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Toss out your calorie counter. Pay no attention to the calorie count on food labels. Counting calories is a useless and simple-minded way to decide what you eat. How come? Firstly, a calorie is a unit of heat. Heat does not directly guide metabolism. When caloric heat is released, nothing will put 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.
The maximum amount of heat released from different food groups is 4 calories per gram of carbohydrate, 4 calories per gram of protein, and 9 calories per gram of fat. It is ridiculous to think that these food groups provide you with that much heat. The maximum number of calories from foods, as measured in a bomb calorimeter, is simply useless and misleading when it comes to weight loss.
If your body behaved like a bomb calorimeter, then the calorie count of foods, such as those on food nutrition labels, would have more meaning. Your metabolism, however, has nothing to do with what happens in a bomb calorimeter.
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.
Consider this: in a calorimeter a gram of starch will yield the exact same number of calories as a gram of cellulose, which is indigestible fiber. As you already know, starch is a source of food calories for people. In contrast, cellulose is not.
Furthermore, a calorimeter will measure the same number of calories from equivalent amounts of potato and celery (correcting for water content). Obviously, your body couldn't possibly do that.
Comparing the metabolism of food to how a calorimeter (furnace) works is not nearly as meaningful as understanding the fate of different foods when they are digested. It is especially meaningful to understand how different cells and tissues, such as fat vs. muscle, are impacted by different foods.
It may surprise you, for example, to compare two well-known and nearly identical sugars, fructose and glucose. Their caloric yield is exactly the same in a bomb calorimeter. However, glucose goes through the liver into many different tissues, most notably brain and muscle, and fructose never escapes intact from the liver. Counting calories tells you nothing about these two different metabolic fates.
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 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.
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.
The maximum amount of heat released from different food groups is 4 calories per gram of carbohydrate, 4 calories per gram of protein, and 9 calories per gram of fat. It is ridiculous to think that these food groups provide you with that much heat. The maximum number of calories from foods, as measured in a bomb calorimeter, is simply useless and misleading when it comes to weight loss.
If your body behaved like a bomb calorimeter, then the calorie count of foods, such as those on food nutrition labels, would have more meaning. Your metabolism, however, has nothing to do with what happens in a bomb calorimeter.
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.
Consider this: in a calorimeter a gram of starch will yield the exact same number of calories as a gram of cellulose, which is indigestible fiber. As you already know, starch is a source of food calories for people. In contrast, cellulose is not.
Furthermore, a calorimeter will measure the same number of calories from equivalent amounts of potato and celery (correcting for water content). Obviously, your body couldn't possibly do that.
Comparing the metabolism of food to how a calorimeter (furnace) works is not nearly as meaningful as understanding the fate of different foods when they are digested. It is especially meaningful to understand how different cells and tissues, such as fat vs. muscle, are impacted by different foods.
It may surprise you, for example, to compare two well-known and nearly identical sugars, fructose and glucose. Their caloric yield is exactly the same in a bomb calorimeter. However, glucose goes through the liver into many different tissues, most notably brain and muscle, and fructose never escapes intact from the liver. Counting calories tells you nothing about these two different metabolic fates.
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 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:
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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