How Calories Can Have An Impact On Your Life

When people make a plan to lose or gain weight, they often talk about their daily calorie count and how to limit or increase it.

So what is a calorie? Well, simply put, it’s the energy it takes to raise the temperature of one gram of water one degree Celsius. Now you may be trying to figure out what all that means and how you’re going to come up with a diet plan based on that information.

You don’t have to be a professor of biology to understand the relationship between foods and calories. But, the important thing you do need to understand is that a calorie is energy.

Calories give our bodies the energy needed, to carry out all the activities that we do. Activities such as swimming or hiking do require more calories than involuntary processes such as the heart beat or the metabolism of food.

If you take in more calories than what the body needs to perform involuntary organ function and voluntary actions, then what the body does is it stores the extra calories as fat, and ultimately, the person gains weight.

If you do not take in enough calories to meet the bodies energy needs, then you will lose weight.

Calculating the total amount of calories a person needs in order to maintain a healthy weight often depends on things like your gender, your height and how active a person is.

Most adults need a minimum of between 1000-1400 calories for proper organ function. This minimum rate is known as your resting metabolic rate (RMR).

On the contrary, in order to feel energized and to remain energized throughout the day you would probably neet to add an additional 400 to 600 calories to your RMR. Keep in mind that this is just a starting point and will need to be adjusted accordingly.

Now in order to gain weight, you’re going to have to consume excess energy or calories. And on the opposite side of the coin, to lose weigt you are going to need to burn more calories than you consume.

In either case, it won’t happen overnight. If you starve yourself for the next 48 hours you will not wake up in the morning to find you now have the slender body that you’ve always wanted. As a matter of fact, starving yourself has a tendency to cause the bodys calorie burning rate to drop.

That’s another story but does demonstrate how the rate at which calories are metabolized can change depending on diet and exercise. Whether you are trying to gain or lose weight, it’s more productive to take a long-term approach that includes making healthy lifestyle changes like staying more active and eating healthier.

Jessie Atkinson takes a look into calories at What Is A Calorie. Jessie also explores carbohydrates at What Are Carbohydrates.