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• Starchy carbohydrates are a great energy source. • Fibrous carbohydrates move it all through the body and provide energy. • Fat decreases infl ammation, improves joint and heart health, and aids in disease prevention and cognitive function. Meal sizes differ for everyone and should be based on how you feel and how much fuel your body requires that day. If you feel hungry within an hour or so after fi nishing your meal, you probably didn't eat enough. On the fl ip side, if you feel full for hours, you probably ate too much. It comes down to common sense, intuition, and simply listening to your body. Why Does This Work? A calorie is a measure of heat, and your body is a heat machine. The thermic effect of food (TEF) is the term used to describe the energy expended by our bodies in order to consume (bite, chew, and swallow) and process (digest, transport, metabolize, and store) food. In other words, certain foods require us to burn more calories than others, simply by eating them. Here's the general breakdown: • Fat is easy to digest. For every 100 calories of fat you eat, you only burn about 5 calories in the digestive process. • Complex carbohydrates take more effort to digest. For every 100 calories you ingest, you burn about 10 during digestion. • Protein requires the most energy to digest because it is made up of 20 different amino acids—nine of which are essential amino acids supplied only through food. For every 100 calories of protein you eat, you burn approximately 25 calories to digest it. 2 If most of your meals follow the complementary eating proportions described above, it is easy to see how you end up consuming fewer calories and burning more, while emphasizing more nutritious foods. Plus, there's no unrealistic dieting and no need for calorie counting! I t p a y s t o b e A B M P C e r t i f i e d : w w w. a b m p . c o m / g o / c e r t i f i e d c e n t r a l 79 SPLURGE MEALS We all have high-fat, high-calorie foods that we love to eat. If you want to keep your sanity and keep your healthy eating manageable, you absolutely must eat those not-so-healthy foods you love—every once in a while. My advice is to follow the 85/15 rule. This means that if 85 percent of the time you eat in the way I've described here, then 15 percent of the time you can eat whatever you want. In real- world terms, that's about one in every seven meals—so if you're eating four meals per day, that means one of your meals can be in the "not-so-good-for-you" category every two days. That's how moderation works, and that's how you do a no-diet diet! Notes 1. Frank M. Sacks et al., "Comparison of Weight- Loss Diets with Different Compositions of Fat, Protein, and Carbohydrates," New England Journal of Medicine 360 (2009): 859–873. 2. T. Halton and F. Hu, "The Effects of High Protein Diets on Thermogenesis, Satiety, and Weight Loss: A Critical Review," Journal of the American College of Nutrition 23: 373–385. Nick Tumminello is the owner of Performance University, a fi tness training and education company based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He's the author of the book Strength Training for Fat Loss (Human Kinetics, 2014) and writes a popular fi tness training blog at www.performanceu.net.