Eat calories to lose weight

Eat calories to lose weight or is it eat calories to gain weight?

I’ve touched on a subject, childhood obesity, that is becoming more prevalent and appear in the press on a regular basis. This can also be a very emotive subject, especially if someone close to you, is suffering from it.

So to get a better understanding of eating calories, I thought I wanted to break things down and go back to basics in order to understand the difference between a good calorie and an empty or bad calorie.

• A lot of people, religiously count the calories of the food products they eat, because they want to lose weight  or do not want to gain more weight, yet they make no distinction between a good calorie or bad calorie. Their only thought is ‘if I cut the calories, I will lose the weight’. But cutting calories indiscriminately, means cutting out potential nutrients as well.

Everything we consume (eat and drink), contain calories. On most food products we find the amount of calories that we will eat, but do we actually know what a calorie is?
The simplified explanation of a calorie, is that it is a unit to measure the energy potential of food.

The question is, do we really need calories? Of course we need calories, because without calories, where will we get the energy to fuel our bodies? The amount of calories we consume per day though, depend on our age and lifestyle. If we take in more calories than we need, no matter what our age, the extra calories with inevitably convert to the wobbly bits we don’t want.

Are all calories good? No. Why? Because a calorie does not necessarily equate to ‘good’ energy. Sometimes people refer to bad calories as empty calories. An empty calorie, is not really ’empty’, because it still provides energy as a good calorie would, but lacks the nutritional value of a good calorie. Examples of empty calories, which so many people indulge in, are soft drinks, crisps, cake……the list is endless.

So how do you eat calories and lose weight? Have a low calorie, high nutrient meal. To me it seems a better option to eat calories with a good amount of nutrition attached to

it, which will feed my body the vitamins and minerals to become healthy and stay healthy.

At some stage, we all consume empty calories. No one is saying you should never have empty calories. The truth is, if we consume the empty calories in moderation and have a healthy and varied diet with lots of good calories, then our bodies are bound respond in a positive way.

Want to have a chat about all those empty calories you want to cut out, then ‘click here’ and fire away with questions at your heart’s content.

Related articles in the Calories Series:

Body Mass Index Calculator – Check Your Health
Calories – What are calories and how do I burn them?
How to calculate your daily calorie intake.
Create a personalized calorie diet plan
Best 1200 calorie diet plan
Best 1500 calorie diet plan
Best 1800 calorie diet plan
Best 2200 calorie diet plan
How many calories in an egg and all other foods

Tags: eat calories, eat calories to lose weight, empty calories, lose weigh