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Health & Fitness

Calories Don't Count - Or Do They?

People have been told calories don't count when it comes to weight maintenance and proper nutrition...but they have not been told the truth!

In my last post I discussed why we are so confused about what to eat and when.  In future posts we will discuss what to eat, when to eat it, and how much to eat to stay healthy, fit and live long.  Today we will discuss one of the most misunderstood terms in diet and nutrition:  Calories.

Many people are totally clueless as to what calories are and whether they are important.  Some patients tell me their nutritional advisors have said: “ignore the calories” or “calories aren’t important”.  (Many of those same advisors tell people not to weigh themselves to see how much they weigh.  Go figure).  If anyone that is helping you with your diet tells you calories are not important, run the other way…fast!

A calorie is a scientific unit of heat.  As used in food science, it refers to the amount of body heat, or energy a person needs to produce to burn food.  For example:  If a McDonald’s hamburger is 450 calories, then you must produce 450 calories of energy to burn it completely away.  It’s as simple, yet as important as that.  If you do not know how many calories your food has in it, you will never be able to know how much energy you need to burn the food and will never know whether you are eating too much relative to the energy you expend each day.

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More specifically, a calorie is the amount of energy/heat it takes to increase the temperature of 1 gram of water 1 degree centigrade.  In terms of the way the word “calorie” is used in food science and nutrition, a nutritional “calorie” is actually 1000 scientific “calories”, (Kcal).  (We commonly see only the word “calorie” used on food labels and in print.  Just remember that it is actually referring to a Kcal, or 1000 real calories of heat).

One of the main reasons that Americans have a hard time maintaining a healthy weight regardless of the type of food they eat is that they eat too many calories of food but do too little calories of work to burn it.  And it really is just that simple.  Why is this? Well, the main reason is that most “authorities” on diet and nutrition have it all wrong.

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The USDA, which is our government source of nutritional information, publishes it’s Dietary Guidelines yearly and updates the information every 5 years.  Although their intentions are good, they still recommend far too many calories daily.  For example:  the current recommendation for women 31-50 is 1800-2200 calories daily and for men 31-50 it’s a whopping 2200-3000 calories daily!

Now, calorie needs in adults are dependent on many factors: body size, age, and lifestyle/energy expenditure play a role.  However, even if you were a very tall, very active 31-50 year old woman, I guarantee that if you ate 2200 calories daily you would not only be unhealthy, but you would certainly gain weight over time.  And that’s just counting the calories and not taking into account the source of the calories/type of food.

I recommend that my female patients 31-50, depending on their height and amount of physical activity, eat no more than 1200-1800 calories per day; the men 31-50, 1500-2200 calories/day.  Now this is of course only the total food energy which is only part of the story.  Next, we will discuss the types of food and when to eat them.

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