We should now look at the energy burned in various activities. I found a spread sheet that listed over 300 activities and the energy burned in 1 hour based on body weight. Rather disappointingly walking at a normal moderate pace will burn about 200 calories per hour. It’s going to take 5 hours to walk off the one brownie!!! If you had it with cream and ice cream, I expect that you will be walking all night! From a metabolic standpoint, you will have definitely triggered the Randle cycle. When you eat more carbohydrate energy than your body can use, which is most of the time, the body will sent the blood sugar off to be stored as fat. The excess sugar in your blood will damage your red blood cells and the cells that line the blood vessels. I am beginning to think that his is related to persistent low iron and heart disease. The Randle cycle is really the central thesis explaining how heart disease really happens.

In contrast a 170 gm piece of beef has only 265 calories. Even if you had a 300gm piece of steak you are only just at 500 calories. So it becomes clear that if you want to loose weight the food pyramid is not your friend. In contrast if you had a 400gm piece of Ravioli the calories consumed are just under 1000. An 80 gm portion of fettuccini is 280 calories. A very enjoyable serve that may require seconds and that will put you walking on the streets for hours again!
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On movement Monday, I thought that it might be good to bring together the connection between what we eat and the energy in it, compared to the energy spent when we move. The activities that burn about 1000 calories an hour are pretty exhausting, such as rugby, competition rowing, skipping fast ( I bet you can’t do it for an hour! ), boxing in the ring, running up stairs ( over 1200 calories, and who can do it for an hour? ), cycling above 20mph or racing. For most of us our activity level is just not vigorous enough to burn the energy that we eat each day. The result of this is that most of us are above our ideal or desirable weight.

As I have been looking into what is a human species specific diet, I am realising that if we eat our species specific diet, then we will find that we actually don’t need to pay much attention to how much we eat, as it is much harder to eat more than we need when we focus on animal protein and fat and significantly reduce carbohydrate foods.
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If I link back to the statement that I see often that counting calories doesn’t work, there is some truth in that, in so far as the high carb diet, especially when it has ultra processed foods and seed oils ( poly unsaturated fats and oils ), they are hormone disrupters and this leads to the body being much less responsive to reductions in calories. The case study and clinical evidence is that if a carnivore diet is followed, there is an eventual reset of the hormone system, so that the body is now quite responsive to calorie intake as it should be.

There are a few ideas to include with your movement drills. Most of these can be done at home with body weight and no special equipment. Give them a try and watch your ease of movement and joint mobility improve.