Calories everywhere

People are counting them and cutting them, and it would be hard to find something at the grocery store that does not list them one by one.

What are Calories and How They Compare

Technically, 1 calorie is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water 1 degree centigrade. We tend to associate calories with food, but they apply to anything containing energy. For example, a gallon (about 4 liters) of gasoline contains about 31,000,000 calories.

When a fitness chart says you burn about 100 calories for every mile you jog, it means 100 kilocalories which are actually a measure of energy.

The number of calories in a food is a measure of how much potential energy that food possesses. A gram of carbohydrates has 4 calories, a gram of protein has 4 calories, and a gram of fat has 9 calories.

Different foods contain different amounts of energy. This is why a small piece of chocolate can have many more calories than a similarly sized piece of lettuce.

However, since calories are a measure of energy, there cannot be, as some diet books claim, different types of calories.

A fat calorie has the same amount of energy as a protein or carbohydrate calorie.

One thing about exercise is that it raises your metabolic rate not only while you’re working out, but your metabolism takes a while to return to its normal level. It continues to function at a higher level; your body burns an increased number of calories for about two hours after you’ve stopped exercising.

Lots of people wonder if it matters where their calories come from. Simply, if we eat exactly the number of calories that we burn and if we’re only talking about weight, the answer is no, a calorie is a calorie. A protein calorie is no different from a fat calorie they are simply units of energy.

As long as you burn what you eat, you will maintain your weight; and as long as you burn more than you eat, you’ll lose weight.

What are Calories and How They Compare

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