It's all over the Internet . . . this crazy idea that calories come in "types."
I've seen articles claiming that "there are three types of calories: carbohydrates, protein and fat." I"ve seen articles focused on "the types of calories to eat when gaining weight" or discussing "why calorie type makes a difference."
We are talking about people who are doing serious time in la-la land here.
To give you some perspective here, we use inches to measure length, pounds to measure weight and calories to measure energy.
Pounds don't come in "flavors", inches don't come in "colors" and calories don't come in "types." To talk like this just wouldn't make any sense (except perhaps in poetry).
Talking about types of calories doesn't make any sense, but talking about the quantity of calories does. Some foods are packed with lots of energy, some not. Some activities take lots of energy, some not.
In either case, we would talk about these energy amounts in terms of calories.
Some foods are packed with more energy than others. In the same way we expect a bag holding a pound of feathers to be much bigger than a bag holding a pound of coal, we expect for the same number of calories, the pile of lettuce to be much bigger than the pile of grease dripping french-fries.
This fact lays the foundation for some diets and it is also the basis for long term weight control. The feeling we have when we feel "satisfied" after eating is actually quite complex - too complex for us to go into here.
But I can say that the relationship between volume of food and number of calories is very important when it comes to weight control. If we can find foods that supply large quantities but small numbers of calories, we stand a better chance of feeling satisfied while not gaining (and maybe even losing) weight.
To recap then, we now know that there's no such thing as types of calories and that calories are a measure of energy in a food or burned by an activity.
And we now know that to lose fat, we need to burn more calories than we eat. - 16004
I've seen articles claiming that "there are three types of calories: carbohydrates, protein and fat." I"ve seen articles focused on "the types of calories to eat when gaining weight" or discussing "why calorie type makes a difference."
We are talking about people who are doing serious time in la-la land here.
To give you some perspective here, we use inches to measure length, pounds to measure weight and calories to measure energy.
Pounds don't come in "flavors", inches don't come in "colors" and calories don't come in "types." To talk like this just wouldn't make any sense (except perhaps in poetry).
Talking about types of calories doesn't make any sense, but talking about the quantity of calories does. Some foods are packed with lots of energy, some not. Some activities take lots of energy, some not.
In either case, we would talk about these energy amounts in terms of calories.
Some foods are packed with more energy than others. In the same way we expect a bag holding a pound of feathers to be much bigger than a bag holding a pound of coal, we expect for the same number of calories, the pile of lettuce to be much bigger than the pile of grease dripping french-fries.
This fact lays the foundation for some diets and it is also the basis for long term weight control. The feeling we have when we feel "satisfied" after eating is actually quite complex - too complex for us to go into here.
But I can say that the relationship between volume of food and number of calories is very important when it comes to weight control. If we can find foods that supply large quantities but small numbers of calories, we stand a better chance of feeling satisfied while not gaining (and maybe even losing) weight.
To recap then, we now know that there's no such thing as types of calories and that calories are a measure of energy in a food or burned by an activity.
And we now know that to lose fat, we need to burn more calories than we eat. - 16004
About the Author:
Author Stephen Bartlay: weight control enthusiast, researcher and author. You can find some of his diet reviews of these three leading fat loss systems at http://WhyWeight.info/ProductReview
