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What are the Calories in food?
Understanding Your Weight A pound of fat represents approximately 3500 calories of stored energy. In order to lose a pound of fat, you have to use 3500 more calories than you consume. Although this seems like a simple formula remember that your body is a thinking organism designed to protect itself. If you were to try to reduce your intake by the entire 3500 calories in one day, your body would register some type of alarm and think that there is a state of emergency. Immediately your metabolism would slow down and no weight loss would be achieved. It's better to spread your weight loss out over a period of a week, so that you aim to reduce your caloric intake by 3500 to 7000 calories per week, resulting in weight loss of one to two pounds per week. It's generally not recommended to try to lose more than two pounds in a week. Attempting to do so may cause health risks, and on top of this you're unlikely to be successful. In the example of attempting to lose two pounds per week, you can use a basic method of calorie counting to help you accomplish your goal. To do so, you need to figure out how many calories a person of your age, sex, and weight usually needs in a day, subtract 500 from that amount, and follow a diet that provides you with that many calories. For example, if you would ordinarily need 3000 calories in a day, you would follow a 2500-calorie a day diet. Next, figure out how much exercise a person of your weight would need to do to burn 500 calories per day, and engage in an exercise plan that will help you achieve your goal. The result is simple: 500 fewer calories consumed and 500 more calories expended equals a 1000 calorie per day deficit, which, over the course of a week adds up to 7000 calories, or two pounds.
Although individual results may vary, the bottom line is if your body is consuming fewer calories than it's expending, then weight will be lost.
How To Calculate Your Needs
In order to eat fewer calories than you need, you have to determine how many calories you actually need. Adults can calculate their approximate energy needs using the following formula: A. Body weight multiplied by 12 (for men) or 11 (for women) e.g., 150 lbs. x 12 = 1800 B. Activity One third body weight multiplied by the number of hours you don't sleep, typically 16 hours 150 lbs. x 1/3 = 50 x 16 = 800 C. Required Calories A + B 1800 + 800 = 2600
Thus, we determine that a 150-pound man requires approximately 2600 calories per day. The "Basal Metabolic Rate" is the number of calories a man of that weight would burn just to keep the heart beating, the lungs pumping, etc. You would just burn your basal metabolic rate worth of calories if you slept all day. Thus the "Activity" calculation is approximately the amount of calories a person would expend by spending his or her whole day sitting around. If you are engaging in activities other than sitting all day, you can increase your activity hours by the number of hours you are actually active. Adult females can calculate their approximate energy needs using the same formula, except that the "Basal Metabolic Rate" is determined by multiplying body weight times 11 instead of 12. Children and teenagers require more calories by body weight, but the amount varies by age and by individual child. It is best to consult a physician before altering a child’s diet, however activity and exercise increases won’t hurt the average youth of today, and will show some benefits of controlling obesity. Overall, this gives you a general idea of what a calorie is, how it relates to weight, and how the body turns calories into fat. This is not of course a complete diet plan. However understanding your body is a definite prerequisite to making the changes necessary to conquer obesity.
Your calorie intake For example: If you were an adult male eating 3,500 calories per day you can drop 250 calories from your diet and increase your energy consumption from exercise by 250 calories. If you can do this everyday, you will create a 3,500-calorie deficiency over the entire week – and that is the equivalent of one fat pound. In order to lose weight you need to find a 500-calorie deficiency everyday. Do it through exercise AND reducing what you eat. Minimum Calorie Intakes Women should not consume less than 1,200 calories per day, or 1,000 less than your maintenance value (how many calories you need to keep your weight steady). The Harris-Benedict formula is one of the leading ways to calculate your maintenance value. Men should not consume less than 1,800 calories per day, or 1,000 less than your maintenance value. If you try a crash diet, where you are only consuming 1,000 calories per day and working out, or getting exercise, sure, you will lose weight. But, it isn’t going to stay off. When you don’t give your body enough fuel, it starts to consume the muscles in your body. As we learned earlier, the muscles are an important part of being able to metabolize your foods. • Eating too little is not the way to have sustained weight loss. • You risk burning muscle of you crash diet by not eating anything. Your body will consume your muscle tissue, actually making it more difficult to keep the weight off down the road. • Eating much less slows your metabolism. You aren’t eating enough food to keep your metabolism running on high octane.
Tracking your calories It might take a little bit of effort, but each food has a written caloric value on the packaging. If you take the time to notice what is on the package you will be able to monitor what your calorie intake is. When you can do this, you will be able to keep tabs on what you are eating and whether or not you are meeting your target intake levels. If you want to be serious about losing weight, then you need to take the matter into your own hands. Don’t just slap a healthy portion of lasagna on your plate and start chowing down. Calculate how many calories are in a reasonable serving and go from there.
Most meals will have you in between 500 and 1,000 calories. This is a good target area. If you can calculate where you actually fit in there with each particular meal, you will be able to get a better idea of your plan for losing weight.
A calorie counter can only help you manage your weight if you keep track of what you actually eat.
The food diary also adds extra calories burned during exercise to your calorie allowance for the day - from your online exercise diary.
How Many Calories Do You Need?
ALCOHOL
What Is A Calorie
The term calorie refers to a non-SI unit of energy, where SI is “The International System of Units (abbreviated SI from the French phrase, Système International d'Unités”). There are two common but different meanings: one is used in food and nutrition, the other was formerly widely used in chemistry, and a food calorie represents 1000 chemistry calories. The food calorie is sometimes capitalized as Calorie to distinguish it from the chemistry calorie; however, this capitalization is rarely observed in practice.
The Nutrition Calorie Nutritionists measure the energy content of food in "calories" (sometimes capitalized and abbreviated as Cal or sometimes C, or abbreviated kcal as if small calories were being used), where each food calorie represents 4,186 joules. This is equivalent to 1000 of the calories used in chemistry, and thus the food Calorie would be called a kilocalorie if small calories were being used. However, in chemistry calories have been deprecated as a scientific unit of measure in favor of joules, and therefore in common modern usage the word "calorie" usually refers to a food calorie. This situation provides two ways of talking about the amount of calories in food which look quite different but that express the exact same amount of energy. One may say that dietary fat has nine kilocalories (kcal) per gram, while proteins and carbohydrates have four kcal per gram, or, one may say that fat has nine Calories per gram while carbohydrates and proteins have four Calories per gram. The amount of food energy in a particular food is measured by completely burning the food in a bomb calorimeter, a method known as direct calorimetry Dieticians recommend counting calories to avoid obesity. The government of the United Kingdom recommends consumption of no more than 2000 Calories (2000 kcal) by women each day and 2500 Calories (2500 kcal) by men each day. With people wanting to learn more about weight loss, it has provided the necessary incentive for us to write this interesting article on weight loss! We find great potential in weight loss. This is the reason we have used this opportunity to let you learn the potential that lies in weight loss. The Physics and chemistry calorie In physics or chemistry, a calorie (abbreviated cal) is a unit of energy that equals the amount of heat necessary to raise the temperature of one gram of water by 1 degree Celsius, at a pressure of 1 atm. This amount of heat depends somewhat on the initial temperature of the water, which results in various different units sharing the name of "calorie" but having slightly different energy values: • the 15 °C calorie, The slight variations in these units can be seen if you convert them to joules. For example, one 15 °C calorie is the amount of heat necessary to raise the temperature of 1 g of water from 14.5 °C to 15.5 °C. This is approximately equal to 4.1855 J or 3.968×10-3 Btu. The International Steam Table calorie is approximately equal to 4.1868 J and the thermochemical calorie 4.184 J. Of these various units, what is most commonly meant by calorie in contemporary English text is the 15 °C calorie. The nutritional Calorie represents 1000 of these 15 °C calories. Since this could be a source of confusion and error, these units are now deprecated. The International System of Units (SI) unit for heat (and for all other forms of energy) is the joule (J), while the (obsolete) cgs (centimeter gram second system of units) system uses the erg (unit of energy and mechanical work in the centimeter-gram-second system) Before start losing weight and counting calories you must first calculate the number of calories your body needs everyday, because this amount changes from person to person, depending on sex, age, weight, muscle content or height. Averages are situated around 2000 calories for women and 2500 for men. An easy, but not so accurate calculation is that for every 500 less than your normal amount of calories eaten every day you will lose up to one pound (453,6g) per week. Counting calories must be included as part of your diet, because when you loss weight is best to know how many calories your food has, and so ensuring that the amount of calories burned each day is more than the amount stored. All nutritionists agree that a healthy low fat diet without counting calories could not exists, so take your time and solve that problem with various calorie calculators. By knowing all the time the amount of calories consumed you can control how much you can eat and how it will affect your body. When dieting and counting the calories you can eat almost anything as long as you do not exceed the number of calories burned every day. When you eat fewer calories, your body is forced to consume the fat stored to make up the deficit in your calorie count. Nutritionist’s advice is that you must combine psychical exercises with healthy eating in order to create some calorie deficit.
If like most people, you can’t abide the thought of counting the calorie and weighing and measuring every scrap of food you eat…. Try the simple and fast ‘space food’ concept. With simple calorie controlled portions replacing two meals a day, it is so CONVENIENT to eat healthy again, with no effort at all on your part1
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