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.
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.
Do you realize how food calories are measured? We completely incinerate the food in a lab instrument called a bomb calorimeter. When a substance is completely burned up, until nothing except its charred remains are left, it has lost all the calories that it contained. When this is done in a bomb calorimeter, the amount of heat that is released is expressed as calories.
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.
For one thing, you could never harvest all the energy out of food. You might get 10 or 20 percent of it, certainly no more than 30 percent. Sometimes you won't get any calories at all. Using a calorie counter tells you absolutely nothing about what your metabolism will do with different foods.
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.
Similarly, your body gets plenty of caloric value from potatoes and almost nothing from celery. However, in a bomb calorimeter, they would yield comparable calories per gram.
Instead of comparing food metabolism to a furnace (calorimeter), it is vastly more meaningful to understand the fate of different foods upon digestion. This entails how they impact different kinds of cells and tissues, such as fat vs. muscle, and what happens to these tissues because of different foods.
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 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 how misleading the calorie count is for different foods, you will be clearer about why calories have almost nothing to do with being overweight. Now chew on that concept for a while (pardon my pun), because it is the kind of clear thinking that will help you be truly successful in whatever weight management or fitness program that will work for you 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.
Do you realize how food calories are measured? We completely incinerate the food in a lab instrument called a bomb calorimeter. When a substance is completely burned up, until nothing except its charred remains are left, it has lost all the calories that it contained. When this is done in a bomb calorimeter, the amount of heat that is released is expressed as calories.
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.
For one thing, you could never harvest all the energy out of food. You might get 10 or 20 percent of it, certainly no more than 30 percent. Sometimes you won't get any calories at all. Using a calorie counter tells you absolutely nothing about what your metabolism will do with different foods.
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.
Similarly, your body gets plenty of caloric value from potatoes and almost nothing from celery. However, in a bomb calorimeter, they would yield comparable calories per gram.
Instead of comparing food metabolism to a furnace (calorimeter), it is vastly more meaningful to understand the fate of different foods upon digestion. This entails how they impact different kinds of cells and tissues, such as fat vs. muscle, and what happens to these tissues because of different foods.
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 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 how misleading the calorie count is for different foods, you will be clearer about why calories have almost nothing to do with being overweight. Now chew on that concept for a while (pardon my pun), because it is the kind of clear thinking that will help you be truly successful in whatever weight management or fitness program that will work for you for a lifetime.
About the Author:
Dieters who want to know how to lose belly fat can find excellent solutions online. The best overviews is Dr. Dennis Clark's free belly fat book.
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