Almost everything you eat provides your body with energy in the form of calories. Then, throughout the day, every activity you perform requires you to burn off energy, also in the form of calories. When the calories you consume equal the calories you burn, you're eating an energy-balanced diet. But, it's not like you know exactly how many calories you eat or burn every day, so while the concept is fairly simple, achieving an energy-balanced diet actually takes effort.
Determining Calorie Burn
Your body uses calories to support basic bodily functions, like respiration, circulation and cell turnover. These calories represent your basal metabolic rate, or BMR -- the calories you burn throughout the day, not considering extra physical activity. Add to that number the calories you burn during food digestion, termed the thermal effect of food, and the calories you burn from physical activity and exercise. Because your activity level and food consumption varies from day-to-day, pinpointing the number of calories your body needs is like shooting a moving target, but you can use online calorie burn calculators to get a "best guess" number for your daily calorie burn. You can find BMR calculators on websites like Shape Up America and Calories per Hour. If the website doesn't estimate physical activity needs on top of the BMR, you can determine this yourself by multiplying your BMR by 1.2, 1.375, 1.55, 1.725 or 1.9, depending on whether you're sedentary, lightly active, moderately active, very active or extremely active.
Determining Calorie Intake
With the exception of water and diet sodas, almost every food or drink you put in your body has calories. While it takes a little effort, tracking your calorie intake is actually fairly easy. Packaged foods are required to include calorie and serving information on their labels, and most restaurants provide calorie information on their meals on their websites. You can track your intake manually by writing down everything you eat or drink, the serving size you consumed, and the total calories involved, or you can sign up for an online calorie counting service like Calorie King or The Calorie Counter.
Benefits of Energy Balance
When your calorie consumption meets your calorie burn, you will maintain your body weight, not experiencing either weight gain or weight loss. Most healthy individuals want to achieve and maintain a consistently energy-balanced diet.
Misconceptions
Just because you have an energy balanced diet, doesn't mean that you have a nutrient balanced diet. You could achieve an energy balanced diet while eating nothing but candy and fried foods, but your body would suffer in the process. To make sure that you're consuming healthy foods, follow the guidelines of the food pyramid, concentrating on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat dairy and lean meats.
Considerations
If you eat out often, keep in mind that prepared foods at restaurants and in the freezer section at your grocery may contain more calories than listed on their labels. According to a "Time" magazine article, restaurant meals may pack up to 18 percent more calories, and other prepared foods may have up to 8 percent more calories than they advertise. When you're adding up your calorie intake, try to account for roughly 10 percent additional calories from prepared foods and restaurant meals.
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