Think Healthy – Coral Calcium

Posts Tagged ‘unit of energy’

What exactly is a calorie? Well, a calorie is a unit of energy. When you hear something contains 100 calories, it’s a way of describing how much energy your body could get from eating or drinking but contrary to popular beliefs it doesn’t measure weight or length.

Most people see calories as something bad although in actual fact they are not. In fact, calories are very important to our well-being. For a start, our body needs calories for energy. Calories become bad if we had to much of it. And we are not burning enough of them off through physical activities, it can lead to some serious weight gain.

Most of us are experts at senseless eating both inside and outside the home. Most times, we unconsciously finish off of other people’s plate, taste-test while cooking, and simply swallowed up an entire cake without cutting a piece.

In fact, some of us even resort to taste-testing at the grocery store, which unfortunately is a great way to pack away a few hundredcalories . In some instinctive way, we consider this to be “free” food in every sense, just because it wasn’t served in a dish, portioned into a bowl, or eaten at the table. I have news for you – those nibbling frenzy does count.

Here are a few primary, but certainly not all-encompassing, places where we are likely to go off tangent:

* In the kitchen. As we are usually the primary cook at home, it makes us more in a position to eat and nibble away all day. It’s no wonder that woman pack in thecalories just preparing and cleaning up in the minutes surrounding meals. We seize an extra handful of cheese to pop into our mouths as we sprinkle the rest over the lasagna, and we all but lick the plates as we clean up. We also eat spoonfuls of cookie doughs, pie filling, and cake or pudding scrapings. You name the food, we clean it up real fast. What we forget to consider is that every spoonful of cookie dough packs a 70-calorie wallop, which, if eaten every day, comes up to a seven- pound weight gain in one year. A potato chip, a French fry, a spoonful of spaghetti sauce, a taste-test mashed potatoes- any of these nibbles may pack only about 10 to 20calories. But, who has just one chip and just one taste? Repeatedly tasting, nibbling, and munching add up the calories. In the same way, just cutting out this mindless eating could be the very ticket to health.

* When dining out. Eating out is simply another opportunity for mindless eating. Sometimes those nibbles are in addition to what’s already on our own plates; other times we don’t even bother to order an entrée, having the full intent from the moment we sit down to graze off other’s meals. All in the name of not letting the food go to waste. Yeah, right!

* With the kids. When caring for children, we take mindless nibbling to an all-time high. My sister is an expert at this. For example, she never ordered anything while eating out preferring to finish off her kids’ meals instead. The problem is that she has five kids and more often than not, they, being kids, never finish their meals. In the end, its like she’s eating meals for three adults!! Even woman who wouldn’t dream of nibbling anywhere else are likely to pop this or that into their mouths when they are caring for children. We finish off the last of the kids’ sandwiches, eat the last third of a child’s piece of birthday cake, bite-by-bite finish off their pizza crust, nibble on the ravioli while serving dinner, and dole out the snack in a one-for-you-and-one-for-me style. Like my sisters’ kids, most are still in tune with their satisfied signals and so they leave food on the plate, which is then ripe for the taking.

* At the movies. Combine an engrossing movie, the comfort of the dark, and tasty food, and you are presented with a perfect ambience for meaningless eating. Anyone is likely to overeat at the movies given half a chance. In some cases, the catalyst seems to be the container. And the fact is that women eat 40 percent more if served popcorn in a supersized bucket than if given a large bag. We all look for cue to stop, and in this example, usually that cues is that we’ve reached he bottom of the popcorn bucket.

* Watching TV. Food seems to vanish when we watch TV, read a book, talk on the phone, or surf the Net. Have you ever notice while watching a suspenseful TV shows that the entire bag of pretzels seems to disappear and you don’t remember taking a bite? Or, you’re so engrossed in a book that you gobble a bag of chocolate chip cookies without knowing it?

The truth is that mindless eating often comes with some interesting subconscious rationalizations. We have to work on this… real fast.
Calorie shifting is designed to confuse your metabolism by up-shifting and or down-shifting into different calorie ranges, which may help your body burn morecalories.

Most people fail to lose weight on various weight loss programs as many are really hard to follow. There’s one sure and easy way to lose weight today and it’s called Calorie Shifting – a program that tricks your body into making your metabolism go faster. With Calorie Shifting, you’ll burn more calories and you’ll lose weight.

Let’s say you consume 2000 calories on your current diet. If you have been consistently following your 2000-calorie diet, your body is expecting to receive approximately 2000calories every day.

The idea of calorie shifting is to trick the body into thinking that there has been no or little change in calorie intake, therefore avoiding the body’s tendency to trigger survival mode.Calorie shifting on the other hand involves eating a different amount ofcalories in a periodic manner so as to not allow the body to sense and adapt to calorie change.
That is where calorie shifting comes in.

This Programme essentially offers you an 11-day meal plan through its Diet Generator. The 11-day meal plan mainly consists of a lower-carb, higher-protein, low-fat diet. The key here is that you’re not constricted in the amount you eat, so you shouldn’t go hungry with this diet.

The day is divided into 4 meals that should be eaten at a minimum of 2 1/2 hours apart. There is no calorie or carb counting, no limit on portion size – You “just eat short of being full”. After the 11 day meal plan there is a 3 day “cheat” – where you get to eat whatever you want. Then you are back into the 11 day plan again.

To learn more about this particular weight loss program,
click here http://www.weightlossidiot.com and get your free E-report on food guide now!

A homemaker who found her love of food and cooking works to her advantage.She now knows her healthy food. A surefire way to achieve weight loss goals. Today she shares the experiences over the internet.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/wellness-articles/invisible-calories-1729469.html

This installment of Fat Loss Secrets will shed some knowledge of the importance of calories – what they are, and why it is vital to keep track of them! So let’s roll…

Put simply, a calorie is a unit of energy used by the body to perform all of its functions.

In a nutritional sense, calories come from the foods we ingest. When our bodies break down and digest this food, it uses the energy stored in the food (calories) to perform the daily functions necessary for life (metabolic functions). Such functions include everything we do – breathing, walking, exercising, digesting….basically any energy-requiring function that we engage in.

Now that you understand what a calorie is, it is time to apply it to fat loss. There are a lot of fat loss secrets you may read about that promise success, but you will not get far until you realize the importance of caloric intake for fat loss.

You may be familiar with the “calories in versus calories out” idea. This idea states that:

In order to lose weight, you must consume less calories than you burn, and
In order to gain weight, you must consume more calories than you burn

This is the basic, underlying concept to fat loss. Though it is not really one of the fat loss secrets, it is definitely an idea you must accept in order to complete the fat loss puzzle.

Do you now see why it is important to keep track of your caloric intake in order to be successful? If you fail to do this, you will have no way of knowing if you are eating too much or too little.

Right now you may be thinking, “Well if I starve myself or eat very little then I don’t have to count calories because I know I am consuming less calories than I burn!”

This is a horrible way to think! You see, the “calories in versus calories out” concept applies to overall WEIGHT loss, not fat loss only. If you starve yourself, you may lose some fat, but you will also be sure to lose muscle mass and water. And for optimal fat loss you MUST hold onto as much muscle as possible and stay hydrated.

Muscle is a metabolically active tissue. This means that the mere presence of muscle in the body requires energy (in the form of expended calories) to retain. So the more muscle you have and hold onto, the higher your metabolism be, which means the more calories you will burn (even at rest!), and the more fat you will lose!

Put simply: more muscle=more fat loss.

So it’s time to reveal some fat loss secrets!

The key fat loss secret in terms of caloric intake is to adjust your calories at a minimal daily caloric deficit. A daily caloric deficit means that you burn more calories per day than you consume. Likewise, a daily caloric surplus means that you consume more calories per day than you burn.

The idea behind a minimal deficit is that it enables us to burn fat while keeping most, if not all of our hard earned muscle! And by now it is no secret that we must hang onto our muscle in order to keep losing fat steadily and efficiently.

To lose fat, you want to avoid two particular scenarios at all costs: Steep caloric surpluses and steep caloric deficits:

Steep caloric surplus:
It is VERY easy to eat way too many calories in a day without even realizing it. Think of this: A common meal for an American eating out may be 2 double cheeseburgers, a medium Coke, and small fries from McDonald’s. This adds up to around 1500 calories for one meal. Factor in 2-3 other meals during the day and calorie intake could easily reach 4500 or more, especially considering that people love to snack between meals! 4500 calories is way too much for the AVERAGE person in a day. Overweight people with a lot of fat or bodybuilders with a LOT of muscle may require that many calories a day to maintain their weight. But the average-weight person eating this many calories per day will be storing the excess as FAT. I’m sure many of you already know about this simple idea…so I wouldn’t call it a fat loss secret, but rather general overeating information.

Steep caloric deficit:

Eating way too few calories in a day is generally less likely to happen in today’s society. Why? Because the convenience and low prices of calorie-dense fast food make it almost unavoidable at times. And the over-sized portions served at restaurants can pack thousands of calories at one sitting. The most common situation for a steep caloric deficit is when someone is on a diet. Some of today’s diets focus on cutting massive amounts of calories in order to “lose weight fast.” You will learn about why this is NOT an effective method of fat loss in the Metabolism chapter. Other diets focus on counting “portions” instead of calories. This method is dangerous as it is just an estimation and can easily lead to continual daily caloric deficits.

Steep caloric surpluses cause us to:

-gain fat

-gain muscle (ONLY IF the calories are from foods which promote muscle growth)

-speed the metabolism

Steep caloric deficits cause us to:

-lose some fat

-lose muscle

-slow our metabolism

By NOT counting calories, you are putting yourself at serious risk for a steep caloric surplus or a steep caloric deficit.

Now that you have read this edition of Fat Loss Secrets, you hopefully understand the importance of tracking your calories for maximum fat loss!

more lowcarb diet plan tips:

www.lowcarb-dietplan.com

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/nutrition-articles/do-i-have-to-count-calories-1591119.html