How Many Calories Do You Need To Eat Per Day?

Conventional medical, government and health professionals say around 2,000 calories a day.

What if that simply isn’t true?

The 2,000-calorie theory is based on energy use. Specifically, the energy we get from the food that makes up that 2,000 calories we are told to eat daily.

In my article, “Food is not fuel,” I go into what food really is, information, and in today’s world, how energy, or fuel, is the least of what food provides. 

Today I will take it even further.

For discussion’s sake, let’s say that the body needs 2,000 calories of energy daily to sustain itself.

Why would we assume that all that energy must come from food?

What if the body could recycle and reuse a significant portion of that 2,000 calories?

The body consists of mostly inorganic material in the form of water and minerals, both of which can be, and does get recycled and reused very easily.

Almost every cell of the body can use glucose to make energy.

One gram of glucose is four calories.

Five hundred grams of glucose is 2,000 calories.

Glucose can be made in the body rather easily and readily from glycerol when triglycerides (fat) are broken down, the byproduct lactate from exercise, ketones from keto-genesis during fat burning, as well as from amino acids like glutamate.

Glutamate, I will note, is the most abundant amino acid in the entire body and is found in every protein structure or tissue we have. Our entire body is made with protein; even body fat is 10% protein, and bone is 50% protein by volume and 33% by mass.

In a constantly fed state with food coming in all day, every day, our body breaks down more of itself in this process as it breaks down the food we eat than when we are not eating.

When all these food and body materials are readily abundant, I would argue overflowing, the body’s recycling system is turned nearly off.

In the fed state, with the body’s recycling system at its lowest, all the energy needs are met from the diet.

In the fasted state where there is little to no food coming in, the body will turn up its recycling system and efficiency to use what’s in the body already and being processed through everyday life to make energy.

This is how weight loss occurs, we turn on the recycling system in the fasted state while not eating, and the body will make energy from other materials and tissues, like body fat.

Weight loss isn’t about burning off fat but rather turning up the body’s natural, normal recycling process.

In the fasted state, we also see harmful tissues like plaque in the brain and organs, fat in the liver and muscle, scar tissue, and damaged materials, cells, or tissues all get recycled as well. 

This we call healing.

You can only be in one state at a time. They work inversely. As one goes up, the other goes down.

The fed and fasted metabolic states are 100% vital to our survival, healing, health, and optimal function.

But they are not 50-50 partners.

When healthy and happy, the fed and fasted state works in a cycle of a short time in the fed state with a lot of time fasted.

Culturally, we have it backward, consequently driving our dismal health status and aging process as we do with only 12% of Americans metabolically healthy.

Step One:

Eat all your food in three meals a day without snacking.

Step Two:

Once hunger has improved, skip breakfast or, ideally, dinner 2-3 days a week.

Step Three:

Prepare a lifestyle shift plan with a progressive fasting rotation calendar.

Make a plan. Write it down. Build slowly, get proper support, and know how to bend fast instead of breaking one.

But you need to plan. Winging this will not work.

If you are ready for a professionally guided program and option, please message me or leave a message in the comments, and I’ll reach out.

We can do better!

Dr. Don