Energy density is also called calorie density. If you want to lose weight and maintain the loss understanding this concept is really useful. This page can be used by patients and practitioners, along with our PDF handout.
Summary, in a nutshell
Whole plant foods tend to fill you up more than other foods. This helps you lose weight. If you only want the summary picture, here it is:
You may have heard “Energy in vs energy out = weight loss or weight gain” and of course this is correct: If you eat more total energy (calories) than you use, you will gain weight. If you eat less energy than you use, you will lose weight.
All of your energy intake (in the left blue bar) is from your “diet”: foods and drink. Most of the energy you use daily is not from exercise. In fact, this normally is around 10% of total energy. The remaining 90% is a combination of metabolism and other.*
How to change energy balance to lose weight
1. “Eat less” – Consume less food.
2. “Move more” – Expend more total energy.
3. “Diet and exercise” – Combination of the two.
Diet vs exercise
Here we see a 40% reduction in total caloric intake when switching to a whole food plant-based diet.
A whole food plant-basevd diet is roughly equivalent to 100 minutes of vigorous exercise daily.
Why are plant foods so low in energy?
- Plant foods are rich in fibre, water, and carbohydrates; this mean they are low in density.
- Water and fibre take up a lot of space in the stomach, but only a small amount of energy is provided by fibre.
- Carbohydrates/sugars have half the energy of fats.
- Vegetables, e.g. broccoli or potatoes contain fibre and water which stretch out the stomach. They have protein, carbohydrates and fats in the quantities the body was designed to digest and store. In order to gain enough energy through lower density plant-based foods, we should eat a lot of starches, and this is consistent with our evolution. Potatoes are great for weight loss, however with processed oil and salt from the modern environment – deep fried potato chips from a fast food restaurant are not.
Maintenance of weight loss is hard, similar to how it takes most people multiple attempts to quit smoking. Lifestyle changes are hard, so don’t be disappointed by inevitable set backs. Creating unrealistic expectations for yourself by making yourself change when you are not ready won’t help. Give it your best effort.
- Start with making simple changes first, like cutting added fats from cooking, or removing dairy products.
- It’s important to monitor progress, and work out solutions to problems as they arise. GP consults are perfect for this; start by getting cholesterol, HbA1c, blood pressure, weight and waist circumference measured.
- Don’t pressure others to change – they’ll ask if interested.
So, that’s energy density, one of the principles that is important for losing and maintaining weight loss.
- If you would like some more information, we explain this and more in our video series. Try the first week of the video programme here for without making an account (like on facebook) or choose a free video programme here.
- Click here to see our traffic light system.
- If you want to see the full page graph of lots of different foods and their energy density, click here (opens in new page).
Dr Nicholas Wright