1/3 to 1/2 of his needed calories. This may or may not be true in many cases depending on that persons dietary habits. Lets say for example that 'say it ain't so' Joe has a large Starbuck's coffee for his "breakfast", eats a typical fast food value meal for lunch and for dinner has a nice helping of his wife's famous Spaghetti with meat sauce. For our purposes here I will use an order of Pizza Huts spaghetti with meat sauce entree.

Coffee: Starbucks Caramel Macchiato with whole milk - Venti (20oz). This one was my favorite in my old life.
Calories: 380

Lunch: Joe likes his chicken sandwich, biggie fries and medium frosty from Wendy's.

Calories: 1,066

Dinner: Spaghetti with meat sauce

Calories: 600

Total: 2,046 calories.

This would be perfect if our handsome Joe weighed about 113lbs. Considering the average weight for an adult male these days is approximately 185-195lbs, I think Joe is a little light. Using the formula of 18 calories per pound you weigh to calculate your approximate maintenance level of calories, Joe should be consuming about 3,330 calories just to keep his manly plumber's physique. Depending on how tall and muscular he is - he may or may not fit the "plumber butt" stereotype.

Now, my formula was simple. Getting into the science of it is more involved and better to use if you are serious about getting a grasp on how the body works when it comes to its use and storage of energy.

I will admit, Joe's diet is less than healthy, even with the chicken. But in many cases with proper exercise and weight training, Joe could eat that way every day and look great. I am not sure how the rest of his health would fare and I am sure his body fat percentages may not be ideal, but when you are trying to lose or gain weight, there is only one thing to look at...first anyway...and that is calories in vs. calories out.

So, now let's imagine Joe was on a diet and instead of the food above, he chose to have black coffee, A healthy salad for lunch, and for dinner a small piece of chicken with rice and veggies.

Coffee (20 z) - 18 Calories

Healthy Salad - maybe 100 calories depending on how healthy.

Chicken dinner: 330 calories.

Total: 448 calories!

I eat that in a single meal! No wonder this person is hungry!

Let's go one step furthur and add the idea that your body will slow its metabolism down in order to compensate for the lack of energy on hand, IE: calories. First of all, it is going to try and store as much of that energy dense fat it can. At 9 calories per gram of fat, you body won't burn any fat you consume because it is too valuable a resource. It would rather burn the carbs and protein that you eat, then after that your lean mass, better known as muscle and vital organs. We are getting into the nitty gritty, but the more you starve yourself, the slower you metabolism gets, which means the lower your maintenance gets.

Let's now introduce the fact that 3500 calories= 1 lb of fat. This is AFTER your maintenance and whatever you burn walking, breathing, etc. If you maintenance is so low, it would not take much for you to go way over this level, once in a while. Add this up over time, and you can easily starve yourself fat. Not to mention, with your body storing fat and burning it's lean mass (muscle) your ratio of body fat to lean mass goes way up, increasing your body fat percentage and effectively decreasing your overall health. This leads to many illnesses, hypertension and high cholesterol being only two.

So that is me on the soap box for now. But when you see your friends and neighbors starving themselves, sit down together over a protein shake or lean turkey burger and open their eyes to how much they can really eat. They may thankyou and pay for the meal!

Later - Scott