What Is A Calorie?

Calories are actually a measure of energy; scientifically, the amount of energy it takes to raise one gram of water by one degree Celsius. The term we use as Calories are really kcals or 1000 Calories. We use kcal because if we didn’t, a Three Musketeers Bar would have 285,000 calories and no one would ever eat one!

Calories are measured by an apparatus that burns the edible portion of a food and measures the energy that is released. Calories people burn are measured by monitoring the amount of oxygen taken in and carbon dioxide released during certain activities.

In grade school we learn that oxygen is what we breathe in, and carbon dioxide (CO2) is what we breathe out. Where does the carbon come from? The Carbon (C) that we breathe out comes from the energy yielding nutrients: Carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. The other nutrients—vitamins, minerals, and water—neither contain carbon, nor provide Calories.

People burn most of their calories by their continuous body functions (heart beating, breathing, regenerating new cells, etc). This is called your Basal Energy Expenditure and accounts for about 2/3 of the daily calories burned by most people. When you add to this your movements and exercises during the day (even the process of digestion), you find your total calories expended.

How do we calculate the number of calories in a food? There are a few basics to begin with: Carbohydrates provide 4 calories per gram. Protein provides 4 calories per gram. Fat provides 9 calories per gram. The only other substances that provide calories are drinking alcohol, and sugar alcohols (such as sorbitol, found in sugar-free gums and candies).

You can calculate the calories in a food by reading the label that shows grams of carbohydrates, grams of protein, and grams of fat. The gram weight of a food will be more than the total of the carbohydrates, protein, and fat, because of water weight. Water can compose of up to 90% of some foods (fruits in particular) but is present in very small amounts in high fat foods, such as butter.

For example, a teaspoon of sugar weighs approximately 5 grams. Only about 4 grams are carbohydrate (the rest a little bit of water). If you multiply 4 grams x 4 calories/gram, you find 16 calories in a teaspoon of sugar! Let’s try to calculate butter: a teaspoon of butter weighs about 5 grams. There are 9 calories in a gram of butter (fat). Take 9 calories/gram times 5 grams and find that there are 45 calories in a teaspoon of butter. Hmmm, butter sure has more calories than sugar!

Try doing the math on food labels you find around your house: On a label of bread you might find 12 grams of carbohydrate (x 4 is 48 calories) and 3 grams of protein (x 4 is 12 calories) and the total calories in a slice will be near 60 calories. The slice of bread weighs 30 grams, but the rest of the weight is from the water content.
I hope you enjoyed this little nutrition class :)

The Scale Can Be Your Friend

More research on helpful weight loss tips: weighing daily helps people track themselves and learn when to adjust their diet to maintain their weight! For years the standard recommendation was to weigh yourself weekly and expect one-two pounds of weight loss per week. While the one-to-two pound range is still a good idea for losing, the fact is you can easily gain this quickly as well. And when people slack off on monitoring their weight, that number can grow pretty high before you notice your clothing is too tight.

Weighing daily comes with some caveats:

1. You have to realize that daily fluctuations occur based on your water weight, which can be affected by sodium intake as well as hormones for women.

2. You will also weigh more if you are wearing heavier clothing (obvious, isn't it!)

3. And you will weigh more immediately after a large meal. Picture this: holding a large turkey dinner with all the trimmings plus dessert while standing on the scale. . . if the scale says you weigh three pounds more while you are holding the food in your arms, why wouldn't it say three pounds more immediately after you eat it and your stomach is holding it? It does exactly that! By no means is this the same as eating enough calories to gain three pounds of body fat, (which would be over 10,000 calories). After the food is processed and the waste excreted, you'll be back down at least 2-1/2 pounds!

4. Since day-to-day fluctuations are invariable it's important not to give too much attention to the number on any one day. Following daily weights in a log book, on a paper chart, or even on a computer graph can show you trends over time and help you get back on track when the numbers continue to rise. Likewise, if the numbers continue to decrease over time, you know you are losing real body weight; not just seeing a lower number on the scale due to dehydration because you didn't have enough water one day

So stay on top of your weight as you continue to eat healthy and adjust your calorie intake to get to your goal, and then use this monitor to help you stay just where you want to be!

Can Meal Replacements Work for Weight Loss?

Several years ago, meal replacements were frowned upon by many dietitians and other health professionals. The emphasis was on learning to eat healthy, real foods in the proper portions, and no substitutions were allowed! Now the philosophy has changed. Leading experts in the field of nutrition are offering up this advice: If it works to help you lose weight and it's not potentially harmful, go for it!

That being said, there are dozens of ways you can choose a meal replacement diet!

1. Many diets can be purchased which include an entire program for you. You've seen them on tv with their famous spokespeople. You don't buy any of your own food: These programs provide meals, snacks, desserts--everything. The downside is they can be expensive, and you may not like the taste of their food. You are also highly likely to regain the weight when you go off their program and back to eating supermarket and restaurant food. But it's a good idea to try if it will help you lose weight now. Maybe you'll gain it back, but maybe you won't!

2. You can eat one or two regular meals and substitute the third with a meal replacement, such as a bar or a drink. You know the saying, "a shake for breakfast, a shake for lunch, and a healthy dinner". It can be a diet drink, or it can be Carnation Instant Breakfast Drink. The important factor is that you are getting a good source of important nutrients in a limited amount of calories at that meal time. The reason it works is it takes away the work of figuring out what to eat and how to prepare it. Just pop open a can and drink your breakfast and maybe lunch, too. One of the hardest parts about dieting is all the planning--this takes that hard part away.

3. Another option is to prepare a low calorie frozen meal for lunch every day. This can be considered a meal substitute, just like the Subway diet can. It's a prepared item that you do not have to think about or fix or cook.

4. You can use any combination of these: A slimfast for breakfast, a 6-inch low fat sub for lunch, and a Lean Cuisine for dinner. Just be sure to use the food pyramid guidelines to also get in enough servings of fruit and dairy, which are often not included in these meals. Sound like a lot of calories? I calculate less than 1200. That means you have enough leftover for a 100- calorie snack bag in the evening. enjoy!

Please let us know if you try this! Comment here and let us know which way you did it and what your results were.

And The Best Diet Is ...

Wow! I sure am learning a lot at this year's Food and Nutrition Conference and Exhibition (FNCE). I will have a new entry every day this week to fill you in on the latest research reported by the best dietitians and doctors around the country as members of the American Dietetic Association gather to share the latest findings, newest products, and best tips for weight loss.

Here is a summary from the meetings I attended yesterday:

1. The diet that works best is ... ta da ... the one you can stay on! Yes, research shows that whatever diet you choose--South Beach, Atkins, The Zone, SlimFast, or your own concoction of specially planned meals--if you can adhere to an intake that is lower in calories, you will lose weight. While people were on a regimen that had them eating fewer calories than they burned, they consistently lost weight. When they went off the diet, they gained the weight back. One to five years after stopping their diet, about 98% of the dieting population gains back all the weight they lose during the diet.
So the moral here is, find something you can stick with...forever. Don't see yourself snacking on cheese sticks and pork rinds four years from now? Maybe Atkins isn't the diet for you. Like counting your points? You can stay on weight watchers forever! It's important to include some flexibility, variety, and definitely to include foods you like. Think long and hard about what you can do to change your eating habits permanently, and you won't have to go on a 'diet' again!

2. Everything is proven to be good for you. As I predicted, all the vendors are here showing evidence that prunes--oops! I mean dried plums--are good for you; pork is good for you; nuts are good for you, etc etc etc. Read research with caution. There can be studies showing anything the researchers set out to prove, and companies that sell a product will find a way to prove their product is good for you!
Meanwhile I am enjoying a lot of tasty samples. Some I will bring home for my husband to try and I'll let you know how they go over (I am not a fan of chocolate and peanut butter, and many of the snack bars are made with these flavors).

3. Weight loss is good for your health. Amazingly, research shows this! Over and over again there are reports in the seminars about how even a slight weight loss (7-10% of your current body weight) can reduce the incidence of diabetes in those who are prone, decrease blood pressure, lower high cholesterol, raise HDL cholesterol (the good kind), and lower elevated triglyceride levels. This means if you weight 200 pounds you can lose 15-20 pounds and produce amazing results for your health. You do not have to aim for a goal of 150 pounds, which is a daunting task, and may be the reason you put off dieting! Just shoot for ten pounds at a time and see what changes you can make at your next doctor appointment.

Well, these are the highlights from the first day. More to come later this week!

How Many Calories Should I Eat A Day?

One question I hear all the time is "How many calories should I be eating a day?" This, of course, varies greatly from person to person. It depends on not only your weight but also your height; the taller you are the more you burn because you have more lean body tissue and this lean tissue (muscle) uses more energy than fat. It depends on whether you are male or female; men typically have more muscle mass, so they burn more calories (not fair!). It depends how old you are because after a certain age (around 35) we start burning fewer calories and that number continues to decrease gradually as we continue to age. Finally, it greatly depends on your activity level because if you get a lot of exercise you naturally are burning a lot more calories.

Here's a quick and convenient way to estimate of how many calories you need. Multiply your weight by 15 to get the number of calories you need per day to maintain your weight. If you weight 150 pounds and you are happy with this weight, you need (15 x 150) approximately 2250 calories a day to maintain it. This is a very general starting point, because from these numbers we don't know whether you are male or female, active or sedentary, young or older. It's just an estimate.

If you would like to lose weight, multiply your present weight by 10. If you weigh 180 pounds and you would like to weigh less, a good estimate is for you to eat (10 x 180) 1800 calories a day. Again, it certainly depends on how active you are, how tall you are, and whether you are male or female (a man could lose weight faster on this calorie level than a woman), but it's a good place to start.

Play around with the range of 10 to 15 times your weight. If you weigh 160 pounds, look at the numbers from 1600 (16o x 10) to 2400 calories (16o x 15). You could probably lose a pound a week by limiting your calorie intake to 1600 calories, and you would probably maintain your weight if you ate 2400 calories a day. Remember if you are middle-aged, female, less than 5'4", and not very active you will need to keep your calories in the lower part of this range to lose, and maybe even to maintain your weight.

If you are very overweight (say, 270 pounds or more) you should multiply the weight you would like to be by 15 to find a good starting calorie level. People who are nearly 100 pounds overweight are carrying that extra weight as fat tissue, which does not burn nearly the calories of our muscles, organs, and other body tissue. So a 270 pound woman may aim for (170 x 15) 2550 calories to start losing weight. It sounds like a very high calorie level for weight loss to occur, but people who are this heavy are usually eating more than 2500 calories a day! Therefore, reducing your intake to less than you usually eat will result in weight loss. You do not have to start with a 1200 calorie diet and feel starving to lose weight. Eat a little less; take your time with weight loss. Make it permanent!

Now, just a quick note on where to go from here: how do you figure out what to eat once you figure the appropriate calorie level? It's pretty tough counting calories all day, so take advantage of using some estimates again here. Aim for 1/3 of your calories at lunch and 1/3 of your calories at dinner; slightly fewer at breakfast to allow for small snacks during the day. If you want to eat 1800 calories a day, divide that into a 400 calorie breakfast, a 500-600 calorie lunch and dinner, and a couple of 100-150 calorie snacks! Read your labels and get to know what the calorie content is of foods you eat often. Some websites calculate these for you so it may be helpful to enter your food intake on one such as The Daily Plate.

Post any questions and we'll help you get started!

What's "Good For Me" Now?

This weekend I'm off to the Food And Nutrition Conference and Exposition (FNCE), the annual meeting of the American Dietetic Association. I'm excited because I'll be bringing back lots of information for all of you! I'll be learning the latest research on what makes people gain weight, how the appetite signals work, and how best to help people lose weight.

In addition to the research presentations, there will be food and nutrition companies present by the hundreds. They'll each have a booth set up in the enormous exhibit hall, be handing out pens and mugs and key chains to entice us to walk over to see what they have to tell us, and they'll all tell us the same thing: Why their product is so "good for you"!

There's the Pork Board and The Dairy Council; The American Egg Board and the International Tree Nut Council. There are retail companies like Nestle and Kelloggs to tell us how chocolate is good for you and how breakfast cereal is a good start for your day. The California Dried Plum Board will be there (they changed the name of "prunes" to "dried plums" several years ago as a marketing technique since prunes have a reputation among some of not being very tasty). And there will be new products showcased like Quorn; a textured vegetable protein made from mushrooms that makes a delicious vegetarian version of 'chicken' patties and other substitute versions of meat products. What they all have in common is research to prove that their product is good for you; studies that show how consumption of the food they sponsor will reduce your chance of getting cancer, or improve your eye health, control your diabetes or help you lose weight.

But did you know you can find a study to support just about anything? If I wanted to do research to prove that eating lots of lemons makes my hair lighter, I could do that. There might be 929 studies that show lemon intake has no effect on hair color, but the 930th study might show a slight lightening of hair shade in a small group of women who drank lemonade every day... it might not be a direct result of the lemon intake but, hey, if that's what I'm trying to show then it works for me!

My point is, be careful about what you read and hear when trying to figure out what's 'good for you'. Ask and investigate when you see a study reported on the news that "coffee drinkers suffer lower incidence of Alzheimer's disease". Was the study sponsored by the coffee bean board? Was there more than one study done with the same result? Are there dozens of other studies that disprove this outcome? The saying "don't believe everything you read" is very applicable in relating to news about a specific food and what it can do for you. Don't be quick to judge, don't be quick to avoid one food because one study showed it can make blood sugar rise in some people with diabetes, and don't jump on the bandwagon to overeat another food because one study found it can help your eye health. Constantly changing your diet based on the latest rumors is unnecessary and confusing. If you try to keep up with the latest research on everything from everywhere you'll end up flustered and feeling like you just don't know what to eat or who to believe.

Look for information that has been obtained from reputable scientific institutions, results that have been repeated, and facts that have stood the test of time. Follow the recommendations of appropriate and reliable associations such as the American Dietetic Association, the American Diabetes Association, The American Medical Association, and the American Heart Association. You'll find advice repeated consistently among all of these boards, such as "get plenty of fruits and vegetables and whole grains" and "maintain a regular exercise habit of at least 30 minutes of activity daily" and "consume fats and sweets in moderation".

It's easy to get confused with all the media bombarding us with so much new information every day. Don't let yourself get caught in the trap of trying to keep up with "what's good for you" and changing what you eat and what you avoid because of one report you heard. The bottom line is: there is not one food that will help cure or prevent any disease and, likewise, there is not any one food that will be the downfall of your health.

Follow the adage "everything in moderation" and check with the reputable national organizations for any questions you have on what's good for you!

If you have any specific questions I can clarify for you, feel free to post a comment here for a public answer, or email me at laurie@mycoachlaurie.com for a private response.

Motivation Monday: What Can You Do This Week?

On Mondays we often resolve to start a new diet. We feel guilty for all the calories we consumed over the weekend, going out to eat, having a few drinks with friends, splurging on desserts, and generally throwing caution to the wind. So instead of scaling back we decide to go for the extremes to make up for it: No more chocolate--ever!--we declare; I'll just have a grapefruit half for breakfast and a salad for lunch and some plain chicken and vegetables for dinner from now on; and definitely no snacks anymore.

How long can you really keep up a pattern like that? Depriving yourself and telling yourself "no" all day long, despite true hunger setting in. Trying to ignore the ever-present treats we eye in every store, in every cafeteria line, on every coworker's desk. Have you tried this way before? Okay, so you know it's not going to work!

Instead, try a new idea: Choose ONE thing you can do this week to improve your diet. The goal should be for it to become a long standing habit. Remember that habits don't develop overnight. Certainly you would not easily change all of your eating habits this week, so shooting for a plan like the first one is setting yourself up for failure.

What can you be sure to accomplish this week? Drinking three more glasses of water each day would be a good habit and in no way a deprivation. Including an extra fruit or vegetable serving in your diet each day (or both!) would make your diet more healthy and it's a great goal to shoot for. Maybe you can commit to a 20 minute walk each evening after dinner, or after lunch with a coworker.

If you think these ideas won't help you lose weight, think again. In the long term if you were to establish the walking habit you would be burning an extra hundred calories every day (that's 36,50o a year!) resulting in a weight loss of 10 pounds. If your focus was on eating MORE of something, like fruits, vegetables, or even water, it would take the feeling of deprivation away and be easier for you to follow through each day. Even a positive change that is not diet-related, (like taking 30 minutes a day to relax, or meditate, or journal, or call a good friend) can help reduce your stress and decrease the stress-induced eating behaviors in which we often engage during the week.

Stop the all-or-nothing diet behavior! Find just one new habit you can begin this week. Set yourself up for success and start today.

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