Calorie Counting & Weight Loss

You can eat them, count them or ignore them, but here's why knowing your calories from your onions is the key to losing weight

Many books make calories unnecessarily hard to understand, but the concept is really quite simple. Once you have grasped what calories mean, you have a powerful tool to help you control your weight.

Put simply, calories are just the basic units by which both the energy values of food and the energy needs of the body are measured.

You may be familiar with diets that advocate counting your daily calorie intake. It's now seen as a rather old-fashioned way to slim, not least because you have to weigh things obsessively and eating anywhere but at home becomes a nightmare. It can also make you very boring to be around as you proceed to tot up the number of calories on everyone's plate. You may find that friends stop returning your calls! However, it is really important to have some general knowledge about the calorific value of foods so you can make the best choices about what you're going to eat.

Most foods are a combination of protein, fat and carbohydrate in different ratios depending on the food. Gram for gram, fat contains 9 calories, protein and carbohydrates 4 calories and alcohol, if you're interested, 7 calories. Basically if you eat anything in excess, there's the potential that it will be more than your body needs in terms of energy or calories and will end up stored as fat. Of course it's easier to reach your maximum calorie needs quickly if you cram in lots of high-fat foods, as they have the most calories. Also, the most nutritious choices may not always be available, especially when you are away from home.

HOW MANY CALORIES DO YOU NEED?

I'm going to give you a basic formula to work this out (calculators at the ready!) but it will only be an approximate calculation. It should still be enlightening, though. The reason it is only an approximation is because if we were going to be really scientific, we would have to factor in other precise information. Your gym or health centre can probably help you with these calculations if you want to be more precise.

One of the factors that makes a difference is your age, because your calorie needs diminish as you get older. By the way, this is for adults only, so please don't try this on your kids. Your sex is important too. As men have more muscle than women and muscle burns up more calories than fat, men need more calories just to exist.

Now let's play with some numbers:

First work out your resting metabolic rate (RMR) which tells you the energy you need to stay alive. Multiply your weight in pounds by 10 if you're a woman, or 11 if you're a man. (If you're a metric sort of person, first multiply your weight in kilos by 2.2 to get the poundage.) Next, factor in how active you are by multiplying the sum above by 0.2 if you only do very light activities, by 0.3 if you do a little more formal exercise such as walking as well as housework, by 0.4 if you are moderately active and you rarely sit still or by 0.5 if your job involves manual labour or you play lots of sports. The result is the number of calories you need on top of your RMR.***

Eating and digesting food uses up around 10% of your calorie needs, so, after adding your RMR and the extra calories you worked out for your activity levels together, work out what 10% is. Now add all three of those figures together and you'll have the number of your total calorie needs per day.

To lose half a kilo (a pound) a week, you need to cut your daily calories by 500 (or cut fewer than that and make up the difference with exercise), which is a safe amount to aim for. Although this might not sound a lot, it's easier to achieve in the long term and easier to sustain. If you lose lots of weight very quickly, you're more likely to put it back on and get into that yo-yo dieting spiral.

OK, end of accountancy lesson. Who'd have thought that playing with numbers could be such fun!


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