Calorie Counting

Should you be calorie counting or should you not

Calorie counting would scare any dieter stiff if they understood what it actually meant. Unlike other weight loss tools like food pyramids, it is very intensive and not just a matter of using calorie counters. Infact some diets have been promoted with the slogan "calories do not count". 

The question however still remains, are calories important?  "Go Beyond Calories" (And Lose Belly Fat Permanetly)    goes into detail of how weight loss literally revolves around more than just calorie management. But before we delve into answering whether or not you should count every calorie you eat, let’s first better understand what calorie counting is all about? 

A calorie is a unit of energy that is used to refer to energy available in foodstuffs. In pure physics, the term is defined as the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of 1kg of water by 10 Celsius or 1.80 Fahrenheit. 

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The food we eat provides energy for your body functions. 

This energy is what is expressed in calories. The importance of calories counting is usually based on the fact that energy is neither neither created nor is it destroyed. 

Is only transferred or changed from one form to another. 

For example the energy you find in food comes from the energy in the sun. 

Plant converts this energy into carbohydrate, proteins and fats. When we eat their plant we convert these carbohydrates, proteins and fats into chemical energy that our bodies use to run daily functions, like walking, thinking etc. 

But when you take in more energy that you need the body cannot destroy it. It stores it in the form of body fat for future use hence weight gain. 

So to lose weight you will need to use this stored energy. 

You do this either by restricting any more energy intake or by increasing energy expenditure. 

This then would mean that the laws of calories would require you to burn equal number of calories you take just to maintain weight. 

Obviously you need to burn or use up more calories than you take to lose weight. 

A successful weight loss program depends on providing fewer calories than you need to stimulate weight loss.

Unfortunately, calorie counting introduces a number of problems. The first is different sources of calories are used up by the body differently resulting to the calories acting significantly differently within the body. You probably have heard the statement "not all calories are equal". This statement refers to the fact that the different sources of calories in your food namely, carbohydrates, proteins and fat are released in different ways affecting how your body stores fat. 

For example, though fat has twice the amount of calories than both carbohydrates and protein, it is not always completely digested to release all the calories. Further more it takes a much longer time to get digested and therefore keeps you full for significantly longer times encouraging both calorie expenditure and fat burning. 

On the other hand, processed carbohydrates are quickly digested and absorbed. This results to excess energy in the body resulting to it being sorted as body fat. In addition it quickly triggers hunger signals faster due to quick depletion, it tend to result to over eating. This is the reason behind the recent encouragement to use low glycemic index carbohydrates. Such carbohydrates are not quickly digested and tend to keep you full for longer. Glycemic Index (G.I) and glycemic load, a variation of GI, have on this basis become a major weight loss tools.

Another problem with calorie counting is the amount of work involved in counting calories. Generally the calories counting of every morsel of food that goes into your mouth is practically impossible for most people. Even professional athletes require expert help to do this. 

Bill Phillips a best selling health and fitness author notes, "There aren’t many people who can keep track of their intake for an extended period of time. As an alternative, I recommend counting portions." The use of portions to replace calories counting makes it easier to keep track of your calories. However this introduces another problem of determining food portions/size. 

But before you start choosing the best weight loss tool to use, you need to get get the right weight loss strategy for you. And if you want to lose belly fat;  if you want to get a flat stomach or even six pack abs you will need to Go Beyond Calories. You need to go beyond the usual diet strategies. To do this you need two things, just two things. These two are...

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