Nutrition:
Raisin The Roof
So you clicked that “more info” button and it has brought you here! Welcome, and let’s take the first few steps in understanding how some of those caloric recommendations came about. It is important to note that these caloric recommendations that are provided to you in the app are as personalised as we can make them – we factor in a lot of things like your activity level, weight, age, and how active you are for work. But, like anything, an app can never replace highly customised nutrition recommendations from a health professional. We encourage you to use this as a start point in further educating yourself, and always speak to the right practitioners before you make any changes to your diet, lifestyle, or exercise.
Basal Metabolic Rate
What the heck is a “basal metabolic rate”. Put simply, your Basal Metabolic Rate (your BMR) is how many calories you need for your height/weight/age. Our favourite analogy is if you were in a coma on a feeding tube, this is how much food you’d need to continue functioning. There are a lot of ways to calculate your BMR, and all of these calculations will require a different amount of inputs – so we’ve tried to use some of the most popular and reliable methods for calculating your BMR.
If you’d like to learn more about BMR’s, you can do additional reading below!
PHYSICAL ACTIVITY LEVEL
Your Physical Activity Level (PAL) is a representation of how active you are through the day and through your exercise selections. Too often women are lead to believe that they need to eat 1000 calories to drop weight, and work themselves to the bone with the gym while they have hugely active work lives; these women will wonder why they get burn out and constantly feel tired. Then in that reverse, for the women that find themselves in heavily sedentary roles with little exercise, they will not require as much food and calories. It’s a tough balance to figure out, and even when you work with a coach or nutritionist there is a lot of guesswork that goes on initially until a baseline is established. What we think you should eat based on your activity and BMR, might not actually be what you need – you might need a lot more or a lot less!
If you’d like to learn more about PAL, you can do additional reading below!
TOTAL CALORIES
Your total calories are found by working out your BMR and your activity level, and doing some quick maths! There is nuance to these caloric suggestions based on what your goal is, as well as if you are dealing with any hormonal conditions. It’s important to remember that even though what we think you should eat based on your activity and BMR, might not actually be what you need – you might need a lot more or a lot less!
PROTEIN
Protein, protein, protein! Never has there been a macronutrient which is under-eaten more than protein, and there is an overwhelming body of evidence that advises eating above the RDI’s for optimal health. There’s even research to show that going up to 4.4g/kg of body weight in protein comes with no adverse outcomes – but is an expensive way to fuel your day. Protein helps repair and build your body’s tissues. It maintains pH and fluid balance, and keeps you healthy. It also transports and stores nutrients and can act as an energy source; so please don’t get scared when you see protein as higher than you’ve ever eaten!
It’s important to remember that even though what we think you should eat based Xg of protein based on your activity and BMR, might not actually be what you need – you might need a lot more or a little less! If you’re interested in reading more about protein, click below!
FATS
We’d like to to give a special shout out to the low fat fad diets of the 80’s for destroying women’s perception of how beneficial dietary fats are for our health. Fats are a wonderful energy source where they provide more calories per gram consumed, they regulate our production of hormones, they boost brain function, they aid in the absorption of fat soluble vitamins, and they help you feel fuller for longer.
When our body fat is too low, we lose that toasty insulation and will find ourselves getting cold more frequently, and low body fat percentages are associated with amenorrhea for women. There are ratios of fats we want to consume (we don’t just want to look at the total fat amount and obtain that from a block of chocolate or take out), so always look at a varied diet and fat intake. Think about fattier sources of animal proteins, avocados, nuts, oils, and dairy. There are a variety of fat amounts you can consume ranging from low fat to moderate fat to high fat (keto), and without knowledge of an individual’s unique needs it’s always safer to stay in a moderate amount of daily fats.
It’s important to remember that even though what we think you should eat based Xg of fat based on your activity and BMR, might not actually be what you need – you might need a lot more or a little less! If you are interested in learning more about fats, click below!
CARBS
We love love love our carbs and we dare someone to try and take them away from us! Unfortunately carbs are probably the lesser important macronutrient when we look at a hierarchy. That doesn’t mean we don’t need them (we do!), it doesn’t mean we can’t lose body fat while we have them (we can!), but it does mean that when you’re wanting to drop body fat that lowering the carbohydrate amount you consume is the easiest way to do so. Carbohydrates are our primary way of getting energy for our body (even though our body can use other macronutrients for this as well); carbs are the way our body likes to get energy. There are numerous ways to calculate your carbohydrate intake, and this amount will vary depending on your physical activity needs as well – someone who runs marathons or trains exceptionally hard will require a lot more carbs and will do things called “carb loading”.
It’s important to remember that even though what we think you should eat based Xg of carbohydrate based on your activity and BMR, might not actually be what you need – you might need a lot more or a little less!
It’s important to remember that even though what we think you should eat based Xg of protein based on your activity and BMR, might not actually be what you need – you might need a lot more or a little less! If you’re interested in reading more about protein, click below!