How To Count Calories and Why

-

 From Verywell.com

If you're having trouble managing your weight it's probably because you don't burn as many calories as you might think. You have to consume 500 fewer calories a day than the number of calories you burn. Many of us don't really know how many calories we burn so we over estimate think we burn 3000 or 4000 calories a day because we go to the gym for an hour a day. Wrong, The dedicated workout enthusiast only burns about 300 calories in a one-hour workout.

Apps to Help with Calorie Counting

If you think an app would be helpful to your calorie-counting goals, here are a few to try:

  • Lose It!
  • MyFitnessPal
  • Calory
  • FatSecret
  • Cronometer
  • MyNetDiary

Summary

The number of calories you need each day varies from person to person based on age, sex, height, weight, and activity level.

To lose weight, you must take in fewer calories than you burn. To gain weight, you need to consume more calories than you burn. Protein is an important nutrient to increase for muscle gain, as are healthy fats and carbohydrates.

A realistic weight loss goal is to lose 1–2 pounds per week by decreasing your caloric intake by about 500 to 1,000 calories daily without going under 1,200 calories per day for women or 1,500 calories per day for men. Adding 500–1,000 calories per day may be appropriate for gaining weight. 

Benefits to calorie counting include accountability, insight into your diet, and the possibility of making healthier food choices. Disadvantages include the chance of inaccuracy, how much time it can take up, how difficult it can be, and the chance it may trigger disordered eating behaviors. It may lead you to focus on the quantity of your calories instead of the quality of your diet. 

Lower-calorie foods include many fruits, vegetables, lean meats, low-fat dairy, whole grains, and legumes. Healthy, higher-calorie foods include fatty fish, whole-fat dairy, starchy vegetables, avocados, olives, nuts, seeds, plant-based oils, and dried fruit. 

Keeping the big picture in mind when working toward better health can help you achieve your long-term goals.


By Brittany Poulson, MDA, RDN, CD, CDCES
Brittany Poulson, MDA, RDN, CDCES, is a registered dietitian and certified diabetes care and education specialist.

Follow me on X, the former Twitter, @ray0369 to get a link to my latest posts.

If you want to lose your body fat look for my e-books at the websites listed below. You’ll get information on Healthy eating, exercise, and diet. Instead of spending hours on the internet reading dozens of posts, you can save time by picking up one of my e-books. 

There are two e-books. “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight?” is available at all the online bookstores selling for $3.99. Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find my e-book. This book gives you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans, or meal plans. 

Look for my first book at Amazon.com, bn.com, iBooks, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, or Gardner Books in the U.K.

My new e-book is available on Smashwords.com and other online bookstores. Just type “getting to a Healthy Weight” in the search box at the top of the home page. 

Look for my podcast by searching “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight” on the podcast app that you use. You’ll see a piece of my book cover.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What's the Mediterranean Diet?

-
Image
The Mediterranean diet is based on the traditional foods eaten by people living in the Mediterranean region, especially Greece. It's loaded with healthy foods and research findings suggest following this diet may help reduce some of the risk factors for heart disease.  According to the Oldways Preservation & Exchange Trust, the Mediterranean diet was introduced in 1993 by Oldways, Harvard School of Public Health and the World Health Organization.  The diet includes: Olives and olive oil Whole grains, mostly in bread and cereal rather than pasta Very little red meat Fish and seafood Some cheese, but less milk Lots of vegetables and fruit Plenty of legumes and nuts A little red wine The Mediterranean diet is high in fiber and antioxidants from vegetables, legumes and nuts, far greater than the typical Western diet, and low in saturated fat. Very little red meat is eaten in this region, and milk consumption is limited as well, except for some cheese and yogurt
Read more

Changing Your Life To Lose Weight

-
Image
I can let you in on the ultimate secret for successfully making a change in your life. A century’s worth of psychological research reveals an interesting paradox in who we are. On the one hand, once we reach adulthood our basic personalities remain unchanged for the rest of our lives. We keep doing the same things—and feeling the same ways—over and over. But, on the other hand, every day we change our behavior drastically in response to different environments. Most of us are one person at work, for example, and another person at home. It is easier to change our environment than to change ourselves. So, if you want to change yourself, change your environment. Said differently: Whenever possible, don’t try to fight temptations – avoid them! The easiest way to make a change in your life is to modify the world around you in ways that will naturally drive you toward making, and maintaining, the change you want. There are many ways to change your environment, but let’s focus
Read more

Cancer and High Protein Diets

-
On the Fox TV Network the other night, one of the big stories was about high protein diets. A new study has shown a link between the over consumption of animal protein and how it can stimulate the growth of cancer cells. It seems we all have cancer cells but they don’t normally grow, unless we consume too much animal fat, dairy or fats from processed foods. Before I continue I want to explain about the link to cancer. After all, Man has been eating red meat for millions of years, right. That's true but todays red meat is not the same. Most red meat that we buy in the supermarket comes from Steers that have been raised in feed lots on a grain diet that is full of hormones and other chemicals that shorten the growing time and put more fat on the animal. These hormones and other chemicals stay in the meat and what you're buying will contain the chemicals that the animal ate. Normally a grass feed Steer that lives on the range in big herds will take 18 to 20 months to grow to
Read more