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PROGRESS AND OTHER FACTORS
The Other Factors Involved in Progress
Energy intake is made up of what you eat and drink. Energy expenditure is made
up of several factors including resting metabolic rate (RMR), calorie cost of
activity, thermic effect of food (TEF), and adaptive thermogenesis (the X factor).
The balance of intake and expenditure is an important factor in weight gain
or loss. If you have a positive energy balance (intake exceeds expenditure),
you gain weight. A negative energy balance (intake is less than expenditure)
dictates that you'll lose weight. Simple enough.
Remember, however, that energy balance is only one factor in gaining muscle
and or losing bodyfat. And although it's the most basic and simplest part of
understanding your needs for growth, ironically, most people totally screw it
up!
One must determine their own unique and individual energy balance. For this,
it is wise to work out a few calculations.
Either use the online nutritional calculator or work through the following
equations by hand.
The first calculation is to work out how much energy one is burning up purely
based upon their own metabolic rate at rest. The energy used to live and exist
without any physical exercise etc. This would include the energy to beat your
heart, breathe, digest food etc.
Resting Metabolic Rate
Resting metabolic rate (RMR) is the energy it costs the body to basically keep
alive. Although you might not guess it, about 50 to 70 percent of your entire
day's calorie expenditure is a result of the RMR.
Determining RMR:
To start off with, you need to take your body weight in pounds and convert
it to kilograms. This is a simple conversion. Just divide your body weight by
2.2.
Next you take your percent of fat and multiply it by your body weight (which
is now in kilograms). This will give you your fat mass (FM) in kilograms. Next
simply subtract this number from your total weight in kilograms and you'll have
your fat free mass (FFM) in kilograms.
Before we go on, why don't we try this out on an example of a 200lb bodybuilder.
Since I'm an athlete with a body weight of 200lbs at 5% body fat, I'd take
my total body mass and divide it by 2.2:
Total body mass in kilograms = 200lbs / 2.2 = 91 kg
Next I'd multiply this kilogram number (91 kg) by my percent of body fat. Remember,
percents are really decimals so 5% equals 0.05, 12% bodyfat will be .12 etc.
Fat Mass = 91kg x 0.05 = 4.55kg FM
Next I subtract this fat mass number (4.55 kg) from my total body mass (91kg):
Fat Free Mass = 91kg - 4.55kg = 86.45kg
Therefore my fat free mass is 86.45 kilograms. From that I can determine my
RMR. The formula for RMR is as follows:
Resting Metabolic Rate for Athletes (in calories per day) = 500 + 22 x fat
free mass (in kilograms).
Again, for our example, I'd multiply 22 times my fat free mass and add 500
to that number as shown below:
RMR= 22 x 86.45 + 500 = 2402
Therefore this athletes resting metabolic rate is about 2400 calories per day.
Everyone have their RMR figured out? Good, let's move on.
Step #2: Cost of Activity
The Cost of Activity represents how many calories are required to move around
and do physical work during the day. This includes the cost of walking out to
your car, scraping the ice off the damn thing, driving to work, and of course,
training after work. These factors make up about 20 to 40% of your daily caloric
intake based on your activity level. So let's figure out your costs of activity.
Once again we'll work with a rather typical example bodybuilder.
Determining Activity Costs:
Cost of Daily Activity is equal to the RMR you calculated above multiplied
by an activity factor that fits your daily routine. I've listed some common
activity factors below:
Activity Factors:
1.2-1.3 for Very Light (bed rest)
1.5-1.6 for Light (office work/watching TV)
1.6-1.7 for Moderate (some activity during day)
1.9-2.1 for Heavy (labor type work)
Note: Don't consider your daily workout when choosing a number. We'll do that
later.
With this information we can get back to determining the calorie needs for
our example. Lets say our example bodybuilder actually has a rather sedentary
job at an office. Therefore the amount of calories it takes to breathe and move
around during the day is about 3800 calories as shown below:
RMR x Activity Factor = 2400 calories x 1.6 = 3800 calories
Costs of Exercise Activity:
Next, we need to determine how many calories your exercise activity burns so
that we can factor this into the totals. Exercise activity can be calculated
simply by multiplying your total body mass in kilograms (as calculated above)
by the duration of your exercise (in hours). Then you'd multiply that number
by the MET value of exercise as listed below. (MET or metabolic equivalent,
is simply a way of expressing the rate of energy expenditure from a given physical
activity.)
MET values for common activities:
high impact aerobics… 7
low impact aerobics… 5
high intensity cycling… 12
low intensity cycling… 3
high intensity walking - 6.5
low intensity walking - 2.5
high intensity running… 18
low intensity running… 7
circuit-type training… 8
intense free weight lifting… 6
moderate machine training… 3
So here's the formula:
Cost of Exercise Activity = Body Mass (in kg) x Duration (in hours) x MET value
And here's how I calculate it for our example:
Exercise Expenditure for weights = 6 METS X 91kg x 1.5 hours = 819 calories
Exercise Expenditure for cardio = 3 METS X 91 kg x .5 hours = 137 calories
Add these two together and our example is burning 956 total calories during
one of their training sessions.
Since this training includes about 90 minutes of intense free weight training
and 30 minutes of low intensity bicycling (four times per week), the exercise
energy expenditure might be as high as 1000 calories per training day!
The next step is to add this exercise number to the number you generated when
multiplying your RMR by your activity factor (3800 calories per day in my case).
So 3800 calories + about 1000 calories = a whopping 4800 calories per day!
And we're not done yet! (Note: I rounded 956 up to 1000 for the sake of simplicity.
If you're a thin guy trying to gain muscle, it's better to round up anyway than
to round down.)
Step #3: Thermic Effect of Food
TEF is the amount of calories that it takes your body to digest, absorb, and
metabolize your ingested food intake. This makes up about 5 to 15% of your total
daily calorie expenditure. Since the metabolic rate is elevated via this mechanism
10 to 15% for one to four hours after a meal, the more meals you eat per day,
the faster your metabolic rate will be. This is a good thing, though. It's far
better to keep the metabolism high and eat above that level, than to allow the
metabolism to slow down by eating infrequently. Protein tends to increase TEF
to a rate double that of carbs and almost triple that of fats so that's one
of the reasons why one can get excited about protein meals.
Determining the Thermic Effect of Food:
To determine the TEF, you need to multiply your original RMR value (2400 in
my case) by 0.10 for a moderate protein diet or 0.15 for a high protein diet.
So this is what the formula looks like:
TEF = RMR x 0.10 for moderate protein diet (1 gram per pound of bodyweight)
TEF = RMR x 0.15 for high protein diet (more than 1 gram per pound of bodyweight)
Since our example eats a very high protein diet (about 350 to 400 grams per
day), then we use the 0.15 factor and my TEF is about 360 calories per day as
displayed by the calculation below:
Thermic Effect of Food = 2400 calories x 0.15 = 360 calories per day
Now add that to your calorie total.
Step #4: Adaptive Thermogenesis
Adaptive Thermogenesis has been coined the "X factor" because we
just aren't sure how much it can contribute to daily caloric needs. Some have
predicted that it can either increase daily needs by 10% or even decrease daily
needs by 10%. Because it's still a mystery, we typically don't factor it into
the equation.
Just for interest's sake, one factor included in the "X factor" is
unconscious or spontaneous activity. Some people, when overfed, get hyper and
increase their spontaneous activity and even have been known to be "fidgety."
Others just get sleepy when overfed - obviously the fidgeters will be burning
more calories that the sleepy ones. Amazingly some studies have been conducted
on weight loss and determined the major contributing factor that varied between
individuals was their movement while supposedly at rest. Whereas some people
just slump down and remain entirely motionless and eyes glued, immobile on the
glowing box, some individuals are constantly in motion. Even when you think
they aren't. There are more leg movements, arm changes, body shifting. This
fidget factor has been known to contribute a great deal to calorie expenditure
throughout the day.
Other factors include hormone responses to feeding, training, and drugs, hormone
sensitivity (insulin, thyroid, etc), stress (dramatically increases metabolic
rate) or temperature induced metabolic changes (cold weather induces increased
metabolic activity and heat production).
With all that said, you don't need to do any math on this part or fiddle with
your calorie total. This is just something to keep in mind. Those astute readers
are subconsciously thinking about repositioning their bodies and having a shift
round to get more comfortable and burn even more calories.
Step #5: Putting it all together
Okay, so how many calories do you need to consume each and every day? Well,
adding up RMR plus activity factor (3800 calories in the case of the example),
cost of weight training (819 calories), cost of cardio (137 calories), and TEF
(360 calories), we get a grand total of about 5116 calories! (Remember, that's
just our example total. You'll get a different number.)
Now that's a lot of food! And one must eat this each and every day when it
is desired to gain muscular body weight. Are you surprised at how many calories
one may need? Most people are. So the next time you complain that you're "eating
all day and can't gain a pound" you'd better realistically evaluate how
much you're really eating. If you're not gaining a pound, then you're falling
short on calories.
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