How Should We Treat Calories

The word calorie has a bad rap. We constantly come across calorie reduced or low calorie foods.

The calories that come from cake are empty calories, which means there’s no real nutritional value that your body can squeeze out and make use of. But in the bigger picture, it’s unwise for your metabolism to become calorie-avoidant.

If you suddenly decrease the amount of calories that you eat, your body won’t try to do more with less. It won’t necessarily provoke catabolism and thus reduce weight and fat cells. Instead, your body will try to keep you alive by slowing down its metabolism. It will simply believe that something is wrong, maybe you’re trapped somewhere without food, and it will just begin to become very stingy with energy.

So what’s the end result? If your body needs 2000 calories a day to survive, and you suddenly give it only 1000, it won’t begin to burn off 1000 calories worth of cells that you have lying around on your love handles.

Instead, your body will slow down its metabolism. It will really try and get as much energy out of those 1000 calories as it can, because it doesn’t want to waste anything.

You’ll feel more tired because your body is being very miserly with energy, and will devote its 1000-calorie ration to essential systems, like blood and oxygen supply.

Metabolically, you won’t be burning off extra calories. In fact, you can actually gain weight by dramatically reducing your calorie intake.

The flipside of this is, you should consume a daily caloric intake that is proportionate to your body size, type, and weight loss goals.

Once you determine the amount of calories that you need, you can provide that to your body via healthy, efficient calories. For example, if your body needs 1500 calories per day, and one slice of double-fudge chocolate cake delivers 500 of those, you can see that eating just one slice will take up a full 1/3 of your daily caloric needs, and that’s not good.

On the other hand, you can see that drinking a tasty fruit smoothy made with yogurt and nuts can deliver half as many calories, but provide you with essential nutrients, vitamins, and other elements that your body needs to healthily do its work.

If you want to know more about it, you can check it out.