We are working with an intricate system so we need to be mindful of what are the boundaries of the system.
We need to ask the following questions
What makes the system function smoothly?
What are the symptoms that the system is not doing great?
What is not working for the system, is it is a system issue or a maintenance issue?
What should be the minimum care provided to the system?
What 20% I must do to take care of 80% of the system health?
What are the rules of the system?
What rules can i bend and what can i break? If i break, what happens to the system health?
…
Here is a cheat sheet of what I found is the threshold for the body from a system design point of view.
From the biochemistry 101 we discussed so far, it is an imperative that we need macro and micro nutrients for the body to function well. Some are produced by the body and some are processed from the input(food) we provide the body. Skipping macro or micro nutrients in your diet is a bad idea. It is not my opinion, this is how our body works. Ask the mitochondria and it will tell you its story 🤷🏽♀️So highly nutritious food as input is what the body recommends.
So how much nutritious food should i take? Take as much that is needed by the body to keep up its functions. It needs at least 1600 calories to keep the factory running. If you use your body more (run, lift, play, chores etc) you need a little more and you can go upto 2200. As you age this number decreases as you body functions also decline. If you go below 1600 cal, your metabolism starts slowing down because it doesn’t have enough input.
When it doesn’t get enough calories from the input it will go and get from the energy stores (glucose, lipids, muscles etc) and that is how you can survive for 40+ days without food. So don’t be paranoid that you must input 1600 cal everyday. We will talk about fasting in the series later.
If you need optimal health go for a routine of 1600 calories of highly nutritious food everyday. The order matters. Nutritious food that gives calories.
Pro Tip: All foods produced by nature have enough nutrients. All foods produced in factory doesn’t.
This is for a working system to continue to work well. Now let us talk about the flaws and the faults in the system and how to repair.
🥂to thresholds!
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