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!
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.
Do you know how we measure calories in food? We incinerate the food in an instrument called a bomb calorimeter. When a substance is completely combusted, until nothing but the charred remains are left, it has released all of the calories that it contained. A bomb calorimeter measures how much heat is released upon complete combustion, which is expressed in calories.
The total heat that can be released from food in a bomb calorimeter is well-known for the three main food groups: 4 calories per gram of carbohydrate or protein and 9 calories per gram of fat. However, these numbers reflect only the maximum caloric yield in a bomb calorimeter. This number has nothing to do with what your body gets from food. This is why the maximum caloric potential of foods is, indeed, a nearly useless criterion when it comes to weight loss.
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.
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.
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, you will be clearer about the uselessness of calorie counts for losing weight once you grasp the difference between calories and metabolism. Chew on that notion for a while (pardon the pun). This is the clarity of thinking that will guide you to a lifetime of success in whatever weight management or fitness program that you pursue.
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!
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.
Do you know how we measure calories in food? We incinerate the food in an instrument called a bomb calorimeter. When a substance is completely combusted, until nothing but the charred remains are left, it has released all of the calories that it contained. A bomb calorimeter measures how much heat is released upon complete combustion, which is expressed in calories.
The total heat that can be released from food in a bomb calorimeter is well-known for the three main food groups: 4 calories per gram of carbohydrate or protein and 9 calories per gram of fat. However, these numbers reflect only the maximum caloric yield in a bomb calorimeter. This number has nothing to do with what your body gets from food. This is why the maximum caloric potential of foods is, indeed, a nearly useless criterion when it comes to weight loss.
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.
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.
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, you will be clearer about the uselessness of calorie counts for losing weight once you grasp the difference between calories and metabolism. Chew on that notion for a while (pardon the pun). This is the clarity of thinking that will guide you to a lifetime of success in whatever weight management or fitness program that you pursue.
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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