The Ultimate Calorie Counter
By Sheila Buff
()
About this ebook
Say goodbye to crash diets, hunger pangs, cravings, and diet drug! health writer Sheila Buff tells you everything you need to know to lose weight safely and easily, and keep it off, in The Ultimate Calorie Counter.
--At-a-glance calorie counts on the foods and beverages Americans commonly eat, including brand names and fast-food restaurants.
--Charts to pinpoint your optimal calorie intake.
--Expert tips for cutting calories without eating less.
--Great calorie-saving food substitutions.
--Fastest fat-burning exercises.
--How to enjoy dining out while counting calories.
Sheila Buff
Shelia Buff is the author or co-author of many books on medicine, health, and nutrition, including The Complete Idiot's Guide to Vitamins and Minerals, The Good Fat, Bad Fat Counter, and Dr. Atkins' Age-Defying Diet.
Read more from Sheila Buff
The Arthritis Cure: The Medical Miracle That Can Halt, Reverse, And May Even Cure Osteoarthritis Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDr. Atkins' Age-Defying Diet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Resumés for Freelancers: Make Your Résumé an Effective Marketing Tool . . . and More! Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Guide to Asthma: How to Help Your Child Live a Healthier Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to The Ultimate Calorie Counter
Related ebooks
Calorie Counting 101 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Calorie Counting Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe New Atkins Made Easy: A Faster, Simpler Way to Shed Weight and Feel Great -- Starting Today! Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Keto Fitness: The Ketogenic Diet, Intermittent Fasting And Strength Training Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFat Loss for Women Over 40: How to Reset Your Metabolism and Lose the Weight for Good Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Carb Cycling for Weight Loss: The Ultimate Diet Guide For Those Who Want To Lose Weight Fast Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReal-Life Carb Cycling for Women: The Carb Cycling Meal Plan for Fast, Sustainable Weight Loss Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Carb Cycling Diet: Your Quick and Dirty Guide to Carb Cycling for Fat Loss and Longevity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummary of Jason Fung, Eve Mayer & Megan Ramos's Life in the Fasting Lane Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Reverse Diet: Lose 20, 50, 100 Pounds or More by Eating Dinner for Breakfast and Breakfast for Dinner Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLow Carb Diet: The Complete Low Carb Diet Plan: Low Carb Diet Cookbook And Low Carb Diet Recipes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCarb Counter: A Clear Guide to Carbohydrates in Everyday Foods Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDon't Believe in the Calorie Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Best Life Diet Revised and Updated Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Keto Answers: Simplifying Everything You Need to Know about the World's Most Confusing Di Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The 90-Second Fitness Solution: The Most Time-Efficient Workout Ever for a Healthier, Stronger, Younger You Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Complete Guide to Reverse Dieting: A Beginners Guide & 7-Day Meal Plan for Weight Maintenance Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5The Metabolic Storm: The Science of Your Metabolism and Why It's Making You FAT and possibly INFERTILE Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsExtreme Fat Smash Diet: With More Than 75 Recipes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The New Atkins for a New You: The Ultimate Diet for Shedding Weight and Feeling Great Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Perfect 10 Diet: 10 Key Hormones That Hold the Secret to Losing Weight and Feeling Great—Fast! Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The New Atkins for a New You Cookbook: 200 Simple and Delicious Low-Carb Recipes in 30 Minutes or Less Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fitness Confidential Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Diet & Nutrition For You
Bigger Leaner Stronger: The Simple Science of Building the Ultimate Male Body Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Muscle for Life: Get Lean, Strong, and Healthy at Any Age! Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Intuitive Eating, 4th Edition: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Thinner Leaner Stronger: The Simple Science of Building the Ultimate Female Body Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body's Most Underrated Organ (Revised Edition) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Diet Myth: Why the Secret to Health and Weight Loss is Already in Your Gut Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Glucose Revolution: The Life-Changing Power of Balancing Your Blood Sugar Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How Not to Diet: The Groundbreaking Science of Healthy, Permanent Weight Loss Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mediterranean Diet Meal Prep Cookbook: Easy And Healthy Recipes You Can Meal Prep For The Week Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The DIRTY, LAZY, KETO Cookbook: Bend the Rules to Lose the Weight! Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Anti-Anxiety Diet: A Whole Body Program to Stop Racing Thoughts, Banish Worry and Live Panic-Free Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVegan Reset: The 28-Day Plan to Kickstart Your Healthy Lifestyle Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Forks Over Knives Plan: How to Transition to the Life-Saving, Whole-Food, Plant-Based Diet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Carnivore Cure: The Ultimate Elimination Diet to Attain Optimal Health and Heal Your Body Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Noom Mindset: Learn the Science, Lose the Weight Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMeals That Heal: 100+ Everyday Anti-Inflammatory Recipes in 30 Minutes or Less: A Cookbook Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Ultimate Calorie Counter
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Ultimate Calorie Counter - Sheila Buff
Chapter One
CALORIES COUNT
Are you overweight? You’re not alone. Today more than half of all adult Americans weigh at least 20 percent more than their ideal weight, and nearly a quarter of them weigh far more than that.
Would you like to lose weight? You’re not alone there either. At any given time, about a quarter of all adult Americans are on a diet. Americans spend $33 billion annually on weight-loss products and services, but despite all that money, the number of overweight people continues to rise.
In today’s world of fast-food restaurants, convenience foods, and busy schedules that leave little time for exercise, it’s all too easy to become overweight by taking in too many calories and using too few. Reversing the process isn’t quite as easy, but it’s nowhere near as hard as you might think. In fact, you don’t even have to go on a diet to do it. All you have to do is reduce your daily calorie intake by a small amount and increase your daily activity, also by just a small amount each day. When you take in fewer calories than you use—even by a small amount—you lose weight, steadily, safely, and for good.
What you’re doing is counting calories, a weight-loss approach that is the simplest and probably most successful method of all. Teaching you how to track your daily calories and cut back on them easily is what this book is all about.
WHAT’S A CALORIE?
If you’re going to lose weight the calorie-counting way, a good place to start is by understanding exactly what a calorie is.
A calorie is a unit of energy. To be precise, 1 calorie is the amount of heat (another way of saying energy) it takes to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius. So, if you burned a chocolate chip cookie completely and measured the amount of heat it gave off, you could then figure out how many calories the cookie contained. As it turns out, the cookie will give off about 50,000 calories. When dealing with the calories in foods, though, nutritionists make the numbers easier to deal with by giving them in kilocalories. There are 1,000 calories in 1 kilocalorie, so our chocolate chip cookie contains 50 kilocalories (abbreviated Kcal). The kilo part of kilocalories gets dropped when it comes to food labels and the like, so for all practical purposes our chocolate chip cookie is said to contain 50 calories.
By measuring the number of calories in a food, we’re actually measuring how much energy that food contains. The foods we eat are made up of three basic components: carbohydrates (starches and sugars), protein, and fat. There are 4 calories in every gram of carbohydrate and protein, and there are 9 calories in every gram of fat. So, the 50 calories in that chocolate chip cookie come from the sugar and flour (carbohydrates), the eggs and milk (protein), and the vegetable oil (fat) that are in it.
Your body converts the food you eat into energy to keep you alive and moving. More calories mean more energy—but only up to a point. Take in as many calories as you expend, and your body weight will stay the same. Take in more calories than you expend, however, and you will gain weight as your body stores the extra energy as fat. But if you take in fewer calories than you expend, you will lose weight as your body burns fat to make up for the missing energy.
To gain 1 extra pound of weight, you have to take in approximately 3,500 more calories than you expend. And to lose 1 pound of weight, you have to expend approximately 3,500 more calories than you take in.
Don’t panic—3,500 calories may sound like an impossibly big number, but it really isn’t. To lose a pound in a week, you’ll need to expend 500 more calories every day than you take in. That actually gives you a lot of flexibility. You could cut 500 calories from your daily diet, but that probably would mean feeling hungry all week. It’s much simpler to cut just 250 calories from your daily intake and increase your activity level by another 250 calories.
As you’ll discover from the calorie counter in Chapter 6, it’s easy to cut 250 calories from your diet. There are about 250 calories in just two ounces of potato chips, in just one candy bar, or in just three Oreos. As you’ll learn in Chapter 3, there are plenty of delicious, low-calorie substitutes for junk-food snacks. And by replacing empty calories in your diet with high-quality ones, you’ll be getting better overall nutrition while you lose weight.
It’s also easy to increase your activity level by 250 calories. As you’ll learn in Chapter 4 on exercise, a 30-minute walk not only burns off about 130 calories, it gives you a lot of other health benefits as well. Sneak in some additional exercise besides your walk—take the stairs instead of the elevator, for example—and you’re well on your way to using more calories than you take in. The result is weight loss. It’s that simple.
HOW MANY CALORIES DO YOU NEED?
Before you decide how many daily calories you should eliminate from your diet, figure out how many you need to take in. About 66 percent of the calories you eat each day go to keep your body functioning normally. These are the calories that you use to keep your heart beating, your lungs breathing, your digestive system working, and so on. You burn them even when you’re sleeping. About 10 percent of the calories you take in go for digesting and metabolizing your food. The rest go toward physical activity—all the moving around you do as a normal part of your daily activities. Most of your leftover calories are stored in your body as fat.
How many calories do you need each day to maintain your current weight? That depends a lot on who you are and how active you are, but you can use a simple formula to get a pretty good idea.
Let’s start with what nutritionists call your basal metabolism rate (BMR). That’s the number of calories you need just to maintain your basic body functions and stay alive. To find your BMR if you’re a woman, take your current weight in pounds and multiply it by 10. If you’re a man, multiply your current weight by 11. The result is your basal metabolism rate. So, a woman who weighs 145 pounds has a BMR of 1,450 calories a day (145 × 10 = 1,450). A man who weighs 180 pounds has a BMR of 1,980 calories a day (180 × 11 =