Throw out your calorie counter. Ignore the calorie count on food labels. Counting calories is a simple-minded and useless way to judge what you eat. Why? First off, a calorie is a unit of heat. Heat is not directly useful metabolically. Once a calorie is released, 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.
Nutritionists, medical doctors, fitness trainers, and many other experts who should know better, incorrectly equate food calories to metabolism. This simple-minded reasoning goes something like this: The calories contained in the food you eat provide energy, in the form of calories, for you to live. Not so!
Now that you know what calories really are (i.e, heat), you can understand that the only thing they can do is effect temperature. They are important for maintaining body temperature, but that is all.
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.
If your body was really like a furnace, then the calorie count of foods, such as on nutrition labels and in food lists, would have more meaning. Your body, however, has nothing to do with how a furnace works.
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.
Consider this comparison: starch vs. cellulose. Cellulose is indigestible fiber, whereas starch is a source of food energy for humans. However, gram for gram, they both yield the same exact number of calories in a bomb calorimeter.
Likewise, a calorimeter will derive the same number of calories from equivalent amounts of celery and potato, after correcting for water content. Obviously, your body could not 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.
For a surprising example of what this means, compare the two nearly identical sugars, glucose and fructose. Following their metabolic fate is much more meaningful regarding their roles in diet and health than just keeping track of counting calories that they yield in a bomb calorimeter. In fact, these two sugars have identical caloric potential, 4 calories per gram. However, glucose goes into many different tissues, most notably muscle and brain, and intact fructose never escapes your liver.
The consequences of the different metabolic fates of glucose vs. fructose are tremendous. Glucose serves your entire body, whereas fructose has to be converted to something else before it can move through your liver. That something else is largely fat. A simple way to look at it is that fructose will make you fat much faster than glucose will. The caloric potential of these two sugars 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.
Nutritionists, medical doctors, fitness trainers, and many other experts who should know better, incorrectly equate food calories to metabolism. This simple-minded reasoning goes something like this: The calories contained in the food you eat provide energy, in the form of calories, for you to live. Not so!
Now that you know what calories really are (i.e, heat), you can understand that the only thing they can do is effect temperature. They are important for maintaining body temperature, but that is all.
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.
If your body was really like a furnace, then the calorie count of foods, such as on nutrition labels and in food lists, would have more meaning. Your body, however, has nothing to do with how a furnace works.
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.
Consider this comparison: starch vs. cellulose. Cellulose is indigestible fiber, whereas starch is a source of food energy for humans. However, gram for gram, they both yield the same exact number of calories in a bomb calorimeter.
Likewise, a calorimeter will derive the same number of calories from equivalent amounts of celery and potato, after correcting for water content. Obviously, your body could not 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.
For a surprising example of what this means, compare the two nearly identical sugars, glucose and fructose. Following their metabolic fate is much more meaningful regarding their roles in diet and health than just keeping track of counting calories that they yield in a bomb calorimeter. In fact, these two sugars have identical caloric potential, 4 calories per gram. However, glucose goes into many different tissues, most notably muscle and brain, and intact fructose never escapes your liver.
The consequences of the different metabolic fates of glucose vs. fructose are tremendous. Glucose serves your entire body, whereas fructose has to be converted to something else before it can move through your liver. That something else is largely fat. A simple way to look at it is that fructose will make you fat much faster than glucose will. The caloric potential of these two sugars 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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