Ignore your calorie counter. And ignore the calorie count on food labels. Counting calories is a mindless strategy for choosing what you eat. Why? First off, understand that a calorie is a unit of heat. It isn't useful for metabolism. Once a calorie is released as heat, there is no putting it back.
Scientists define a calorie simply as the amount of heat necessary to raise a milliliter (cubic centimeter) of water one degree Celsius, at sea level and at room temperature. Consuming calories is like saying that you can eat heat.
Many experts who should know better wrongly equate food calories to metabolism. This overly simplified claim is the basis for saying that food provides metabolic energy in the form of heat. Wrong!
Since calories are simply a measure of heat, you can see why they have nothing directly to do with metabolism. Calories effect temperature, so they really only help keep your body temperature where it should be.
It is helpful to know how food calories are really measured. It is done by completely incinerating the food in an instrument called a bomb calorimeter. In so doing, when only the charred remains are left, it has lost whatever calories it originally contained. The bomb calorimeter measures the amount of heat lost and expresses them as calories released.
In a bomb calorimeter, carbohydrates yield 4 calories per gram, proteins yield 4 calories per gram, and fats yield 9 calories per gram. However, it is nonsense to suggest that these food groups provide you with anywhere near the amount of heat that they yield in a bomb calorimeter. You can see why the whole business of keeping track of food calories, as measured in a bomb calorimeter, for weight loss is so misleading as to be ridiculous.
The concept of calories works for bomb calorimeters, not for your body. The calorie count of foods is a maximum potential, not a metabolic potential. Your metabolism has nothing to do with food calories that are measured in a bomb calorimeter.
In the first place, you can only harvest 10 or 20 percent of the calories from food, maybe up to 30 percent on the high end. Some foods will yield no calories at all, regardless of what they yield in a bomb calorimeter. A calorie counter does you no good whatsoever in evaluating different foods for their metabolic value.
Think about it. In a calorimeter starch yields the same number of calories as cellulose, gram for gram. However, cellulose is indigestible fiber and starch is a source of food energy for people.
Furthermore, a calorimeter will measure the same number of calories from equivalent amounts of potato and celery (correcting for water content). Obviously, your body couldn't possibly do that.
Instead of comparing the metabolism of food to a furnace or calorimeter, it is much more meaningful to talk about what happens to different foods when they are digested, how they get into different kinds of cells (e.g., fat vs. muscle), and what happens to them once they are there.
It may surprise you, for example, to compare two well-known and nearly identical sugars, fructose and glucose. Their caloric yield is exactly the same in a bomb calorimeter. However, glucose goes through the liver into many different tissues, most notably brain and muscle, and fructose never escapes intact from the liver. Counting calories tells you nothing about these two different metabolic fates.
The consequences of these differences are that glucose serves the metabolism of your entire body, whereas fructose has to be converted to something else before you can do anything with it. That something else is largely fat. In simpler terms, fructose will make you fat much faster than glucose will. Their caloric potential is irrelevant.
By the way, once you understand what is truly important about foods of all kinds, which is clearly not their calorie content, you will be very clear on why calories have nothing to do with being overweight. Chew on that comment for a while (pardon the pun), because this is the kind of clear thinking that will guide you to success in any weight loss or fitness program that works for a lifetime.
Scientists define a calorie simply as the amount of heat necessary to raise a milliliter (cubic centimeter) of water one degree Celsius, at sea level and at room temperature. Consuming calories is like saying that you can eat heat.
Many experts who should know better wrongly equate food calories to metabolism. This overly simplified claim is the basis for saying that food provides metabolic energy in the form of heat. Wrong!
Since calories are simply a measure of heat, you can see why they have nothing directly to do with metabolism. Calories effect temperature, so they really only help keep your body temperature where it should be.
It is helpful to know how food calories are really measured. It is done by completely incinerating the food in an instrument called a bomb calorimeter. In so doing, when only the charred remains are left, it has lost whatever calories it originally contained. The bomb calorimeter measures the amount of heat lost and expresses them as calories released.
In a bomb calorimeter, carbohydrates yield 4 calories per gram, proteins yield 4 calories per gram, and fats yield 9 calories per gram. However, it is nonsense to suggest that these food groups provide you with anywhere near the amount of heat that they yield in a bomb calorimeter. You can see why the whole business of keeping track of food calories, as measured in a bomb calorimeter, for weight loss is so misleading as to be ridiculous.
The concept of calories works for bomb calorimeters, not for your body. The calorie count of foods is a maximum potential, not a metabolic potential. Your metabolism has nothing to do with food calories that are measured in a bomb calorimeter.
In the first place, you can only harvest 10 or 20 percent of the calories from food, maybe up to 30 percent on the high end. Some foods will yield no calories at all, regardless of what they yield in a bomb calorimeter. A calorie counter does you no good whatsoever in evaluating different foods for their metabolic value.
Think about it. In a calorimeter starch yields the same number of calories as cellulose, gram for gram. However, cellulose is indigestible fiber and starch is a source of food energy for people.
Furthermore, a calorimeter will measure the same number of calories from equivalent amounts of potato and celery (correcting for water content). Obviously, your body couldn't possibly do that.
Instead of comparing the metabolism of food to a furnace or calorimeter, it is much more meaningful to talk about what happens to different foods when they are digested, how they get into different kinds of cells (e.g., fat vs. muscle), and what happens to them once they are there.
It may surprise you, for example, to compare two well-known and nearly identical sugars, fructose and glucose. Their caloric yield is exactly the same in a bomb calorimeter. However, glucose goes through the liver into many different tissues, most notably brain and muscle, and fructose never escapes intact from the liver. Counting calories tells you nothing about these two different metabolic fates.
The consequences of these differences are that glucose serves the metabolism of your entire body, whereas fructose has to be converted to something else before you can do anything with it. That something else is largely fat. In simpler terms, fructose will make you fat much faster than glucose will. Their caloric potential is irrelevant.
By the way, once you understand what is truly important about foods of all kinds, which is clearly not their calorie content, you will be very clear on why calories have nothing to do with being overweight. Chew on that comment for a while (pardon the pun), because this is the kind of clear thinking that will guide you to success in any weight loss or fitness program that works for a lifetime.
About the Author:
People who want to know how to lose belly fat can find excellent solutions online. The the best place to start is Dr. Dennis Clark's free belly fat book.
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