Are You Chronically Underfueled?

Watching the Olympics this summer I found myself thinking about how the athletes balance training, resting, and fueling so they can 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 many women relate to food, not as a source of fuel for energy, but as something to be wary of.

Calories Are Energy

At the most basic level, a calorie is simply a unit of energy. That’s all. It’s a number that tells you how much energy a particular food provides to your body.

Even just chilling out binge watching your favorite show, your basic metabolic functions require at least 1,300 calories a day. If you’re doing housework, gardening, exercising, etc. that number may be well over 2,000 calories.

When discussing adequate fueling with my over-50 strength training clients, I find they consistently underestimate how active they are and consequently don’t fuel themselves well enough for their true activity level.

The average women is approximately 5’4” and weighs 170lbs. If she is “lightly active” (a step above “sedentary”) she would burn more than 1,800 calories a day. If that same woman was “moderately active” she would burn 2,055 calories a day.

Societal Influences that Perpetuate Underfueling

It’s difficult to not have a skewed relationship with food when we are surrounded by fashion models who average 5’9-6’0” and between 110-130 pounds! (Look at the previous paragraph again and compare that 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 dieting often arise. In a culture that conflates thinness and worthiness, restrictive eating habits are common.

Being chronically underfueled leaves women feeling sluggish both mentally and physically, and can have a negative impact on metabolism, sleep quality, mood, and immune function.

How To Fuel Properly

Here are essential factors to consider when eating to properly fuel yourself:

• Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) – Your RMR is the amount of energy your body needs to perform basic “life support” like breathing, circulating blood, neurological function, organ function, and cellular repair. Your RMR accounts for up to 75% of the total number of calories you burn each day. In other words, most of the calories you consume go toward just keeping you alive if you were to lay in bed all day, not moving.
• Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) – NEAT is the amount of energy that your body uses to do daily activities like washing dishes, typing, walking around your home/office, or even fidgeting. The number of calories you burn from NEAT varies greatly based on your activity level, lifestyle, and occupation; a server in a restaurant would have significantly higher NEAT than an office worker.
• Thermic Effect of Food (TEF) – Your body burns calories chewing, digesting, and storing food. Each type of food – protein, fat, or carbohydrate – has a different TEF. Consuming protein burns the most calories by a small margin.
• Calories Burned During Exercise – The number of calories you burn during your workouts will vary depending on the intensity and duration of each session. For instance, on a day when you engage in strength training you need 10-20% more calories. (For that “average” 170lbs woman, that would equal approximately 200-400 additional calories per day.) Not consuming enough calories while strength training can actually have the opposite of the intended effect and result 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’s a calculator you can play with to see how many calories you need each day. Chances are you need more calories than you think you do!

Embracing Food as Fuel

It’s time to embrace food as a source of vitality and energy, not an enemy to be feared and presumptively restricted. Chronic underfueling can result in negative impacts on both physical and mental health. By understanding factors that influence realistic calorie requirements you can better fuel yourself 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 level of activity? – Karin