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How to measure your energy balance?

Energy balance is actually the one thing that defines your weight: you might think that since you exercise on a daily basis and eat all the right things, you will automatically lose weight and keep yourself in a good shape. But this is only half true.

What is energy balance?

Energy balance can be understood as the relationship between “energy in” (calorie intake you get with food and beverages) and “energy out” (calorie burn for the daily energy requirements). Now, before we dwell into the topic, let us clear up one definition issue: even though we call the burned calories “energy out”, this is not entirely correct, due to the fact that some of the energy turns into fat and glycogen (primary and secondary energy stores respectively) and can never actually get out of the body, resulting in the weight gain. In other words, some of this energy is being used on vital functions of the body, while other gets to the reserve, but for the sake of simplicity we are still gonna call it “energy out”.

The “energy in”/“energy out” relationship is defined by the laws of thermodynamics: as you might remember from the physics course, energy is never actually created or destroyed—it is transferred between different objects. Energy balance is crucially important to your body: the body weight, its composition, your looks, the amount of work (both physical and mental) that you perform, even your life expectancy are all influenced by whether your energy balance is positive (meaning more “in” than “out”) or negative (more “out” than “in”), or balanced.

Basically, a negative energy balance leads to weight loss, while a positive energy balance leads to—yes—to weight gain. But that does not mean that all you have to do is to keep the “out” dominating the “in”.

According to Ryan Andrews of PrecisionNutrition, a severe negative energy balance can lead to a decline in metabolism and in bone mass, reduction in testosterone levels, an inability to concentrate, and a reduction in physical performance. On the other hand, a continuously positive energy balance leads to weight accumulation and changes in body composition, eventually resulting in reduction of life expectancy.

Calories are not the only thing to consider

As Ryan puts it, “blaming weight gain on calories [alone] is like blaming wars on guns.” You also have to be your-own-body-aware (eat when you do feel hungry and stop eating if you don’t want to), avoid processed foods, do your fair share of regular physical exercise—and manage your energy balance, of course. Because if you don’t, it may soon turn out that, even though eating less, along with losing the “fat weight” you will lose the “lean mass” (i.e., muscles). The same goes for overeating (“overgetting” your energy): you gain muscles, but without proper physical exercise, you get fat, too.

Your own personal energy balance is hard to estimate, but this can be achieved with the help of the HEALBE GoBe smart band, which lets you constantly monitor both consumed and burned calories—so that you are always able to counterbalance the excess.