| COUNTING
CARBS OR CALORIES |
 Over
the past few years, there has been much emphasis on weight loss and dieting. The
sudden overload of dieting plans and information has bombarded people with more
viewpoints on weight management than they can handle. Low carb plans, like the
Atkins Diet, offered people a way to eat unlimited amounts of foods that do not
contain carbohydrates. Other plans that focused on cutting fat, allowed a lenient
approach to looking at your diet. Since then, the Atkins Diet has been shown to
be less than perfect, and in the end, quite unhealthy for your body. Worst of
all, it taught users nothing about how to keep the weight off without relying
completely on the diet for the rest of their lives. Above all of these fad diets
that offered easy weight loss by combining grapefruits or cabbage soup with other
foods, or other combinations, a major recurring theme has been counting calories
and/or carbohydrates, and often counting fat.
These concepts show up a lot in literature about weight loss, because they
respond to the major principle of dieting and weight management. This is the
concept of calorie deficit, or the calorie balancing that is required to control
your weight. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this concept, it follows
the rule that your total calories consumed compared to the calories you burn
overall, will determine any changes to your weight. Every day we burn calories,
when we are sitting still, when we are working out at the gym, even while sleeping.
Our bodies require calories to perform tasks, such as breathing and pumping
blood, even brain functions. This is known as our Basal Metabolic Rate. We also
burn calories by performing tasks with our muscles and organs. The typical amount
of calories our bodies burn in one day are 2000 for women and 2500 for men.
This number varies based on your level of fitness, current weight, activity
level, etc. All the food we eat has a certain caloric value that can be added
up at the end of each day to give you your caloric input. If you subtract your
calories burned from your calories consumed, you can see exactly how much weight
you will lose based on this number.
A pound of stored fat on your body is the equivalent of approximately 3500
calories. Therefore, to lose one pound you have to burn 3500 calories more than
you eat. This sounds easy, since we've said that you burn around 2000 per day,
but you have to eat! Your body works on calories, and if you starve it, it will
begin to slow your metabolism to ensure you don't run out of energy. This can
make it even harder to lose weight since you'll be fighting against your body
rather than working with it. Losing weight must be done gradually, in order
to ensure that your body accepts the loss and keeps it off.
Any rapid weight loss will be overcome by your body eventually, it needs to
EAT! If you avoid food for a few days, or skip breakfast, your body will force
you to binge afterwards to make up for the lost calories. In the end, you'll
remain the same weight. If you lose 500 calories per day, you'll lose a healthy
1 pound per week. This is an acceptable loss for your body and will be a healthy
rate to shed the pounds.
This is a major aspect of the calorie counting debate, but a very compelling
one. The idea that you should count fat or carbs is not wrong, but low fat diets
are not necessarily low calorie diets, which is what really matters. You actually
need a good combination of protein, fat and carbs in order to be healthy.
Many people say that calorie counting can drive you crazy and take too much
energy. However, when you think about it, it is not completely necessary that
you take every single calorie into account. Just be aware of the calories you
are eating and make sure to keep it just under your daily requirements. This
will ensure that you stay on the path to losing weight the right way, and you
will have a method that is easy to apply for the rest of your life.
There are plenty of diets that will give detailed lists of what to eat, etc,
but in the end, your body only responds directly to calories. You will obviously
need to take it beyond this and try to choose snacks and meals that contain
healthy nutrients, and good forms of fat, but overall it is calories that will
determine your weight.
You can also look at it this way, many foods that have "low fat" versions
actually have almost the same calorie content. Even though you drop your fat
intake, you won't lose any more weight since you are consuming the same amount
of calories. In a low-fat diet, you won't even be aware of the fact that you
are not helping to lose weight. But by counting calories, you would see the
impact that dieting choices have on you.
In the end finding the right balance of diet and exercise is the only ways to
really take control of your weight and health for life. So be aware of the calories
you burn and eat, and you're already well ahead!
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