Counting Calories to lose weight

Most people are aware of the need to count calories as part of maintaining a healthy weight. While this is true, there are some myths surrounding calorie counting that many people are not familiar with. Another problem is that often calorie counting just seems too overwhelming to put into daily use. In fact, keeping track of caloric intake is actually a very simple process that everybody can learn and utilize.
 We encounter the word “calorie” on a frequent basis, but most of us probably could not come up with its definition if asked. Basically a calorie is a unit of energy. Calories make up macronutrients. The three primary macronutrients we are all familiar with are proteins, carbohydrates and fat. One gram of protein and carbohydrates both contain 4 calories and one gram of fat has 9 calories (that’s one of the reasons we are told to cut fat from our diets). The calories we consume are burnt off as energy.
And now for the part most of us are interested in; how does that information relate to losing those extra pounds?  It’s quite a simple principle of balance and equality that people in the fitness industry refer to as “Calories in vs. Calories out”.

“Calories in” is the food you take in everyday. Every single food that we eat has a certain caloric value. Usually, even if we don’t think we are following a diet plan, we consume roughly the same amount of calories from day to day. That is essentially our “diet plan”. To figure out the number of calories you consume daily, find out the caloric value of the foods you eat every day. Reading food labels is helpful and so are websites such as the new calorie counter.

“Calories out” on the other hand refers to the calories your body uses up, or burns. Your body burns calories two ways.  One way is called involuntary, also known as Basal Metabolic Rate. All the functions your body performs to be alive, such as heart beat, brain function, digestive system, all use up calories. The other way is voluntary, and that is all the movement you perform as a form of exercise. There are also guidelines available where you can check how many calories you burn when you perform some common activities.
Therefore the weight loss formula is quite simple. In order to lose weight, you need to burn more calories than what you consume. Cutting calories and increasing physical activity is the only proven way to lose weight. If you consume as many calories as you burn, you will not lose weight, but you will not gain it either. If however the number of calories which you put into your body is greater than that which you burn, that’s when you get into problems with weight gain.