Calorie Weight Loss

There's no real mystery to our weight. It's all about calories.

A calorie is a unit of energy. One calorie is 1,000 kilocalories. One kilocalorie of energy heats one gram of water by one degree at sea level. It's as simple as that.

There are many diet gimmicks available but the key to losing weight is taking in less calories than are burned. Calorie by calorie weight loss occurs when we either expend more with physical activity or we consume fewer calories than our bodies need to sustain our current weight.

There's really no reason to complicate a counting calorie weight loss program. The calorie count for most foods is pretty much the same. Meat calories are almost the same, be it beef, pork, chicken, whatever. Most seafoods and shellfish have the same calorie count, too.

Fruits and vegetables vary only slightly from one to the other and starchy grains and vegetables have pretty much the same number of calories, too. A counting calorie weight loss program can easily become automatic once the calorie count of most types of foods are memorized.

There are no good calories or bad calories. There are just calories. Some calories come from nutrient rich sources, meaning they are loaded with vitamins, minerals, and other essential nutrients we simply must have to maintain health.

Other calories are said to be empty, containing so few nutrients they don't contribute to health. They contribute only to our bodies' fat stores, though, so when counting every calorie weight loss will happen faster with fewer empty calories consumed. You won't get so hungry either.

One often-overlooked source of empty calories is beverages. If counting every calorie weight loss will be sabotaged if beverage calories aren't considered.