What is a calorie?
Happy Tuesday!
We have gone through the WHYs of eating (and will continue to do so further) and are now pivoting to talking about the WHATs to eat.
Our biggest goal is empowerment through education within our practice. Empowering our clients to make their own choices and not rely on misinformation or social media to make decisions for them.
Today, we are diving in to calories. What are they? Are they bad? Are they good? Do we need a certain amount each day?
Let’s start with Webster. A calorie is a unit of energy equivalent to the heat energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 °C.
Calories are a way of keeping track of the body’s energy budget.
Everything we consume has a calorie count. The amount of energy the item stores in its chemical bonds.
When we consume food, we release the energy or calories to be stored until our body needs it.
We use calories in 3 different ways:
10% goes to digestion
20% goes to physical activity
70% supports our basic body functions (heart pumping, lungs working, brain functioning etc)
Our basic body functions are also known as your basal metabolic rate or resting metabolic rate. This varies GREATLY person to person based on sex, muscle mass, intestine length, etc.
This is why it is so hard to determine the exact amount of calories a person needs.
Our stage of life helps determine these needs. Someone running a marathon would have higher calorie needs during training. Pregnancy requires slightly more calories with hormonal changes. The elderly naturally have a slower metabolism so would require less than their younger year bodies.
Another fun fact: calorie counts on nutrition facts labels contain how much energy the food contains NOT how much energy you can actually get out of it. There are many factors that alter the energy input during digestion such as fiber, protein, certain vitamins and minerals, etc.
To paint a clearer picture: If we were eating pizza with our friends and ate the same pizza and same amount of slices, we would all be getting a different amount of calories. Enzyme levels, gut bacteria, intestinal length all play a role here in determining how many calories each of us is consuming.
Everybody’s ability to extract energy from food is completely different.
A calorie is a great measure of energy but a little more complicated then it may seem to calculate them precisely for each of us.
So remember: calories are our friends! They are what gives us the energy to play with our children, excel in our careers, enjoy our friends and family, and live life to the fullest. You can’t live without them.