How weight loss, gain and maintenance are achieved

Food for thought: excluding exceptions such as endocrine, hypothalamic and genetic disorders, our dress size is determined by energy balance...

1. If our energy intake is greater than our energy expenditure i.e.we're consuming more calories via food and fluid than we're eliminating via exercise, activity and performing basic bodily processes, we will accumulate additional weight.

The result: our struggle to shape a slender silhouette leaves us susceptible to developing detrimental diseases such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity and certain cancers - our risk of premature death is also increased.

2. If our energy intake is equal to our energy expenditure i.e.we're consuming the same amount of calories via food and fluid as we're expending via exercise, activity and performing basic bodily processes, our weight will remain the same.

The result: regardless of our shape and size, our weight at this stage will remain stable - this means that we won't accumulate nor eliminate excess weight.

3. If our energy intake is less than our energy expenditure i.e.we're consuming less calories via food and fluid than we're eliminating via exercise, activity and performing basic bodily processes, we will also eliminate excess weight.

The result: we successfully shape a slender silhouette whilst dramatically decreasing our risk of premature death and disease.

Top tip: our bodies burn energy both at rest - by maintaining basic bodily functions such as breathing, keeping the heart beating and diet induced thermogenesis - and during daily activities - by walking, working out and sustaining simple tasks such as cleaning.

By calculating our basal metabolic rate (BMR/the energy that we eliminate at rest), we can establish the minimum amount of calories that we need to consume in order to continue functioning effectively and efficiently on a physical and psychological scale. Once our basic energy expenditure has been established, we can then combine this calculation with our current level of activity to determine our total daily energy expenditure (TDEE/the energy that we eliminate via exercise, activity and performing basic bodily processes) and if our overall caloric consumption needs to be increased (weight gain), decreased (weight loss) our stay the same (weight maintenance) in order to achieve our goals. 

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