Calorie Counting - is it worth it?

Calories and how much of them we eat seem to be the 'way of the world' in days gone by.

For the section today I am going to explain what a calorie is and the basic use of calories within the body.

To start with, what is a calorie?

A calorie, as per the dictionary definition is: "the energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 kilogram of water through 1 °C, equal to one thousand small calories and often used to measure the energy value of foods"

So it is a unit of energy, it comes from Latin 'calor' meaning heat and the French 'ie' suffix to create the French/English word we use today.

Calories are used in every form of liquid or solid where the make up of it is changed through an action (eg, eating, burning, moving, etc...)

An example of calories in use elsewhere is in petrol, 1 litre of petrol contains over 8 million calories!

Your body is a machine, it needs nutrients and it has been figured out that your body needs a range of different nutrients to keep it functioning at an optimal level. The fact we use calories to quantify the food we eat was introduced in 1887, as a guide to the masses on how much they should eat.

This has now gone the other way where we are trying to reduce this as much as possible in an effect to 'lose weight'.

So the question is, is there any point to counting calories to lose weight?

Well... If you are eating everything in sight, and packing on the weight and you suddenly cut the amount of food you are eating, then yes you will lose weight initially as you are in taking less calories than your body is 'burning' which will lead to fat 'oxidation' where you fat will burn to give you energy.

However, your body knows when it is in trouble, if you are not in taking enough calories to keep up with your body's demand, whenever you do eat something, your body will store this as a 'self defence' mechanism to stop itself 'starving' hence the reduction or reversal of fat loss.

Psychologically, when you obsesses over 5, 10, 20 calories here or there, this presents extra stress on the body and this can cause weight gain as your body is again protecting itself from a stressful situation.

So in a way, no there is no point in counting calories long term. in my next post I will discuss the role of food in the body.