Toss out your calorie counter. Pay no attention to the calorie count on food labels. Counting calories is a useless and simple-minded way to decide what you eat. How come? Firstly, a calorie is a unit of heat. Heat does not directly guide metabolism. When caloric heat is released, nothing will put it back.
Scientists have a very specific definition of a calorie. The simplest one is that a calorie is the amount of heat that is required to raise a cubic centimeter (milliliter) of water one degree Celsius, at room temperature and at sea level. Saying that you can consume calories is like saying that you can eat heat.
Many experts who should know better wrongly equate food calories to metabolism. This overly simplified claim is the basis for saying that food provides metabolic energy in the form of heat. Wrong!
Since calories are simply a measure of heat, you can see why they have nothing directly to do with metabolism. Calories effect temperature, so they really only help keep your body temperature where it should be.
Do you realize how food calories are measured? We completely incinerate the food in a lab instrument called a bomb calorimeter. When a substance is completely burned up, until nothing except its charred remains are left, it has lost all the calories that it contained. When this is done in a bomb calorimeter, the amount of heat that is released is expressed as calories.
The total heat that can be released from food in a bomb calorimeter is well-known for the three main food groups: 4 calories per gram of carbohydrate or protein and 9 calories per gram of fat. However, these numbers reflect only the maximum caloric yield in a bomb calorimeter. This number has nothing to do with what your body gets from food. This is why the maximum caloric potential of foods is, indeed, a nearly useless criterion when it comes to weight loss.
The concept of calories works for bomb calorimeters, not for your body. The calorie count of foods is a maximum potential, not a metabolic potential. Your metabolism has nothing to do with food calories that are measured in a bomb calorimeter.
In the first place, you can only harvest 10 or 20 percent of the calories from food, maybe up to 30 percent on the high end. Some foods will yield no calories at all, regardless of what they yield in a bomb calorimeter. A calorie counter does you no good whatsoever in evaluating different foods for their metabolic value.
Consider this: in a calorimeter a gram of starch will yield the exact same number of calories as a gram of cellulose, which is indigestible fiber. As you already know, starch is a source of food calories for people. In contrast, cellulose is not.
Similarly, your body gets plenty of caloric value from potatoes and almost nothing from celery. However, in a bomb calorimeter, they would yield comparable calories per gram.
Comparing the metabolism of food to how a calorimeter (furnace) works is not nearly as meaningful as understanding the fate of different foods when they are digested. It is especially meaningful to understand how different cells and tissues, such as fat vs. muscle, are impacted by different foods.
It may surprise you, for example, to compare two well-known and nearly identical sugars, fructose and glucose. Their caloric yield is exactly the same in a bomb calorimeter. However, glucose goes through the liver into many different tissues, most notably brain and muscle, and fructose never escapes intact from the liver. Counting calories tells you nothing about these two different metabolic fates.
The consequences of these differences are that glucose serves the metabolism of your entire body, whereas fructose has to be converted to something else before you can do anything with it. That something else is largely fat. In simpler terms, fructose will make you fat much faster than glucose will. Their caloric potential is irrelevant.
By the way, once you understand what is truly important about foods of all kinds, which is clearly not their calorie content, you will be very clear on why calories have nothing to do with being overweight. Chew on that comment for a while (pardon the pun), because this is the kind of clear thinking that will guide you to success in any weight loss or fitness program that works for a lifetime.
Scientists have a very specific definition of a calorie. The simplest one is that a calorie is the amount of heat that is required to raise a cubic centimeter (milliliter) of water one degree Celsius, at room temperature and at sea level. Saying that you can consume calories is like saying that you can eat heat.
Many experts who should know better wrongly equate food calories to metabolism. This overly simplified claim is the basis for saying that food provides metabolic energy in the form of heat. Wrong!
Since calories are simply a measure of heat, you can see why they have nothing directly to do with metabolism. Calories effect temperature, so they really only help keep your body temperature where it should be.
Do you realize how food calories are measured? We completely incinerate the food in a lab instrument called a bomb calorimeter. When a substance is completely burned up, until nothing except its charred remains are left, it has lost all the calories that it contained. When this is done in a bomb calorimeter, the amount of heat that is released is expressed as calories.
The total heat that can be released from food in a bomb calorimeter is well-known for the three main food groups: 4 calories per gram of carbohydrate or protein and 9 calories per gram of fat. However, these numbers reflect only the maximum caloric yield in a bomb calorimeter. This number has nothing to do with what your body gets from food. This is why the maximum caloric potential of foods is, indeed, a nearly useless criterion when it comes to weight loss.
The concept of calories works for bomb calorimeters, not for your body. The calorie count of foods is a maximum potential, not a metabolic potential. Your metabolism has nothing to do with food calories that are measured in a bomb calorimeter.
In the first place, you can only harvest 10 or 20 percent of the calories from food, maybe up to 30 percent on the high end. Some foods will yield no calories at all, regardless of what they yield in a bomb calorimeter. A calorie counter does you no good whatsoever in evaluating different foods for their metabolic value.
Consider this: in a calorimeter a gram of starch will yield the exact same number of calories as a gram of cellulose, which is indigestible fiber. As you already know, starch is a source of food calories for people. In contrast, cellulose is not.
Similarly, your body gets plenty of caloric value from potatoes and almost nothing from celery. However, in a bomb calorimeter, they would yield comparable calories per gram.
Comparing the metabolism of food to how a calorimeter (furnace) works is not nearly as meaningful as understanding the fate of different foods when they are digested. It is especially meaningful to understand how different cells and tissues, such as fat vs. muscle, are impacted by different foods.
It may surprise you, for example, to compare two well-known and nearly identical sugars, fructose and glucose. Their caloric yield is exactly the same in a bomb calorimeter. However, glucose goes through the liver into many different tissues, most notably brain and muscle, and fructose never escapes intact from the liver. Counting calories tells you nothing about these two different metabolic fates.
The consequences of these differences are that glucose serves the metabolism of your entire body, whereas fructose has to be converted to something else before you can do anything with it. That something else is largely fat. In simpler terms, fructose will make you fat much faster than glucose will. Their caloric potential is irrelevant.
By the way, once you understand what is truly important about foods of all kinds, which is clearly not their calorie content, you will be very clear on why calories have nothing to do with being overweight. Chew on that comment for a while (pardon the pun), because this is the kind of clear thinking that will guide you to success in any weight loss or fitness program that works for a lifetime.
About the Author:
People who want to know how to lose belly fat can find excellent solutions online. The the best place to start is Dr. Dennis Clark's free belly fat book.
