Calories Matter... But They Don't Tell the Whole Story

We've spent decades arguing about calories versus food quality, but the truth is that both matter. In this episode, Julia explores the science of energy balance while explaining why protein, muscle mass, nutrient density, and food quality have such a profound effect on hunger, metabolism, and body composition. Discover why calorie counting isn't the whole answer, how to make every calorie work harder for your health, and the practical strategies Jolie uses to help clients build leaner, healthier, more sustainable eating habits.

Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):

Welcome back to the Jolie Life Podcast. If you wonder if you should be counting your calories or you should be counting your macros or if counting calories seems passe, or you're counting calories and you're frustrated by what's happening in your body, this podcast is for you because we are going to talk about what calories mean when they matter, why they matter, and when they don't matter and how to understand what a calorie does in your body and that not every calorie behaves the same way in your body. There's actually a lot of difference in how a calorie from protein versus fat versus carbohydrates performs in your body. So let's dive in. You're going to really find this interesting, particularly if you are like me who wants to work on body composition and wants freedom in eating. So part of the drive for Jolie and for myself is learning how to eat intuitively.
(01:10)
And I did a podcast on intuitive eating and when it doesn't work, but what I mean by this is having ease with food. That more than anything, we want for our clients to feel at peace with food. And part of feeling at peace with food is knowing how it works, the science behind it, so that you can make choices that serve your needs, but you also want to know where you have wiggle room. And so that will be a part of this podcast too. So if calories are all that matters, why can two people each eat 2000 calories a day and end up with completely different bodies? And this is true. And while calories matter, it's not the whole story.
(02:03)
Let's back up and talk about what is a calorie. A calorie is simply a unit of energy. So specifically one kilocalorie is the amount of energy that's required to raise one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius. So a calorie is just a measurement of energy. Calories are not good. Calories are not bad. They're simply a measurement. It's simply energy. And I think it's important that we don't group things as bad and good. It has a neutral value. And the body uses calories. Your body uses energy for breathing, for your heart functioning, for your brain functioning, for digestion, for walking, for thinking, for lifting weights, for sleeping. Your body uses energy to perform all of its functions. When we look at food, we are looking at the energy contained and we're also grouping it into a category. That's its micronutrient category, a protein, a fat, a carbohydrate.
(03:17)
As a rule of thumb, there are about four calories per gram of protein, four calories per gram of carbohydrate, and nine calories per gram of fat. So you see that fat has double, more than double the amount of calories of both protein and carbohydrate. And also notice that protein and carbohydrates have the same number of calories per gram. But as you will find out later in the podcast, they behave very differently in your body. So we have our macronutrients. These are the nutritrients that provide calories from protein, carbohydrate and fats.
(04:07)
So why do calories matter? And this is where people sometimes get confused. I would never say that calories absolutely do not matter because if you consume more energy than what your body burns, you're going to store energy even if that energy is good. So sometimes I run into clients who have cleaned up their diet and they're eating a lot of good food, but then they end up eating too much good food. So too much fish, too many almonds, too much avocado. And it ends up that they are actually consuming more calories than they need. And so they end up storing excess body fat. So if you consistently consume more energy than your body needs, you are going to affect your body composition and you are going to store that energy in your tissues. Initially, your glycogen and your muscles, but eventually it's going to go into your body fat.
(05:10)
So calories can determine whether you're gaining weight, whether you're losing weight or whether you're maintaining your weight. So they're not irrelevant, but here is the important distinction. Calories determine whether weight changes. They don't determine what kind of weight changes.
(05:33)
That depends on your protein levels, your level of muscle you hold in your body, your resistance training, the density of the nutrition that you're eating. So how densely nourishing is the food that you're eating, your sleep, your hormones, and your food quality. All of these things are what contribute to your body composition. And I want to stop for a moment and highlight body composition because this is a huge part of the work of Jolie because it's so central to your health, right in this moment central to your health, but 10, 20, 50 years from now, central to your health.
(06:21)
One of the biggest mistakes that I see people make is just wanting to lose weight and not putting an eye toward the end result because the end result determines how you're going to go about that weight loss. So when I work with a client, we're looking at losing weight for body composition. If you are a client that doesn't need to lose weight, we're looking at eating for your vitality, but also for your body composition because that directly affects your vitality. You can have two people that are the same weight, but they look completely different because of body composition. So you might have 150 pound woman who is 30% body fat. She's going to look very much different than 150 pound woman who is 17% body fat. The 150 pound woman who's 17% body fat is going to be a lot leaner and a lot smaller than the woman at the same weight with 33% body fat.
(07:47)
That person is going to look puffier, is going to be considerably bigger, is going to wear two to three sizes higher than the other woman, but it's the same weight. So I want to back up away from weight a little bit. And as we talk about calories, consider how it influences your body composition. So the amount of muscle you have versus the amount of fat you have. Because leaner is going to be healthier and metabolically it's going to make it easier and easier for you to maintain your health and to maintain your weight. And that's why your micronutrients are so important, almost more important than counting your calories. And one of the reasons like why at Jolie, we don't emphasize calories, we don't put them on your meals, is we really want you to understand that the quality and the density of nutrition that you're eating is more important than the calories contained in the food.
(09:01)
And it's a way of training us out of thinking about calories and instead thinking about nutrient density. When we talk about calories and body composition, we have to also talk about basal metabolic rate because those two things, your body composition and your calories affect your basal metabolic rate. And in case you're not familiar with that terminology, the calories that your body burns doing absolutely nothing. So when you are at rest is your basal metabolic rate. It is your base. You can use that to help you remember metabolic rate. It's how many calories you need to stay alive, to keep breathing, to keep your heart beating, to keep your brain working, your kidneys functioning, to keep your body at 98.6 degrees. This is your baseline baseline. And usually 60 to 75% of all of your calories you burn each day are burned just to keep you alive literally.
(10:14)
And that's enormous. Now here's the part that most people don't talk about. Muscle is one of the biggest influences on basal metabolic rate. The more muscle you maintain, the more calories your body will burn around the clock. And this is one reason that people think their metabolism slows as they age, which oftentimes their metabolism is not slowing. It's that they're losing muscle. And when you have less muscle, you need fewer calories to keep you alive. Hence, your metasolism follows, your metabolism follows and it slows. But here is the key. Here is your trick to get out of this is to build more muscle because as you build more muscle, guess what? Your basal metabolic rate goes up. Your body will burn more and more calories doing nothing. So the cool thing, I was talking to someone who is on a weight loss journey and is also on a body reccomp journey.
(11:24)
And they were surprised that while maintaining their weight, they're gaining more muscle, that their basal metabolic rate is going up. And that is because your muscle burns a lot of calories. And this is one of the keys of why it's so important that you maintain your muscle mass and seek to augment your muscle mass as you get older to offset, particularly as you are approaching menopause and going through menopause. This is also important if you are on a GLP-1 because at the end of the day, you want to maintain what you were able to accomplish and your muscle is going to help you do that with greater ease. And remember, we started this podcast with part of understanding how food in our body and calories and macronutrients work is to give us a certain ease around food and about nourishing our body. We gain that ease by building muscle because it gives us a bit more calorie elasticity, if you may, in what we're eating.
(12:39)
So why do severe diets backfire? So when calories become too low, your body begins to adapt. Metabolic adaptation is when your body's natural response is your body's natural response to prolonged calorie restriction. Your metabolism will, your body will become more efficient. And with that, your metabolism will slow. So if we are in a state of severe restriction for very long periods of time, we're going to find our hunger increasing, our energy decreasing, and our body being more efficient. You're going to also find less neat. Those are like the fidgeting movements that we make that actually burn a lot of calories. It's surprising. But your body will begin to not do those because it's trying to conserve energy. That is something that happens with severe calorie restriction. Also, it affects leptin, the hormone that signals fullness. Leptin will decrease with severe calorie restriction because the signaling to your brain is going that your stomach is not full, that you are not eating enough in terms of nutrients.
(14:02)
So one of the things about how our body signals fullness is that our brain receives information from our stomach about how much food is in our stomach as well as what's the nutrient density. So as our stomach stretches, it sends a signal and then leptin gets released that we're full.
(14:29)
As the stomach senses, ooh, there's a lot of good stuff in here. Maybe you had an avocado toast with lots of avocado and an egg on it. Your body senses, ooh, we have a lot to work with here. And leptin gets released to tell you that you were full. One thing about the whole fullness signaling is we help to create that by eating slowly, and we also help to create that by eating volume. And you're going to find volume in your vegetables and things like that. The other hormone that I want to highlight is ghrelin, which is the hormone that stimulates hunger. When we are in a state of severe caloric restriction, ghrelin is going to increase. And that's why after months of calorie restriction, that's just straight up, I'm cutting my calories by 500 or I'm cutting my calories by a thousand, depending on where you are.
(15:28)
People often say, "I'm doing everything right, but I can't lose another pound." And they are literally always hungry. Your body is not sabotaging you. Your body is just putting on the brakes. And this is where nutrient density is going to be your best friend because nutrient density will impact your ghrelin, it will impact your leptin, and it will impact your metabolic rate. So let's talk about metabolic rate and how your nutrient density is going to affect that. One, when you have a high protein diet, your body is going to need more energy to burn. So of all your macronutrients, of all your calories, your protein, your fat, and your carbohydrate, it takes the most energy to burn protein. So protein actually eating a high protein diet actually raises your basal metabolic rate because it requires more energy for digestion. And the other thing that happens is let's say you're eating a lot of your carbohydrates in the form of vegetables.
(16:46)
That is going to help reduce your ghrelin and it's going to increase your leptin because those two hormones are inversely related to each other because your stomach is going to stretch. Your body is going to feel full. Your body's going to take a long time to digest, so you will have this continual flow of energy into your body. So we can use these methods of eating, and we use this a lot in Jolie, to help our bodies not put on the brakes and to feel like, okay, we're doing well. And so we can release extra weight. We can go through that plateau and a client can continue to lose weight.
(17:34)
So people frequently ask me, should I count calories or should I count macros? And do we count calories in our programs or do we count macros? And my answer is that it's important always that you understand calories and you prioritize macros, and that's how we work with clients. Protein is first, and I have to highlight here that protein comes in the form of animal protein. So what you're used to, your fish, your chicken, your beef, but it also comes in the form of plant protein, which plants, when you eat a large variety of them, you can get complete proteins from them. So protein first, and that comes through your plants as well as through your animals. Choose carbohydrates intentionally based on your goals. So how we plan carbohydrates for clients is very different. If they need to gain weight, if they need to lose weight, if they need to maintain weight, if they exercise a lot, if they're an endurance athlete, all of that affects how many carbohydrates and what kind of carbohydrates we give them.
(18:45)
And you need to include healthy fats. You build meals around nutrient-dense foods. And this is one of the keys. When you start to build a meal around nutrient-dense food, not only do you affect body composition, but you affect your sense of satiety and you reduce cravings, which is so important. So if your body composition goals aren't moving in the direction you want, calories may need adjustment. But after they're adjusted, you need to look at the quality and the composition of the diet that you are eating. So it might just be straight up you're eating too many calories. Once we figure out how many calories you should eat, then you control the macros based on your needs, based on a client's needs, basically. So calories matter, macros matter, equally important. Food quality matters because it influences your health as well as your sustainability of eating habits, and they all work together.
(20:00)
And there's one thing that I hope you take away from today. It's that calories matter because energy balance matters. So calories matter in the sense that you do not want to be eating too many calories, but calories never tell you the entire story, ever, ever, ever. And if you are interested in a body composition that improves your overall health, improves how you look, how you feel, how you move, then you really, really need to focus on the story that macros are telling you, as well as the quality and density of the food that you're eating. Quality of your calories, the amount of protein that they contain, the nutrients they deliver, and the muscle that they help build, the inflammation that they help cool, the support they give to your digestive system, the support that they give to detoxification systems, the way that they influence your hormones, the way that they create energy balance and blood sugar stability.
(21:09)
This is the important part. This is the part that is going to take you from just being average to being optimized. And that's where we want to be because there we feel so, so good like we are on jet fuel. It's an amazing feeling. And once you get used to it, you never want to go back to the other feeling. You're like, "I can't believe this body of mind can feel this good." So take a few notes, pass this podcast along to someone who you think might find it interesting, and be a part of the Jolie community. My goal this year is for us to impact 10,000 people to find better health, better wellness through nutrition. And I believe that every person deserves to feel good. And a key part of feeling good is learning to nourish your body and being relaxed around food. Food is one of the things that we have to enjoy every single day.
(22:17)
Let it not be a source of stress. Let it not be a source of guilt. Let it not be a source of confusion and definitely, definitely let it not be a source of disease. That's it. And I love you. I hope you got a lot from this. And until the next time,