The difficulties of eating "Healthy".

 
Graphic by:  This is Not a Diet - its your life.

This Article contains some great advice for us all. 

The Courteous Healthy Eater
     
          by Kate

People who make an effort to eat in a way that supports their health have a bad reputation. 

It seems that many times, the "Healthy" eater is also the "Judgmental" eater. 

Let us band together, fellow healthy eaters, and change this stigma by killing it with kindness.

If you aren’t sure if you have the right to talk to someone about his/her food choices, ask yourself the following questions:

1.  Is this person my child?
2.  Am I this person’s doctor?
3.  Did she ask me?

Unless you answered yes to one of these questions, you do not have the right to make food choices for this person.

The following suggestions are for everyone who eats food, regardless of your personal choices: 
 

• Don’t Comment on Other People’s Plates.  When you see someone eating something you think looks unappetizing or that you would not eat yourself for whatever reason, you do not have to tell the person who is eating what is wrong with her food.  In fact, you may consider that this person could very well have eating choices of her own that impact her health, mental or physical.  You may even imagine that this person is very sensitive about eating or suffers from an eating disorder if it helps you mind your own business.
   
•  Let Other People Make Their Own Decisions.  Let other people decide what they are going to eat.  If you think the diet they are following is stupid or unnecessary, that’s okay.  Don’t follow it.  But let each person have the autonomy over her own life to decide for herself if and when she wants to make a change.
   
• Don’t Assume Everyone Has the Same Goal.  Do not tell a heavy person that if she stopped eating X she would lose weight.  Conversely, do not tell a thin person that she needs to eat a cheeseburger.  That is not your stomach or your body, you do not get to decide and your opinion is insulting unless it is requested.
   
•  Be Polite Online.  When you see a picture of...

The number of calories we are advised to take in by BMR or RMR charts are based merely on Averages.

These Basal Metabolism Rate (BMR) or Resting Metabolism Rate (RMR) charts are based on the calculations of basic mathematical formulas such as Harris/Benedict or Mifflin, or some other less-accepted-but-very-similar formula.

There are a great many people who have a lower BMR or RMR than the posted Average.  There are also people who have a higher BMR or RMR than Average, but not very many of them choose to hang around in diet websites.

The standard BMR or RMR calculations might … or might not … apply to your individual body.

There is no predetermined calorie number that tells us whether or not we are eating in a deficit, eating at maintenance, or eating a surplus. The resulting changes in our bodies --- over time --- are what define the amount of how many calories our bodies are using as energy.

Here is an article explaining a few Key Definitions that might help some of us avoid becoming confused about Calories, Diet, and Nutrition.

Defining a Calorie Deficit
            by Brad Pilon, bodybuilder, author of Eat Stop Eat (Intermittent Fasting)

Eating at a calorie deficit.

From my understanding, by definition this means an amount of food that results in loss of body mass. By this definition you cannot be in a deficit if you are not losing body mass.

You can be eating less, a little, not much, like a bird, and not lose body mass since these are all subjective descriptions of an amount of food, but if you are eating less food than is needed to provide the energy you require to power your daily activities then a loss of mass must occur.

This loss may be masked by fluctuations in bodyweight caused by water or the weight of the food in your digestive track (at least for a little while), but make no mistake, it is the loss of body mass that defines the deficit, not eating below an estimated amount of needed calories. The Loss of body mass is what defines a Deficit.


Eating at maintenance.

The term maintenance can be confusing; it raises the question, maintenance of what?

From my understanding eating at maintenance does not mean maintenance of body weight, but maintenance of function.

When you eat at maintenance all of your body’s daily energy needs are equaled by the energy provided by the food and drink you consume. This includes the energetic needs for muscle growth since the energy needs of protein turnover are part of your basal metabolic rate.

In other words, if you were in some hyper-muscle-growth-mode induced by who knows what, the energy needs of that growth would be reflected in an increase in your metabolic rate. Meaning if you were not eating enough to cover these needs you would be eating at a deficit and loss of body mass would occur.

A good way to think of maintenance eating is an amount of food that does not result in an appreciable loss of body mass or an appreciable amount of body fat gain, since a gain in body fat is how we define a surplus, ...