Counting calories can be tedious and time consuming, but counting your calories to keep your weight in an appropriate range for your age and height can help you in several ways. The majority of Americans suffer from weight problems, according to the 2010 report "Fat as in Fat." Learning how to count calories in a healthy way can teach you about portion control, serving sizes and how to balance your nutrition.
Importance
Eating the right number of calories determines whether you will gain, lose or maintain your weight. Although considering the nutritional value of the calories you eat is vital to your health, eating too many calories from any type of food can cause weight gain. Many books and magazines promote diets that focus on eating mainly proteins or mainly carbohydrates; however, a February 2009 study in the "New England Journal of Medicine" discovered that the most important component of weight-loss was not the type of diet but rather the overall caloric intake.
Benefits
Healthy calorie counting enables you to monitor your caloric intake, calculate how many calories you are eating from fats, proteins and carbohydrates and identify whether you are consuming too many calories from high-calorie foods. When you manage your weight through calorie monitoring, you often feel better about your appearance, experience less incidences of heart disease, joint pain or high blood pressure. The longer you count calories, the more skilled you will become at accurately estimating the calories in foods you eat most often, which can help you make healthier choices at restaurants, social functions and at home.
Calories Required
Your caloric needs vary depending on how active you are each day, your age and your gender. If you need to lose weight, subtract about 500 calories from the number of calories you need to maintain your weight. A mainly sedentary, 250-lb., 35-year-old man needs more than 3,000 calories a day to maintain his weight, and a 175-lb. woman needs about 2,055 calories to maintain hers. Cutting 500 calories from your diet each day will help you lose about 1 lb. per week.
Calorie Composition
Eat more of your calories from lower-calorie carbohydrates and proteins than from fats. Carbohydrates and proteins both contain four calories per each gram, while a fat gram has nine calories. You will feel fuller after eating a 147-calorie bowl of oatmeal then you would 1 oz. of potato chips. The chips have more than half their calories from unhealthy fat, while the oatmeal has almost no fat calories. If you eat a 1,600-calorie diet, eat about 800 calories from carbohydrates, 480 from protein and up to 320 calories healthy monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats.
Strategies
Track your calories online or in a journal to ensure you eat within your allotted range. If losing weight, reduce the number of calories you eat from junk food, cookies, baked goods or fried meats and eat more filling vegetables, grains and fruits. Eat about one-third of your calories in the morning, and the other two-thirds divided between snack, lunch and dinner.
References
- Trust for America's Health; F as in Fat 2010; June 2010
- New England Journal of Medicine: Comparison of Weight-Loss Diets with Different Compositions of Fat, Protein, and Carbohydrates
- Weight-Control Information Network: Statistics Related to Overweight and Obesity
- United States Department of Agriculture: Interactive DRI for Healthcare Professionals
- Mayo Clinic: Counting Calories: Get Back to Weight-Loss Basics
- USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, Release 17: Energy
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