Energy

One of the most important elements in nutrition is energy. Without it, human life would be impossible; all the processes we perform during the day consume energy, both for the maintenance of our vital functions and for the performance of our routine activities.

Energy has a space of great importance within the study of holistic nutrition, since within the broad spectrum that covers this, is the relationship between what we consume and the behavior of energy in the body.

Next we will go a little deeper into this subject, with the objective of approaching the basic aspects that distinguish it, within the complex system that nutrition presents in our organism.

Energy in nutrition

Energy can be acquired and transformed in many ways, within the human body there is a complex and efficient structure that allows us to obtain energy through the decomposition of food. For this purpose, the well-known metabolic function comes into play, where the metabolism is in charge of distributing energy in different processes, attending to the needs of the organism.

Within these processes we find the anabolic function, which by definition would be the function of building. This function is the one that allows us to use energy to strengthen, repair and create around our needs. Thus, without energy it would be impossible to perform this function, which is what ensures that we can continue to function as a system.

Another function related to energy is the catabolic function, which would be the function of destroying, so it is the antagonist of the anabolic function. The catabolic function allows to balance the anabolic function, in a compensation system that helps the constant improvement of the organism.

Calories

The energy received by the organism is counted through calories. That is why there is the famous thesis that if we want to lose weight it is necessary to provoke a caloric deficit, that is to say that the energy we receive is less than the energy we expend. This thesis has been evolving, since it is not all about calories received and calories burned.

Calories can be obtained from practically any food, the problem lies in the nutritional balance made with those foods, since obtaining calories from a vegetable will never be the same as obtaining them from an ice cream. Although this is another issue to be addressed, calories in holistic nutrition are just one more element, it is not the axis on which weight loss revolves, as this responds to old and outdated conceptions about nutrition.

Caloric surplus

Caloric surplus is the phenomenon that occurs when we supply much more energy than the body is able to use. The human body is a very efficient machine, we are created to work in hostile conditions, we have energy reserve systems, and in fact we are able to obtain energy from our own body if we do not receive enough through the food we eat.

When glucose levels in the body are extremely low, we can make use of the stored glucose, entering into a state of ketosis we are able to convert fat into energy to be used in all our activities. With this we want to express that as a general rule we consume much more calories than we need, being this one of the fundamental causes of obesity problems, which nowadays are a very common phenomenon.

It is important to understand that energy is important, but that the excess of calories is not healthy, it produces an increase in body fat and with it the appearance of several deadly diseases for the organism.