Nutrition

Energy Balance

Tim

— 1 min read

If you're looking to get a better understanding of weight management, it's helpful to start with the concept of energy balance.

It comes down to to a fundamental principle of physics (the 1st law of thermodynamics, to be exact):

Energy cannot be created or destroyed.

In the context of weight management, this means:

  • When you take in more energy than you burn, you gain weight.
  • When you take in less energy than you burn, you lose weight.
  • When then amount of energy that you take in is equal to the amount of energy that you burn, you maintain your weight.

So if you've been trying to gain or lose weight, and whatever you've been doing doesn't seem to be working, that means your energy balance isn't where it needs to be. And you'll need to figure out how to manipulate it to get into a consistent surplus (or deficit).

This is where things can get tricky: There are lots of factors that influence the amount of energy we take in and absorb, and the same is true for the amount of energy we burn.

I'll cover these in detail in future posts.

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