Who REALLY Needs 2,000 calories per day?
Bonus Article: Navigating Midlife, BIG Questions, and Change - Part 1
Welcome!
This week is a two-fer. What can I say, I felt compelled to write. You’ll find an article about where the idea of a 2,000-calorie per day diet comes from and some reflections on big questions me (and some friends) have been pondering along with some things to consider when navigating big changes.
Also, it’s Women’s Health Month … look forward to a future article on brain drain and its impacts to women’s health.
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In good health,
Dr. F
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Article 1: Who REALLY Needs a 2,000-calorie/day Diet?
When you look at a nutrition label, you’ll see the values given are always based on a 2,000-calorie per day diet. People tend to think because that’s the number used, that it represents an official recommendation, or ideal, by the government on how many calories we should be consuming each day.
But, here’s the thing: That’s false. Moreover, it should be unsurprising to learn that the 2,000 calories per day was fairly arbitrarily chosen. Back around 1990 the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act created a need for a reference calorie amount to go on the labels. The USDA conducted surveys of Americans to get an idea of average caloric consumption – these were self-reported intakes, which means the accuracy depended entirely on the person reporting them. The results showed men reporting intakes in the 2,000 to 3,000 calorie range and women reporting intakes in the 1,600 to 2,200 range. 1,600 to 3,000 calories is a large variance; while the average would have been 2,300 calories, 2,000 was chosen for its simplicity.
The average daily caloric consumption in 2017-2018 was 2,093 calories per day (the average from 1977-2018 was 1,807 calories/day). In the same time period, restaurant and out-of-home food consumption increased to over 16% of American’s daily caloric consumption. Keep in mind these numbers have most likely increased since that USDA reporting period. Simultaneously, about 60% of the average American’s food intake comes from ultra-processed food, most of which lack nutrient-density and are completely devoid of essential micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients). That number is about 70% for teens. This means that we rely on 30-40% of our diets to fuel 100% of our body … or less, since restaurant prepared food also is noted to be missing key micronutrients and over-abundant in refined carbohydrates and saturated fats.
Further consider that as of 2018, 42.4% of adults had obesity, 9.2% had severe obesity, and about 30.7% were overweight. The average American, regardless of weight, does not get adequate exercise, fiber, or other basic nutrition requirements.
Interestingly, though obesity rates continue to climb, neither caloric intake nor activity levels are correlated with the incredibly rapid increase in obesity prevalence … the much slower increases in caloric intake compared to the rapid increases of obesity simply don’t match up. Same can be said for physical activity. There hasn’t been a drop in physical activity to an extent that can explain the rise in obesity. This is why obesity is simply not a calories in, calories out or willpower situation – the effectiveness of GLP-1s and the experience of reduction of food mental chatter (and the reduction of many types of addictive behaviors) debunks the willpower aspect. Yes, physical activity and total calories consumed matters, but metabolic changes, the gut microbiome, and the quality of the calorie – what we’re eating – likely matters more. I’ll save the specifics of this for another article (unsurprisingly, I have many opinions about GLP-1s).
I bring up the above only as proof points for these three points:
For most Americans, 2,000 calories per day is probably more than they need, especially given relative inactivity
How many calories a person should eat is unique to them and is based on their metabolic need, current weight, physical activity, current health concerns, medications they’re taking, physical capability, age, and so many other factors
Quality of the calorie matters
If you want to know how many calories to consume, consider using one of these online calculators here or here or here.
Article 2: Navigating Midlife, BIG Questions, and Change - Part 1
A friend I’ve known since childhood (inadvertently) reminded me that this is a milestone birthday year – if you call 45 a milestone. It caught me off guard, if I’m being honest. I just don’t think about my birthday or my age that often; I’ve taken on my dad’s belief that age is very much just a number and so much more of a mindset – plus, it’s allll the way in November … so not top of mind right now.
I’m also not generally into celebrating my own birthday. Most often, for me, my birthday is a day of reflection; I think about all that I have to be grateful for, everything that went down over the year, the highs, the lows, what I achieved, what I didn’t, what I want for the coming year. Taking this approach has not always fared well. There have been a couple birthdays in the very distant past where I just didn’t want to acknowledge the day at all for the shit-year full of failures that I told myself it had been. Gosh our self-narratives can be so powerful.
I’ve gotten less intense about it over the years. That Me of 20 years ago feels like a ghost of Present Me.
If I can pick a word to describe this year, thus far – nearly halfway through the year, already – it would be “introspective”. The reflecting I do on my birthday is something I’ve been doing kind of everyday this year … more like over the past 2 years, really. Not to say that I jammed all of my self-reflection into one day, previously … I’m way too much of an over-thinker and over-analyzer for that. It’s more the depth combined with frequency that marks the difference for the past 5 months to 2 years.
I find myself sitting with really challenging questions, old emotions, pieces of self-identity that I had let go, other pieces I still need to let go of. I’m in my head A LOT.
What’s funny, though, in talking to a few close friends recently, is the realization I’m not alone in it. Perhaps it’s that we’re all at a certain age, where we’re starting to challenge the long-held beliefs about who we are, who we aren’t, and if the daily hum-drum reflects where we thought we’d be and, more telling, where we want to be. Is THIS what causes some people to have a “midlife crisis”? This challenge and potential misalignment of self-identy? This disconnect between who they thought they would be versus who they are versus who they still, yet, want to become?
I imagine it’s probably those things combined with the realization that we’re in the back half of our lives – our available time left on this earth, and the experiences that make up our lives, is now being counted down, instead of up … and confronting that mortality causes some people to freak the fuck out.
I think it’s the uncertainty (maybe mixed with fear, doubt and some denial) and lack of honest self-reflection that creates the powder keg for the big blow up. A lot of people don’t want to ask themselves the hard questions, for fear of what they may dredge up. Certainly, in the face of trauma, these types of exploration are best undertaken with the support of a professional. Barring that, I think most people shy away from the discomfort or deprioritize or compartmentalize things to be dealt with “later” and then later doesn’t come. Until it does.
In one of the conversations I’ve had recently with a friend, I told him I’ve been trying to make decisions that would make 65-year-old-Me proud. See, when I look back at my late teens and Early-20s-Me, there’s a lot I don’t particularly love. I’ve worked hard on a lot of those parts. Enough so, that in many ways I don’t recognize that person … like I said earlier: Ghost of Present Me. Or, maybe like an afterimage (that thing you see after looking at a bright light). When I’m 65 and looking back on who I am today, I don’t want Future Me to look back with sadness, shame, regret, guilt, pity or the like. I am not living IN the future (and do my damndest to not live in the past), but I guess I’m trying to live FOR the future. It’s not always easy, because who I am today isn’t necessarily all of who I want to continue to be. There’s still so much growing and evolving to be done.
I simultaneously feel like I know myself more and better than ever before, while still making discoveries. For instance, I’ve long known that balance looks different for me than it does for others and that one of the things I love doing is helping high-achieving, high-performing women find their personal sense of balance, but it wasn’t until a few days ago that it struck me: I am someone who seeks balance.
I have sought balance for as long as I can remember. When I was younger I called it fairness. I’ve often been cast as the moderator and/or translator between two groups/departments/business units. I don’t appreciate imbalance in relationships (whether personal, family, friendship or business) – it doesn’t feel right when it’s all about me or when it’s all about the other person; it’s why I exit out of relationships that often feel one-sided (though, often later than I should). Perhaps it’s an outcome of struggling with a sense of belonging, as I wrote about in a recent article. I have no idea what may be nature vs nurture, here. My husband had the insight that even my imbalance (when I burn the candle at both ends or become a slot for several weeks) is often part of my attempts to establish balance.
What does any of this have to do with nutrition?
If you’re familiar with my Substack space, you’ll know that I write frequently about nutrition, but not exclusively about nutrition. I often tackle mindset as well as other areas of interest, like health tech, FemTech, and whatever is occupying my thoughts on a given day.
Yes, I am a doctor of clinical nutrition, but my practitioner style straddles clinician and coach. While the nutrition care plan creates the central hub of the wheel, almost every spoke that branches off involves a client’s habits, behaviors and mindset. Often, their mindset and behaviors are determining factors in their ability to achieve their goals.
I often work with clients to bring awareness to their stress responses – many don’t know how to recognize what the stress looks and feels like to them. I also help them understand how food helps their body function, how and what the tradeoffs are, and prioritization of efforts, energy, and time.
The feelings and perspectives we have about food run deep – they’re often established when we’re children and reinforced through our life experiences. It’s one reason why making long-term shifts to what and how we eat can be so challenging. Combined with the chronic stress from daily stressors, the existing ways we’ve taught our body to respond to food and other external stimuli, and other aspects, it can feel like the deck is stacked against us. Let’s not forget to factor in trauma, especially adverse childhood experiences, which have been correlated with poorer health outcomes as adults (find out your ACEs score here).
As behaviors change, it may bring up unexpected thoughts and feelings. Knowing ourselves, developing self-awareness, and asking the hard questions becomes part of the journey – ever more so if the desired change is occurring during a key inflection point of life (around a milestone birthday, getting a new job, having a child, getting a divorce, experiencing midlife, moving to a new city, etc.).
Having a plan, a program and a proper support system can help navigate unfamiliar and challenging terrain.
9 Things to Consider when Moving through Challenging or Unfamiliar Territory
I developed a framework, aptly and uncreatively called The Framework, that helps clients move through behavior change. Many of the things I’ve included below came from it.
1: Intentionality
Intentionality = Specificity of energy + action
I’m a believer that if you’re not making a decision for yourself, someone/something else will make it for you; and that the lack of a decision is still a decision. If you don’t define and establish your boundaries, the people you have relationships with (whether personal or professional) will set them for you. Think about the habits you engage in daily … how many did you purposefully create vs how many happened of their own accord? Within a business context, if you don’t define the culture of your business, it doesn’t mean you don’t have one, it means it’s being created organically, on its own. That can be positive or negative.
Being intentional isn’t about exerting control. It is about creating definition, focus, and clarity. It’s about knowing where you’re willing to flex and where you’re willing to hold firm. It’s being comfortable with acknowledging that you can’t control everything and identifying where specificity of energy + action are merited.
Try it out
If you’ve never practiced being intentional, here’s a simple way to get started: Choose the fucks you want to give; set a number and hold it there.
If you find yourself spinning out or getting worked up frequently about things people say or do, especially things you have no control over, you may giving fucks freely, will-nilly. Not everything merits the energy you give it and very few things deserve to occupy space in your brain rent-free. Reacting to everything (aka giving a fuck about everything) is exhausting.
So, start with 5. When you feel yourself getting spun up, ask yourself: Does this person or situation REALLY merit one of the 5 fucks I have to give today? If it helps, imagine handing over a physical card to someone and you only have 5 to hand over. If you routinely find yourself running out, there’s likely some deeper self-inquiry you might want to engage in.
Your energy is a precious resource. While the person that cut you off in traffic or the person letting their dog roam off-leash in a place where dogs aren’t even allowed may feel like well-deserved recipients of your mental anger-grenades, all it serves to do is stoke the flames of a stress response in your own body. A response that will take your body hours to re-regulate. All for someone who you’ll likely never see, again. We can’t escape repeated daily stress responses, but we can do our part to not make our internal response worse and to start the re-regulation sooner. Or, we can let chronic stress win and end up with higher risks of everything from hypertension to heart disease and cancer.
2: Influence vs Control
Identify what you can control versus what you can influence. There’s a lot going on in our bodies and around us that we can’t control. We can’t control someone else’s behavior. We can’t control what our employers do, the state of the economy, or the general world around us. We can control our own response and we can influence the way our body physiologically reacts.
Ask yourself
What in my life is truly within my scope of control? What is within my sphere of influence? You can even do this on-the-fly, when things start to feel overwhelming or you feel the anxiety start to creep in, check in and ask yourself if it’s a situation you can control or influence. Then, identify what those actions of control or influence might look like.
3: Let It Go
I was taking a virtual dance class the other day and the instructor said, “You can choose to let go.” She said it in reference to literally letting go of the barre to test your balance, but it was the message I needed right in the moment. And, it hit me like a ton of bricks. If I write a book, best be believed it will be about letting go (I’ve literally had a book title on the topic identified for at least 5 years now).
This also ties into Intentionality and several other aspects noted in this article. Often, holding on to something – an emotion, a repetitive thought, a grudge, a limiting belief – is a choice, whether we realize it or not. We choose to hold on to it and maybe even be defined by it. Because maybe it’s deep. Maybe it goes back to a question of self-identity: Who are we if we’re not it? [It’s up to you to insert whatever “it” means to you for this example]
Ask Yourself
What belief about myself (or others) am I holding on to? What evidence do I have to support that belief? What makes it valuable to me to continue to hold onto? What benefit do I get from continuing to hold on to it? What might my life look like if I were to let go of it?
Check back next week for the Part 2, which will cover the other six things to consider.
References
Food Consumption, Nutrient Intakes, and Diet Quality - Summary Findings. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-consumption-nutrient-intakes-and-diet-quality/summary-findings
Ultra-processed food exposure and adverse health outcomes: umbrella review of epidemiological meta-analyses. https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-077310
Obesity and Severe Obesity Prevalence in Adults: United States, August 2021–August 2023. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db508.htm
Overweight & Obesity Statistics. https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/overweight-obesity#:~:text=the%20above%20table-,Nearly%201%20in%203%20adults%20(30.7%25)%20are%20overweight.,(PDF%2C%2097.2%20KB)%20.
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