calories
what are calories
how to burn calories

They average woman requires more than 1000 cal (4200 kJ) per day and, the average man, 1500 cal (6300 kJ) per day, to function normally weight loss will take place by restricting the calorie intake at or, below these levels .

Reducing the calorie intake below the bodies requirement by approximately 500 cal/2100 kJ per day should lead to the loss of about one pound/450 g per week.

Brown Fat Fact.

The discovery of the phenomena of brown adipose tissue lends credence to the rather depressing theory that we are all congenitally predispose to be either fat or thin.

Tests carried out on volenteers show that Brown adipose tissue located at specific sites of the body, for example, between the shoulder blades and around the vital organs, contains a high concentration of highly metabolically active fat cells.

How the body Burns Calories

These act as the bodies "furnace" burning up calories/kilojoules rapidly to provide energy and body heat. Brown fact is distinguished by an increased flow of blood through it, and the extra large and efficient nuclei of the cell, the mitochondria, which contained brown pigments and are responsible for fully converting food into energy.

The amount of brown fat in humans and animals is proportionately far lower than ordinary fat - white fat makes up about 22% of body weight, brown fat only makes up 1% or less - but research suggests that in certain individuals brown fat may be metabolically ineffective, or present in small quantities.

This discovery certainly helps to explain why people seem to fall into "naturally" slim or plump categories. Research is currently underway to discover whether stores of brown fat, which are also thought to become less efficient in later life, can be made to function more efficiently with the use of thermogenic drugs.

The search is now on for a drug that could act only on brown fat cells, perhaps via the central nervous system, without harmful side-effects.

Stress chemicals such as noradrenaline, and nicotine in tobacco and caffiene in coffee, known to have a stimulating effect on brown fat.

Meanwhile, studies carried out in America indicate that rats fed on a high-fat meal produce less heat and burn up fewer calories than those fed on a high carbohydrate meal.

This difference is in part attributable to the metabolic activity of brown fat. Calorie for calorie (kilojoule for kilojoule), therefore, high-fat foods are considered likely to cause greater weight gain and high carbohydrate foods.

Many dieters are familiar with Plateau stage weight loss, whereby after losing a significant amount of weight over a few weeks the weight than simply sticks, in spite of stringent dietary restrictions.

The inability to shed those extra stubborn pounds prevents many persons from attaining their ideal goal weight. Another contributory factor in diet failures is also persistent hunger. Both phenomena have been attributed to the theory that we are all born with an inbuilt metabolic rate, or set point, at which our bodies function at optimal level.

The effect of Metabolism on Burning Calories

As weight is lost, signal sent out by the brain (principally the hypothalamus) increases feelings of hunger and the metabolic rate slows down in order to conserve calories/kilojoules.

Dieting can lower the body's basic metabolic rate and studies the Queen Elizabeth College in London show the long-term dieters become metabolically adapted to eating less food, with the result that the rate of weight reduction then decreases.

There is no mystery about this, since the body that weighs less obviously requires less energy is the one that weighs more. Some researchers suggest a rather neat corollary to this adaptation syndrome, namely that abandoning the diet results in rapid rebound weight gain.

The reason for this is either that the metabolic rate is too sluggish to burn up extra calories/kilojoules or, as some studies suggest, the body has to struggle to regain its former weight and establish a normal metabolic rate.

Trying to maintain a reduced body weight by taking in fewer calories/kilojoules than normal seems to place the metabolism and the stress, and rebound binge eating after dieting reflects a response to that stress.

See--
Metabolic Rate and How It Affects Your Weight

What all this suggests though based as yet on empirical rather than hard scientific evidence, is that opting for very rapid weight reduction by going on a crash diet may cause the metabolic rate to become more unstable than it would as a result of losing weight slowly and steadily at a rate of about one to two pounds (450 g to 1 kg) a week.

Easing oneself slowly and gently into a different, but balanced, eating pattern may prove less of a shock to the metabolic rate and the brains appetite centre. Ultimately, this enables you to maintain the new lower weight more easily.

Proponents of this theory of dieting believe it can make you more liable to put weight on, also argue that weight loss can be achieved more effectively through upping energy output, ie, by increasing exercise. There is some evidence to suggest that taking fairly vigourous and regular exercise can raise metabolism significantly over short periods and help you burn off more calories/kilojoules.

Exercise and Metabolic Rate

However, whether increasing physical activity can permanently alter the body's metabolic rate, remains as yet unproven. What does seem certain that our metabolic rate is determined genetically. Scientists hope one day to develop a drug that could be used to crank up a defective or sluggish metabolism without harmful side-effects.

Achieving one's goal weight is not necessarily the same thing as acquiring an ideal figure. Surplus fat often tends to accumulate more noticeably on hips, bottoms and thighs, clinging on stubbornly long after excess flesh has dropped away elsewhere.

Losing weight, but not inches (centimetres), is often the bane of dieting. This is especially true for women, who are often unable to reduce surplus fat below the waist, compared to men who achieve a more uniform weight loss.

Scientists believe the key to the problem lies in the time of fat cells we carry, in particular the inbuilt codes which determine how easily they release or retain fat. Fat cells carry two different types of receptors on the surface Alpha 2 receptors inhibit the breakdown of fat, Beta 1 receptors stimulate its release.

The ratio between these two different examples, women, who carry more that retaining alpha-2 cells in areas below the waist than men. For man, this type of fat cell is concentrated mainly around the stomach, accounting for the familiar potbelly.

Like brown fat and preset metabolism, the type of fat cells we carry are almost certainly inherited and there is little you can do to fundamentally alter your particular quota and location of stubborn fat. Work is currently taking place to perfect a drug which could be used to block alpha receptors, or stimulate beta receptors into releasing more fat, the use of such drugs is at the moment sometime away.

How many calories are there in 65 Figs ?

How many calories are there in 250 sticks celery ?

how many calories are in a mc donalds big mac meal?

How many calories in 8oz Chocolate bar ?

How many calories in Big Mac Fries & Coke Drink?

How many calories are in 8oz Peanuts?

All of these food items have the same amount of calories

The calorie containing nutrient groups packaged their energy differently.

Fat has 9 cal per gram, while carbohydrates and proteins contain less than half that, at 4 cal per gram each.

Figuring out the calorie content of a particular food from its gram weight isn't always a simple calculation, though, because the nutrient groups often coexist in the same foods. Hamburger meat, for example, is both protein and fat, and regular milk contains protein, carbs, and fat. Different foods, moreover, carry a different number of calories per volume.

In foods that are primarily fatty, calories tend to be densely packed, meaning they deliver more calories for a given volume; in primarily protein foods they are less densely packed; and in primarily carbohydrate foods, calories are the least densely packed. For instance, you have eaten too heads of iceberg lettuce (a carbohydrate) to get 100 cal, and a mere tablespoon of butter to get the same number of calories.

Of the three macro nutrients- fat, protein, and carbohydrate -fat is the most densely packed with calories: It has 9 cal per gram, while proteins and carbohydrates only have 4 cal per gram.
Not only do you consume a dense concentration of calories when you eat fat but, the fat you eat is quickly stored, unlike protein and carbohydrate, which are rapidly burned off when eaten in reasonable amounts.

Dietary fat is only utilised if your body needs more energy than it gets from protein and carbohydrate. The key to weight loss is to eat less fat than you require to satisfy your energy needs; your body will make up for the deficit by mobilising fat from its fat stores.

Calorie dense foods contain a high number of calories per unit of volume, meaning that you get a lot of calories for very little food.

Nutrient dense foods contain high levels of minerals, vitamin C, phytonutrients, and other unknown factors that contribute to good health.
Generally speaking calorie dense foods are nutrient poor. (You may have heard them called "empty calories".) Nutrient dense foods are usually lower in calories.

Humans have been genetically programmed to prefer foods that are high in fat and sugar, which are calorie dense and not usually natural.

Our obesity problem originates with than natural desire to consume these foods. The more readily they are available, the more we eat.

The opposite of calorie dense foods are those with low calorie density. These are the foods which many diets of been based. Among the most notable recent entries in the category of low-calorie density diets is that commended by Barbara Rolls in her book Volumeterics.

The theory is that by eating a largely plant-based diet with a high water content, you will be able to eat more food while consuming fewer calories and will, therefore, feel full.

One study done at Pennsylvania State University showed that dieters who ate a cup of soup or a salad before their meal consume fewer total calories. Both fruits with a high water content, non-starchy vegetables, and lean protein are part of this plan.

The term "calorie", as used to denote the energy content of foods, is somewhat misleading.

In actual practice, the unit used to measure the energy potential of foods is the Kilogram Calorie, abbreviated to Kcal.
However, the convenience of modern usage has contradicted this term to "calorie".
In 1968 a universal recommendation was made to use the term "joule" as the standard unit of energy content of foods.
Although the joule is a more convenient, modern usage has virtually ignored the recommended change and persisted with "calorie" as indicating a food energy content.
Those who prefer the more scientifically correct term may convert "calories" to "joules" by the use of the conversion factor of 1 kilo calorie = 4.1 86K joules.

Determination of the energy potential of foods has taken into account losses occurring during the foods metabolism within the body.

Therefore, the figures quoted for a foods calorie content refer only to the net food energy available after the food has been thoroughly digested.

It is well-known that when available food energy (measured in "calories"), is not user lies by the body, it is usually stored within that body in the anticipation of a future need.

This storage is in the form of bodily fat. Thus people come to relate of foods calorie content with the accumulation of excessive fatty tissue around the body.

This is often a valid relationship implying that either less food or more exercise are required, or both. But it does not necessarily follow that all foods high in calories are fattening.

Other nutritional factors, together with the foods general digestive properties, must be taken into account.

For example, many people attributed to nuts and to seeds the reputation of being fattening.

This is a valid claim only when nuts and seeds are roasted and salted and or when they are eaten snacks between meals.

But when raw nuts or seeds are eaten in suggested quantities with meals, they provide important sources of protein and are certainly not fat producing.

Quantities of up to 4 of 5 ounces of nuts per day, or up to 3 ounces of seeds per day with fresh vegetables or fruits , will provide the average person's basic daily protein requirements and offer a delicious meal from which all nutrients (including calories) will be utilised.

In the late 1700s a brilliant French scientist named Antoine Laurent Lavoisier proves that the food you eat is gently burned (oxidised) in your body with the help of oxygen contained in the air that you breezed into your lungs. He proves that certain parts of foods provide the body heat.

Lavoisier, and a colleague by the name of Pierre Simon Laplace, even developed a method by which the heat producing value of foods could be measured.

Later, an American by the name of then Thompson devised a unit of measurement for the heat which food producers in the body.
This unit was called the calorie-the very same calorie that overweight people have been reckoning with ever since.

Once the important role played by food in creating body heat was understood, scientific circles began to talk of foods they'll you only in terms of its calorie content, it heat producing potential is. The calorie became a tyrant; it was to rule most physicians and dieticians until the world War of 1914.

Large and butter, with approximately 250 cal per ounce, became premium foods. Carrot spinach onions and other vegetables which have a low calorie content, sank to an uncharted depths in scientific esteem.

Sugar (approximately 120 cal per ounce) was deemed to be a "wonderful" food; ready to eat cereals (120 cal per ounce) became the "finest nourishment" anyone could partake of!

The situation became worse when, in the 1890’s, a German professor of physics by the name of Max Rubner proved (by some very complicated experiments on dogs) that he derived from foods is transformed into the energy which makes body motion is possible.

The calorie advanced in scientific favour because the calorie rating of the food determined it energy value, and energy seemed to be synonymous with life itself.

Competition to supply the public with calories now became so keen that cereal manufacturers literally set up nights trying to figure out ways to make their products different.

Wheat, corn, right and rice with shredded, flaked, crumbled and even blown through "guns" most fruits and practically all vegetables were outcasts amongst the food groups.

Such was the scientific food knowledge cheaply governed eating standards just a couple of generations ago.

How many calories are in 8 Baked Potatoes ?

All of these foods contain - 1300 calories !

How exercise burns extra Calories

There is another compelling reason to exercise. Amino acids replenish the protein that makes up about 30% of your muscle mass.

And exercise enables muscles to absorb amino acids more readily. If you follow a diet with out exercise space-no matter what kind of diet it is space-some of the weight you lose will be muscle.

If you return to your old eating habits and still don't exercise you will regain weight in the form of fat not muscle. If you exercise whilst dieting, however, you will build muscle and improve your calorie burning efficiency.

Muscle burns many more calories than does any other tissue. Performing the same ordinary activity, a muscular two hundred pound person may burn as many as 800 cal more per day than a two hundred pound person who was out of shape.

One of the muscles you strength and while exercising is your heart. It expands likeable burn when filled with blood, and contracts to force the blood out through your arteries.

Sustained activity increases the flow of blood to this organ, raising the resistance it encounters when contracting and making it stronger.

The result is, not only greater cardiovascular fitness, but also improved capacity for exercise -the type of exercise that will help you to lose weight.

The best exercise for burning calories is aerobic, the sort of exercise that makes you feel winded and increases the efficiency with which your heart sends oxygenated blood to your muscles.

Weightlifting is also effective because it builds calorie burning muscle.

How Much Exercise Do You Need?

The generally accepted prescription for exercise is 30 minutes of moderate exercise most days of the week walking, like swimming, running, bicycling, and any number of other activities that gets you winded, is aerobic.

People who have lost thirty pounds or more and kept them off for at least a year 98% of those people follow a regular walking exercise routine.

The advantages of walking are very attractive; not only does it burn calories but it is cheap, convenient, easy on the joints, and almost anyone can do it, either alone or in sociable groups.

The generally accepted amount of beneficial walking is 45 min per day.

How fast will you lose weight?

A hundred and fifty pound person walking 15 min miles may burn up to 300 cal in 45 min. About 3500 cal = 1 pound of body fat.

In theory that means this person could lose a pound every he 11 to 13 days.

How fast you will lose weight depends on your age, starting weight, diet, and metabolism.

One person could take months to lose the first five pounds, then lose twenty pounds in six months.

Another may lose two pounds a month from the very beginning.

According to the American College of sports medicine, people who work out at a higher intensity space-75 to 85% of their maximum heart rate space-for 20 min may well burn as many calories as a person walking the 45 min.

calorieswhat are calories how to burn calories