Do Calorie Counting and Weight Loss Go Hand in Hand?
Posted at by ifydcat on category weight loss
Is losing weight really as simple as reducing how many calories you consume in a day? Well, it is and it isn’t. It is true that you will lose weight if you consume less calories than your body burns every day, but figuring out how to do that is not quite so simple. You can change your average calorie balance through a combination of eating less food or more food, eating different foods, and exercising more or exercising less. Some may find they prefer to lose weight by increasing their activity level and continuing to eat the same amount of food as before, while other people choose to not increase their activity level and only decrease the amount of food they eat. Every individual is different, so you should create your own program to lose weight and then stick to it until you get results.
Misunderstanding is common as to what a calorie actually is. A scientist’s definition of a calorie is that it is the heat necessary to raise the temperature of one cubic centimeter of water one degree Celsius. To somebody trying to gain or lose weight, what is commonly called a “calorie” is actually a Kilocalorie, or one thousand calories of the above definition, a measure of the energy content in food.
Therefore, from now on, when you see “calorie” think “kilocalorie”.”
Using a very simplistic model of how the body handles food, to gain a pound of body weight you have to eat 3500 calories more than your body burns. Conversely, to lose a pound you have to eat 3500 calories less than your body burns. Your weight gain or loss will be determined by how quickly you consume that food imbalance. So, if you eat 500 calories per day less than your body burns, you will lose one pound in seven days, or about four pounds per month.
Cutting 500 calories per day from your normal diet may seem like a lot, but consider that you could accomplish that by eliminating the equivalent of one sixteen ounce non-diet soda (about 194 calories), two slices of sandwich bread (about 74 calories each or 148 calories total, plus 40 or 50 more with mayonnaise) and a small bag of potato chips (150 calories in each ounce) each day. To lose weight more quickly or more slowly, simply adjust how much food you remove from your daily diet.
Of course, the real world is more complex than that, which is why you need to formulate a personalized plan that includes increased exercise, better nutrition, lose weight and other factors in a comprehensive program.
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