Calories, enzymes and how they relate to fat-loss or muscle gains.

A couple of things have been on my mind recently when it comes to food as it relates to fat-loss and strength/muscle gains.

First,  I do believe "calories-in, calories-out" is an important part of a fat loss program.  No matter what we eat fat loss will not happen if we are eating above calorie maintenance.  It's a mistake to say that calories do not matter or we should never count calories.  I ask clients to count calories and report them to me for a few weeks so we can get an idea of what their  calorie maintenance levels are.  Once we establish how many calories we need to lose fat/gain muscle then I ask clients to eyeball their food portioning.  If you can not eyeball your portions after a few weeks of doing it "right" you are not paying attention.

NOW THAT BEING SAID

What controls the amount of food we eat on any given day?  Appetite!  And what controls our appetite?  Proportions  and quality of macronutrients (protein/fat/carbs).
So yes, we could lose bodyfat on 1,500 calories a day of candy bars but why don't we do that?  We do not eat this way because  so much sugar will destroy our leptin sensitivity.  Leptin is one of the hormones primarily related to appetite.  The more refined foods/sugars we eat the more leptin insensitive we become.  Our appetite becomes endless and those 1.500 calories a day of candy bars will leave us feeling starving (for more sugars!) all day.  If we replaced the candy bars with a well-balanced diet we would still be a little hungry (too little calories for anybody over 100 lbs) but appetite will be much less of an issue. If we instead focus on eating reasonable portions of fats, proteins and natural carbs our appetite will slowly normalize.  The greatest day of my life was after about 45 days on a ketogenic diet when I went  bed  one night and possibly for the first time in my life I was not obsessing about food as I closed my eyes to go to sleep.  I had a neutral appetite and it was a novel and incredible thing at the time! 

The 2nd thing I have been thinking about often lately is how 'living' is our food and how does this relate to fat-loss/muscle gains?  Well, first off let me say that pure raw foodists are onto something when they put a tremendous amount of stock into eating uncooked/raw foods.   The more raw foods we can eat the better since these foods improve our beneficial gut-bacteria levels and the easier we can digest all foods.  The problem with raw foodism, as is the problem with any unbalanced method of eating, is that we evolved cooking and some foods need to be cooked for humans to access their macro and micronutrients.   Carrots, spinach, mushrooms, asparagus, cabbage, peppers and many other vegetables supply more micronutrients when cooked instead of eating raw.  Cooking has a point of diminishing returns as I do believe that overcooking/charring meats is proven to be carcinogenic, that is why I put a good deal of emphasis on eating cooking our meats just enough to make them palatable.     This is the one thing that separates  us from other animals, we cook and evolved cooking!

In my opinion it is all about enzymes in the gut- you have probably heard of probiotics, beneficial gut-bacteria.   I am positive that if we looked at the enzymes in the guts of overweight/physically weak people we will find low levels of beneficial bacteria.  These people have slowly lost the ability to digest nutrient/protein/fat dense foods (quality meats, eggs, raw milk, raw vegetables) so they start relying on low-nutrient/low-fat foods (grains, sugars, over-cooked vegetables) that have high levels of palatability  to get their calories.  This in turn makes them hungry all the time as they never feel satiated.  They overeat these foods, gain bodyfat, lose strength and further diminish the strength of their digestive systems.

This is why I am putting a good deal of emphasis on eating as much living, high-enzyme foods as I can at every meal.  I could care less that a 100% plant-based eater looks at animal flesh as a dead food.  It's my opinion that death starts at decomposition.  Otherwise vegetables would have to be considered as dead as raw meat but that is not the case!  Vegetables are alive, containing their enzymes, until they start decomposing.   So while I may eat a few overcooked foods (mainly pork products) I try to balance these foods with plenty of raw vegetables, raw milk, raw eggs and meats either slow-cooked at low temperatures or to a medium-rare state.

Summary:  Know how many calories you need for maintenance but don't obsess about calories and eat as much enzyme-rich food as you can!