While the goal is always to consume a normocaloric nutritional pattern (meaning your ingested calories meet your personalized metabolic needs), there are some things to keep in mind. For example, when caloric intake regularly exceeds requirements, it can lead to an energy imbalance.

When it comes to finding energy balance, I don’t need to tell you that our current food environment works against us. Over the past few decades, we have experienced a major punch: portion sizes have increased dramatically, while the nutritional quality of our food has plummeted.

Moreover, we know from rodents and primates, Homo sapiens ourselves – conserving calories not only helps achieve and maintain a healthy weight, but more importantly leads to positive changes in body composition, namely less excess adiposity (fat mass) and more lean muscle tissue (fat-free mass).

On the other hand, excess calories, fat storage, insulin resistance and shorter lifespan are closely related. It’s not a fun web to get tangled up in. For example, we know that high insulin levels are clearly linked to accelerated aging, a relationship that is conserved in many species.

Consuming fewer calories from food is directly linked to cardiometabolic health gains in insulin sensitivity, heart physiology, and even liver health. Additionally, clinical studies indicate that being calorie-efficient leads to improvements in biomarkers that indicate “the rate of aging is delayed.”

Is anyone else amazed that we have the ability to literally pace ourselves, for our well-being and fullness of life? Personally, I find it very stimulating.