How Do Calories Work?

If you've ever looked the word up in the dictionary, I'm sure the scientific definition provided little incite to the importance of calories as it applies to your day to day life. I know it didn't help me much when I was beginning to change our family's lifestyle to a healthy one.

To me, that's because there should be a second definition. A calorie is something that you take in to provide energy and put out (or burn) when you perform an activity. Both aspects to the equation are important, but not always well understood.

Everything you do, whether it's going for a run or sound asleep in your bed, burns calories. The act of breathing burns calories. On that side of the equation, the important part is to figure out how many you burn, and perhaps increase the number by exercise.

Everything you consume, with the exception of water, adds calories. Sometimes, like eating a raspberry, you may burn more calories chewing and digesting than is found in the food, but that's another story. That is the simple definition of the term as it applies to your life.

Calculating those calories can be an extremely useful tool. It's not just important when you're trying to lose weight, if you are at your ideal weight you want to make sure you can maintain it. If you consume more than you burn, your body will store it as fat.

Doing the calculations used to be very difficult, both for what was consumed or burned. Food scales and mathematical calculations were needed, and it was time consuming, frustrating and usually resulted in a loss of interest by the poor dieter. Not so anymore.

There are a number of sites that have free calculators on them. These will help you even calculate what's going on while you're asleep. Just enter your age, weight and sometimes gender along with the length of time you were doing the activity and the results are totaled up for you. You can do the same with the food.

Gone are the days when you had to use spring scales. Now there are digital scales that are much more accurate and a lot easier to read. That allows you to be certain you know how many servings of a food you eat. They also clean up easier.

There is one last tip for you when it comes to the subject of calories. A lot of people find the simplest diet is to just plain not eat. That isn't a good idea for a lot of reasons. One is that it will put you in famine mode, and you will be unable to lose it. In fact, you could end up gaining.

Hopefully, these tips will help you find a type of diet that fits your needs. However, if you are having difficulties or if you have a lot of weight to lose, it might be an idea to talk to your doctor and perhaps a nutritionist. They can give you more information about what will work best for you.