Mathematics of Calories 🤓
Basic understanding of an equation for weight loss, weight gain, and weight maintenance
Do you know, Personal Finances and Health are a couple of things among the top 5 things that people worry about most. I am not any different. So recently, I have started reading about these two critical concepts, Personal Finances and Being Healthy (Mostly about dealing with Calories). After reading up a bit about both, I have realized they both were pretty similar (Understanding wise)
I’m sure most of you have the basic knowledge of Personal Finance (Don’t worry even if you’re not sure about it). So, our objective here is to learn about the basic mathematics of calories with the help of basic knowledge of Personal Finance.
Basics of Personal Finance
Let’s assume a scenario with a person named Joey
His Bank Balance: B
His Monthly Income: I
His Monthly Expense: E
Here Bank is the repository of the cash joey has. Income adds money to his Bank Balance, whereas Expense takes off money from his Bank Balance.
Now at the end of every month, Net amount Joey remains with is
Net Value = Income(I) — Expense(E)
Depending upon the above Net value, Joey falls in one of the below three situations:
- If Net Value > 0 → (Income > Expense), this situation is called Budget Surplus. Since Joey has saved some money this month, he deposits this money in his bank, which increases his bank balance. Woohoo….Joey is becoming Richhhh 🤑 🤑.
- If Net Value < 0 → (Income < Expense), this situation is called Budget Deficit. Since Joey is in debt this month, he withdraws money from his bank account to pay off his debts. So his bank balance is reduced now. Joey is becoming poor 😔 😔.
- If Net Value = 0 → (Income = Expense), this situation is called Equilibrium. Joey neither saved nor is he in debt this month. So, there is no change in his bank balance. Joey relaxes this month ✌️✌️.
Over a period, Joey’s Bank Balance would either Increase or Decrease or remain the same depending upon his income and expense patterns. Usually, the objective of every one of us is to increase our Bank balance. So, we should try to be in Budget Surplus most of the time.
I hope you have understood the above three situations. Now let’s move on to learn about the mathematics of calories, as I promised in the title of this article.
What are Calories?
Formally, Calorie is the energy/amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of one liter of water by one degree. Wait, wait……we are not the students of biology or chemistry class to understand the above description😵😵
To put it in simple words, Calorie is a unit of energy. Our human body needs energy (in the form of calories) like an automobile needs fuel. Everything we consume (food, water, beverages, snacks, etc.) is nothing but the energy we provide for our body to work.
The reading we see on the weighing machine when we stand on it is called “Bodyweight.” It includes the weight of our bones, muscles, organs, water content, and finally, Fat. Weight contributed by Bones, Organs and Muscles are not entirely dependent on Calories. Fat is the repository of energy stored in our body, and the weight contributed by the Fat is dependent on calories.
Every one of us wants to either increase, decrease or maintain our body weight. Before committing ourselves to do something about our weight, it is necessary to understand the role of calories in it.
Note: Some conversion values that we need to keep in mind.
1 kg → 7,700 calories
1 pound → 3,500 calories
With the help of the personal finances analogy, let’s understand how calorie management contributes to our weight. Let’s again bring back the person Joey. Let’s assume his weight is B and out of which weight contributed by the Fat is W.
His Current Weight: W Kg → W*7,700 calories.
His Monthly Intake of calories: I
His Monthly Expense of calories: E
Here Current Weight by Fat is the repository of the Fat (made up of calories) in joey’s body. Intake of calories adds calories to his body’s repository of Fat, whereas the Expense of calories takes off calories from his body’s repository of Fat.
Now at the end of every month, Net amount of calories that went out/came into Joey’s body is
Net amount of calories = Intake of calories(I) — Expense of calories(E)
In the Expense of calories, the Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is one component that is common in every person’s daily life. In simple words, it is the minimum energy (Number of calories) required by the body to perform all the basic functionalities like breathing, digestion, etc. BMR depends on the various factors of the body like Height, Weight, Muscle Mass. Our day-to-day physical activities like walking for work, lifting objects like bags, laptops, or any other things, and exercise add to the Expense of calories on top of BMR and can be categorized as an Expense of calories with other activities. So, we can further divide the above equation as
Expense of calories(E) = Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) + Expense of calories with other activities (EOA)
Net amount of calories = Intake of calories(I) — Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) — Expense of calories with other activities (EOA)
Same as the above personal finance analogy, depending on the Net amount of calories, Joey falls into one of the following three categories
- If the Net amount of calories > 0 → (Intake of calories > Expense of calories), this situation is called Calorie Surplus. In this case, Joey’s weight is increased by (Net amount of calories)/7700 kg or (Net amount of calories)/3500 pounds. Let’s assume the Net amount of calories is +11550. So at the end of the month, Joey’s weight will be increased by approximately 11550/7700 = 1.5 kg.
- If the Net amount of calories < 0 → (Intake of calories < Expense of calories), this situation is called Calorie Deficit. Since Joey consumed fewer calories than spent, the number of calories in deficit is deducted from his body’s repository of Fat; hence, his weight is reduced. Let’s assume the Net amount of calories is -11550. So at the end of the month, Joey’s weight will be decreased by approximately 11550/7700 = 1.5 kg. He might have been doing a lot of physical exercises and improved his BMR to increase the Expense of calories.
- If the Net amount of calories = 0 → (Intake of calories =Expense of calories), this situation is called Equilibrium. There would be no change in his weight, and he is maintaining his weight precisely as it was in the previous month.
So, it’s just simple math to start with. That’s the reason we see people tracking the calories they are consuming and the calories they are burning while doing physical activities with the help of fitness bands, fitness bands, etc.
Understanding the above equation is the first step to planning your weight loss/gain/maintenance journey. To further go deep into the equation, we can know more about macronutrients, the tradeoff between calories vs. nutritional content of food, metabolism, Basal metabolic rate, and what kind of physical activities help you burn more calories, etc.
I hope you liked this article and learned something new !!
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