Watching the Olympics this summer, I found myself thinking about how athletes balance training, rest, and nutrition in order to perform at the highest level.
In my years teaching yoga and strength, one of the biggest struggles I face is convincing women to eat more. I find that many women relate food not as a source of energy, but as something they should be careful of.
Calories are energy
At the most basic level, a calorie is simply a unit of energy. That’s all. It is a number that tells you how much energy a particular food provides your body.
Even just relaxing while watching your favorite show, your basic metabolic functions require at least 1,300 calories a day. If you do housework, gardening, exercise, etc., that amount can exceed 2,000 calories.
When I talk about proper nutrition with my strength training clients over 50, I find that they consistently underestimate their activity level and, consequently, do not eat enough for their true activity level.
The average woman is approximately 5’4″ and weighs 170 pounds. If she is “mildly active” (one step above “sedentary”) she would burn more than 1,800 calories a day. If that same woman were “moderately active” she would burn 2,055 calories a day.
Social influences that perpetuate the lack of fuel
It’s hard not to have a skewed relationship with food when we’re surrounded by models who average 5’9-6’0” and weigh between 110-130 pounds! (Look at the paragraph above again and compare it to the average woman.)
In the body politics section of my yoga teacher training program, topics such as unrealistic beauty standards, policing of women’s bodies, and fad diets often come up. In a culture that conflates thinness and dignity, restrictive eating habits are common.
Chronic lack of energy makes women feel sluggish both mentally and physically, and can have a negative impact on metabolism, sleep quality, mood, and immune function.
How to refuel properly
These are the essential factors to consider when eating to eat properly:
- Resting metabolic rate (RMR) – Your RMR is the amount of energy your body needs to perform basic “life support” such as breathing, blood circulation, neurological function, organ function, and cellular repair. Your RMR represents up to 75% of the total number of calories you burn each day. In other words, most of the calories you consume go simply to keeping you alive if you were lying in bed all day, not moving.
- Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) – NEAT is the amount of energy your body uses to perform daily activities such as washing dishes, typing, walking around your home/office, or even moving around. The number of calories you burn with NEAT varies greatly depending on your activity level, lifestyle, and occupation; a waiter in a restaurant would have a significantly higher NEAT than an office worker.
- Thermal Effect of Foods (TEF) – Your body burns calories by chewing, digesting and storing food. Each type of food (protein, fat or carbohydrate) has a different TEF. Eating protein burns the most calories by a small margin.
- Calories burned during exercise – The amount of calories you burn during your workouts will vary depending on the intensity and duration of each session. For example, on a day when you do strength training you need 10 to 20% more calories. (For that “average” 170-pound woman, that would equate to approximately 200 to 400 extra calories per day.) Not consuming enough calories during strength training can actually have the opposite effect than desired and lead to a loss of muscle tissue.
Here are a couple of resources to help you gauge your actual activity level and exercise intensity: Light, moderate and vigorous activity and examples of Physical Activity by Intensity. AND, here is a calculator You can play to see how many calories you need each day. You probably need more calories than you think!
Adopt food as fuel
It is time to accept food as a source of vitality and energy, not as an enemy to be feared and supposedly restricted. Chronic lack of fuel can have negative consequences for physical and mental health. By understanding the factors that influence realistic calorie requirements, you will be better able to eat in a way that supports and nourishes you and the life you lead.
Do you feel that your food intake supports and nourishes your daily activity level? – Karin
