Advanced Nutrition Guide: Calorie Requirements, Height Ranking, and the "80 Calories in Rice"

**Advanced Nutrition Guide**

How much heat does the human body need?

After birth, as we grow older, our body's need for calories increases, but this varies depending on gender, the intensity of our work, and the amount of exercise we do during rest periods. As we age, our need for calories gradually decreases.

A 35-year-old working adult male and female have daily calorie requirements of 2300 kcal and 1850 kcal respectively. If they eat more than their body needs, they will gain weight; conversely, they will lose weight gradually.

When the body does not get enough calories, the metabolic rate slows down. At this time, people are more susceptible to cold, more likely to get infected, less able to concentrate, and more easily fatigued. This is one of the reasons why weight loss is easily interrupted.

Conversely, when people are blamed, frustrated, or anxious, they often relieve their feelings by eating. Therefore, it is no wonder that some women are prone to binge eating disorder around puberty.

After food is digested, the small particles of the food pass through the brain and enter the nerve conduction pathways of the central nervous system. Therefore, after eating, one's mood will change. Similarly, one's mood will also change when fasting.

Humans have a relatively complete feeding system that protects them from the immediate threat of hunger; however, conversely, after eating and feeling full, the central nervous system that suppresses appetite is not as effective, so even when full, it is not easy to suppress appetite when seeing delicious food.

After an overeating meal, the amount of food consumed at the next meal is not easily reduced due to the excess of the previous meal, and people will still eat as much as before. This is why, in the civilized world, humans with abundant food are more prone to obesity and find it difficult to lose weight.

Find your height ranking

Boys typically stop growing taller around age 19, and girls around age 16, as the cartilage and hard bone at the ends of their bones fuse, and hormones mature. While our bodies and appearance are largely determined by our parents, height is also influenced by genetics. Generally, the average height of your father and mother at that age is roughly the genetic factor determining your height. Environmental factors include the mother's pregnancy and the environment in which the newborn develops, such as nutrition and exercise after birth.

Therefore, even among siblings who share the same genes from their parents, there can be differences in height. For example, if the father is 168 cm tall and ranks 50th in his age group, while the mother is 160 cm tall and ranks 60th in her age group, then the child will have a chance to be at the 55th percentile at that age. If the child's nutrition is better than other children of the same age, he may even surpass them. Conversely, if illness or picky eating leads to malnutrition, he may fall below the 55th percentile.

Therefore, teenagers have half the chance to grow taller through their own efforts, namely diet and exercise. Appropriate exercise and a balanced diet can not only prevent weight gain but also help them grow taller.

Don't lose lean meat when trying to lose weight.

Improper weight loss methods, which focus solely on weight reduction without considering health, often result in the loss of both fat and lean muscle.

Non-fat tissues in the body, such as internal organs, bones, muscles, lymph, and blood, will be depleted due to improper weight loss. This will lead to a decline in physical strength, weakness, poor concentration, reduced resistance, and even shock. Common improper weight loss methods include starvation therapy, excessively long-term extremely low-calorie diets, and ketogenic diets (commonly known as the meat-eating diet).

To prevent the loss of lean muscle mass, one should consume at least 75 grams of carbohydrates daily to avoid ketoacidosis and engage in at least 30 minutes of exercise daily. According to one study, exercising 2.5 hours a day, 6 days a week, for eight months will increase lean muscle mass while resulting in overall weight loss.

Lean muscle tissue is the body's foundation; with this foundation, one can have a fulfilling life and career.

Using a diabetic's diet?

Sometimes dieters are shocked to ask, "Why is the diet I'm given by my doctor or nutritionist for diabetics?" In fact, the diet for diabetics has improved rapidly in the past few decades, and there are no major restrictions anymore. The whole concept is not about prohibition but about emphasizing balanced nutrition.

The only truly demanding aspect is the focus on energy and food substitution (academically known as "substitution"). Energy planning and food substitution require tools. In the American system, a so-called "food substitution" is used. This utilizes the principle of food classification, categorizing various foods according to the author's ideas into staple foods, fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, eggs, dairy, oils, etc., then fixing the energy of each category, and calculating the weight of that specific food, thus creating a "food substitution table".

Professionals often first prescribe a calorie plan for patients, then distribute it across meals, using various foods at each meal to achieve nutritional balance. Since both weight loss and diabetes require calorie planning, they often use the same tool, aiming to adjust their diet based on calories. Therefore, dieters may end up eating a "diabetic diet."

Food Substitution Table

Food can be classified into three categories based on its energy (calorie) production and nutritional composition: The first category is foods rich in carbohydrates, such as staple foods like rice, vegetables, and fruits; the second category is foods rich in protein, such as fish, meat, beans, eggs, and milk; and the third category is foods rich in fat, such as oils and dried fruits.

With so much food, how do we know how much energy we'll get from eating it? We're neither nutritionists nor gourmets, so how do we assess the amount of food to meet our needs? "80 calories per kilo! A simple food conversion chart can help us."

"80 calories per rice" refers to rice as the unit of measurement, with one unit containing 80 calories. This is designed to educate patients and the general public about food types and quantities, enabling them to learn how to assess and design their own diets. This will help patients who require dietary control to achieve the desired self-care results.

Therefore, the containers used here are the bowls commonly used in Zen Buddhism for serving rice and the spoons for drinking soup; when assessing the "quantity", there is no need to be meticulous or use rulers or scales, just visual estimation is sufficient.

The first category of rich foods includes three subcategories: staple foods, vegetables, and fruits. Staple foods include 1/4 bowl of rice, 1/2 bowl of porridge, approximately 1/2 bowl of rice noodles, wheat noodles, or vermicelli, 1/3 of a carrot, a slice of toast, a slice of radish cake, and four dumpling wrappers. Vegetables amount to about 1 jin (500g). Fruits include: one half-jin star fruit, 1/4 large guava, one half-jin cantaloupe, two oranges, two tangerines, one grapefruit, half-jin honeydew melon, about half-jin pineapple, one jin watermelon (with rind), and half-jin wax apples. One serving of these portions contains 80 calories.

The second category consists of protein-rich foods, such as fish, beans, eggs, milk, and seafood. For example, about two ounces of fish contains 80 calories, while one ounce of meat contains 80 calories, one block of tofu, one egg, half a carton of fresh milk, and about half a pound of shellfish contains 80 calories.

The third category consists of foods rich in oil, such as 1/2 tablespoon of lard for cooking, 4/5 tablespoon of salad oil, 4/5 tablespoon of peanut oil, 1/2 tablespoon of margarine for spreading on bread, 1/2 tablespoon of mayonnaise, and two tablespoons of peanuts and two tablespoons of sunflower seeds for snacks, each serving containing 80 calories.

As for many delicate snacks, cookies, and candies, about 20 grams is 80 calories; while 2/3 tablespoon of jam, 3/2 slices of sandwich cookie, 1/4 slice of cake, etc., is also 80 calories per serving; in addition, half a bottle of soda or half a glass of beer is 80 calories.

For further information or to learn how to calculate calories by visually observing a colored round chart, please refer to "DIY Calorie Control - 80 kcal per Meal" by Dr. Hung Chien-te, published by Lianjing Publishing Company.

Make your own menu

In the past, preparing one's own food was a part of life; everyone had to choose and prepare food every day. But with modernization, much of our food is no longer cooked at home but eaten outside. This may result in people becoming increasingly obese.

If you're too fat, you need to lose weight. When it comes to weight loss, many people turn to menus or recipes. However, most of the menus or recipes available to date are ketogenic diets. As mentioned earlier, the ketogenic diet only causes the body to excrete excessive amounts of water and electrolytes, creating the illusion of very rapid weight loss. At the same time, it also causes uric acid and cholesterol to rise, which is very detrimental to the body's metabolism.

Therefore, the author often says that a single diet is not a healthy way to lose weight. Weight loss should involve balanced nutrition and appropriate calories. This is the diet for patients trying to lose weight, and it is also a healthy diet for normal people.

By simply substituting food items based on the 80-calorie rule, we can create our own meal plan. For a common 1200-calorie diet, the table below clearly shows 6.5 servings of staple food. We can vary the food by using one serving of each type of food as an example. Another common 1500-calorie diet can be similarly modified below.

(Note: The table content in the original text has been deleted as instructed, and only the text description framework of the recipe has been retained.)