Life is Not Fair

Remember when you didn’t get your way, and you complained (probably to your mom, cuz your dad would have popped you for being a pain), “That’s not fair!” And your mom would say, “Nobody ever said life was fair.” And then she would go on to explain all the inequities thrust upon her in her lifetime, and how she has never complained. A little dramatic, possibly, but you get my point.

Here’s another thing that’s not fair, at least not in the realm of calorie counting and the shedding of that last 10, 15 or 20 pounds. Tall people burn more calories than short people do. Really. (To someone who has been "vertically challenged" her whole life, this is especially egregious). This is a whole scientific concept of Basal Metabolic Rate (the amount of calories your body needs to perform all its daily functions) that says that tall people just automatically get to use more calories than short people. It could be that the taller you are, the more wind resistance there is, and therefore, you have to work harder to move. (I am being facetious). It has to do with Body Surface area. It simply takes more calories to operate a machine that uses up more space.

You’d think that for leaving a smaller carbon footprint, the short people of the world could get extra points (in the form of calories). We don’t. But don’t despair. There’s a workaround. Bear with me.

In order determine your caloric needs, you could go do some relatively expensive metabolic testing (which is actually kind of fascinating, and if you can afford it, you should go and do it), or you could use this little formula. Take your weight, add a “0” to it, and you’ve got roughly your daily calorie requirements. That’s if you do nothing at all. There is a somewhat long, but easy to do calculation, but I found that it’s basically easier with just the “0” method. Here is the long version anyway (knock yourself out):
Women: BMR = 655 + ( 4.35 x weight in pounds ) + ( 4.7 x height in inches ) - ( 4.7 x age in years )
Men: BMR = 66 + ( 6.23 x weight in pounds ) + ( 12.7 x height in inches ) - ( 6.8 x age in year )
Oh, here’s another thing that’s not fair: See that last set of parentheses? The one that deducts based on age? A little bit of discrimination there, I believe. Oh, yeah, and men get more calories just because. (No, because supposedly they have more muscle mass, yada yada…)
So, we can say that calories don’t count, at least if you are 5’10 and willowy thin, or 6’2 and resemble a Greek God. But for most of us, it is just a matter of scientific necessity to know what your body needs to maintain a healthy metabolism. That’s not a matter of fair or unfair, it’s just body science.

Over the years, when I have had clients come to me to train, they often have wanted to shed excess pounds. The first thing I have had them do is keep a food diary (not because I’m nosy, but because it’s helpful). You have to know where you are before you can figure out how to get where you want to go. In other words, how many calories do you consume now? Are you gaining, losing, or staying the same? If you don’t track it somehow, you can’t know what your next step is. The cool thing is that there are so many aps available for smart phones that will do that very thing. It makes the calculations a lot easier.



So, life is not fair. But if you are reading this, maybe you are learning something you didn’t know before, and, hopefully, you will be inspired in some small way. Stay tuned, and we can discuss some metabolic “workarounds.” Seriously, it will be fun!