Beware Of Caloric Based Health Advice

I saw a health specialist in the news this week warn people to not eat too much natural granola or nuts, because they contained too many calories. This is exactly the kind of health advice that is making this country obese.

Calories have almost nothing to do with your health, or your weight. It is much more important to concentrate on what kinds of nutrients and toxins are in your diet. Maximize nutrients and eliminate toxins.

Any advice that you get that is based on caloric intake is fatally flawed. Calories have importance only on the level of energy. If you don't get enough calories, you won't have enough energy.

Calories are totally disconnected from what your weight may be. If you eat fewer calories than what your body wants, it simply slows down your metabolism to conserve. In fact it will work harder to store fat from what ever food it does get, because it thinks it needs to store whatever it can to survive the famine.

If you eat more calories than your body needs, it can do a couple of things, depending on what kind of food (nutrients and toxins) you are taking in. If your body has the resources it needs, it will simply dump any excess (and toxins) that it doesn't feel the need for. If it doesn't have the resources it needs, it will store the excess (and toxins) in fat, to await a time when it may have the resources it needs to clean it all out.

Unfortunately most medical people, as well as most nutritionists, have bought into the silly formula ; "Calories In - Calories Out = Weight Loss or Gain"

While this formula may look good to a mathematician, it has no basis in reality. Why, because we have no way to actually measure the calories in and out. Even though most adults have bought into this formula, grade school kids have no problem seeing it's major flaw. They usually call it "poop".

That's right! All people have bowel movements. It is the way the body eliminates much of what it doesn't need or want. There are other paths of elimination as well. Breathing, sweating, heat loss, spitting, and other excretions from eyes, ears, nose, and skin.

If you could somehow accurately measure all of these and incorporate them into your formula, then you could perhaps begin to get some kind of real picture of the bodies energy processes. But since no one knows how to do that, and still keep you alive, please throw that formula away and never use it again. It has nothing to do with reality.

Your health (including your weight) is all about quality, not quantity. Eat lots of fresh whole foods, with a emphasis on whole grains, and get plenty of water, exercise, and rest. Then your body can take in what it needs and will have the resources to dump what it doesn't need.

So.... Rule of thumb : If any health advice you receive is based on calories, discard it, it is faulty.

Even being under weight is best solved with quality food and a healthy lifestyle.