Counting Calories: The Pros and Cons

Counting calories – How it works

Kilocalories are defined as a unit of measurement of energy. If you eat one kilocalorie of food, it provides you with exactly the energy you need to heat up one gram of water by exactly one degree. Colloquially, the abbreviation calorie has crept in. In the actual sense, however, this always means the kilocalories.

• To start, you should calculate how many calories you need per day. A calorie calculator will help you with this.
• The more calories a food you eat contains, the more energy it gives you. A single kilocalorie quantifies the calorific value of the food consumed.
• In the same way, the energy that you take into your body as glucose and store in fat tissue can be measured in kilocalories. You consume glucose in the form of carbohydrates. These are found in numerous foods and are converted to glucose in the first section of the intestine and distributed throughout the body via the blood.
• To find out how many calories you are consuming, you have the option of counting the calories that you have ingested with the respective food. Every food has a certain number of calories in its composition.
• You can use nutritional value tables or calorie tables so that you don’t have to weigh every bite and add up the individual calories. This makes counting easier. There are no special apps for this that make the process easier.
• Tables and apps always calculate the calorie content of the most common foods in 100 grams. You can also find the nutritional information on the label or package insert on purchased products.
• If you want to count your calorie intake, you must first determine the weight of the food you are going to eat. You can then use the tables to determine the correct calorie content or have it calculated using the app.

Benefits of Counting Calories

Counting calories only makes sense if you manage to determine the calorie content of all the foods you have eaten in 24 hours. You must not forget anything, not even the drinks and the candy in between.

• By counting calories, you can determine your personal energy balance in 24 hours. You get the balance if you compare the total calories with the calculated energy consumption.
• This gives you an overview if you want to maintain your body weight, want to lose weight, or are concerned about sudden weight loss.
• If you learn to understand and balance the calories as a calorific value, you can use it to get rid of body fat. This will make you stay slim. It has been proven that too much body fat increases the risk of getting sick.
• If you want to lose fat and/or build muscle, you need to burn more calories than you eat. To do this, however, you need to know how many calories you eat and add them up.
• Counting calories makes sense when you know exactly what your goal is. Calculate your daily calorie requirement. This is the total amount of energy your body needs or uses in 24 hours.

the disadvantage of the method

Many people find counting calories extremely cumbersome, which is why they don’t keep it up for long. You would have to constantly go through everyday life with your calorie tables and a scale, which is only possible to a limited extent.

• There are also people who have no feeling for any nutritional values. They either lack an understanding of calories, good and bad fats, proteins and carbohydrates or are completely disinterested.
• Nutritionists often refrain from counting calories as part of a diet. Common justifications are that each body processes and burns ingested food differently. Movement units are also evaluated differently.
• Also, many foods and physical activities can only be averaged to burn calories, so counting calories makes little sense.
• However, nutritional advice also means that it makes sense to count calories for a while in order to be able to better orient yourself in the world of food. In this way, the energy content of the food can be estimated. You can use this to compare them better.

Determining the calorie requirement for diabetics

Diabetes mellitus, a chronic diabetes mellitus, is characterized by an elevated blood sugar level and an associated disturbed metabolism. The basis of the therapy is fundamentally based on the building block of nutrition.

• It is important for diabetics to determine their daily calorie requirements. Counting calories is hip and important. Based on this, it can be determined during therapy or treatment what he is allowed to eat and how much.
• Type 2 diabetics in particular are often overweight. By watching the calories you’re consuming and getting some exercise, you can bring your metabolism back into balance. This often improves insulin resistance.
• How many calories we need per day depends on numerous factors. Basic and performance turnover play a major role, which everyone should calculate for themselves. Age is also a significant factor. The older we get, the fewer calories we need per day.
• It is, therefore, worthwhile to deal with calories not only with regard to illnesses or diets but also with regard to age. Anyone who wants to stay healthy should deal with foods that are high or low in calories.