This thread is prompted by another thread in the exercise forum. The misunderstanding about what a calorie is in that thread really threw me for a loop ... it also made me realize that there may be a lot of people who have the same confusion/misunderstanding. So I thought this might help.
What is a calorie?
At it's most basic a calorie is a measure of
energy. Properly defined, 1 calorie is the amount of
energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 kg of water by 1deg Celsius.
So what does that really mean for
weight loss?
Everyone's
body needs
energy to run. Simply by existing, we burn
energy. The measurement that we as a society have chosen to document that
energy we burn is a calorie.
In order to replenish that
energy, we eat and we measure what we eat by
calories as well.
It's just like fuel for a car: You put fuel in your car and it burns that fuel to run. You put
calories in your
body and your
body burns those
calories to run. If you have a bigger car, it needs more fuel to run. If you go faster, it needs more fuel to run. If you beef up the engine (add muscles), it needs more fuel to run. It's the same with your
body: if you move around more, you need more
calories. If you're bigger, you need more
calories. If you have more muscles, you need more
calories.
However, that's where the analogy ends. You can't give a car too much fuel. A car has a fuel tank and once it's full, it's full. Done.
The human
body doesn't have a "full" mark. So if you give the human
body too much fuel (calories), the
body uses them. And if there's no outlet for that extra
energy, it is stored as
fat. If someone consistently eats more
calories than they burn, they gain weight.
If they want to lose weight, then they must eat fewer
calories than they burn.
Now keep in mind that
calories ARE NOT nutrients. People get the two confused sometimes.
Calories are ONLY the measure of
energy in food.
No matter what anyone might tell you, the ONLY way to lose weight is to burn more
energy than you take in. That means
calories in vs.
calories out. However you choose to do that is fine: if you count
calories, if you eat less, if you eat different foods ... all of those can work. But no matter how you do it, if you're losing weight, you're eating less than you're burning.
It's that simple.
Linear Mode
