A Calorie Is A Calorie – Or Is It?

You are probably a bit overweight or maybe a lot overweight and I bet you have been on more than one diet during your lifetime. I also bet you still haven’t reached your target weight and with each passing year, you find the weight is easier to put on and harder to work off. You are not alone!

We are all used to hearing how losing weight is simple – just eat less and do more. Doing more is often quite easy but most people notice that when they exercise more their appetites ramp up massively and they end up eating loads more food and therefore they don’t lose weight.

Our Bodies Don’t Want Us To Lose Fat

The simple truth is that our bodies hate to lose fat and if we do drop a few pounds two things happen;

1. Our metabolism changes so we use fewer calories meaning we have to eat even less to keep losing weight.
2. Our depleted fat cells send hormones to our brains to make us really hungry so we replace lost fat.

This message to eat more is very strong – it is one of the most primal and basic urges there is and one of the hardest to ignore. Our hunger signals are not all the same. Some people do not get hungry very often and their urge to eat is not that strong. Unsurprisingly these people are naturally quite slim. Others have very strong hunger urges and these people are often overweight. Note it isn’t the moral fibre of these people that is different just one of the many hormone regulatory pathways in their bodies.

Food Choices

This does not mean we can’t lose weight or partially reset our bodies metabolic rate and hunger signalling to help us shift some excess weight. It does mean that we have to be smart about what we chose to eat, when we chose to eat it and how we prepare our food.

Our objective should be to eat food that will make us feel full for longer and to lose weight in a slow controlled way so our metabolic rates don’t change.

What Is A Calorie?

A calorie (cal) is the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius.

How is a calorie measured? Food is burnt and the heat it gives off is used to heat water – how much the temperature of the water goes up is measured to give us the calorific value of each type of food.

You will also have noticed that food labels use kcal (kilocalories). What is a kcal? This is measured in exactly the same way as a cal but it uses one kilogram of water so there are 1000 calories in a kcal. So basically it is just another way of saying the same thing. Because kcal are smaller numbers they are most often used on food labels and in diet plans.

Sometimes you will see ‘calorie’ used and other times ‘Calorie’. The lower case version should refer to a calorie and the upper case version to a kcal.

Calorie Labels

We all use calorie labels. However, they are shockingly inaccurate as a guide to the energy food actually provides our bodies. This is for many reasons.

No one checks food labels are accurate. Independent testing shows underreporting of calories by as much as 20% is quite common.

Calories are a measure of how much energy food gives off when it is burnt. Many types of fibre can not be digested by us. As a result, the calorie label will over-report how many calories high fibre foods provide. The energy food provides is radically different depending on how the food is prepared. Cooked food typically gives us many times more calories than the same food eaten raw. In addition, the effort taken to digest and extract energy from different types of food is very different – 30% of the energy from protein is used to process it whereas only 5-10% of the energy in carbohydrates is needed to process it. So 100 calories of protein will only actually give you 70 usable calories whereas 100 calories of carbohydrate will give you as much as 95 useable calories.

What all this means is that calories are only a high-level guide to which foods are particularly energy-rich. Those calorie counting diets where you measure and control each constituent to every meal are therefore nonsense. Calories in food and the labels we use to count them are simply not an accurate enough measure of the energy we get from food to make calorie counting diets meaningful.

This is actually a good thing as it makes all those scales and calorie calculations a thing of the past. A healthy diet is not one that involves a huge list of food and portion restrictions. It is about consuming a decent amount of high quality, high fibre foods and a large variety of different plants.

10 Simple Food Choice Rules

1. The majority of your food should be vegetables, salads and whole fruit (not fruit juice). Eat as many different types and colours as possible. You will find it hard to overconsume energy from these foods. They are all superfoods!
2. Don’t eat sweets, cakes, or biscuits on a daily basis. Have these foods as a treat once or twice a week. Avoid processed foods and takeaways as much as possible. If you love a takeaway have one once a week but you can still make healthier choices – choose a tomato-based curry rather than a cream one or a stir fry over fried foods.
3. Don’t eat until you are really full. Leave some room in your stomach. If you are still hungry half an hour later, have a bit more.
4. Chew your food. Chewing is a critical part of the pathway that makes us feel full. If you don’t chew your food well you will overeat. Period.
5. Listen to your body. Everyone is different and dieting is hard enough without fighting your rhythms. Don’t feel you have to eat breakfast if it doesn’t suit you. Skipping lunch is often easy for people when they are busy. Skipping a meal is a great way to reduce your daily energy intake and the evidence shows you don’t end up overcompensating for a missed meal later.
6. Have an alcohol and fizzy drink break. Alcohol has loads of energy in it and fizzy drinks, even diet ones, mess with your metabolism and make you put on weight. Have 2-5 days a week when you don’t have alcohol or fizzy drinks.
7. Try fasting. 1 or 2 days fasting or on very low calories is a great way to lose weight without changing your metabolic rate. The evidence shows that you might eat a bit more the following day but nowhere near two days worth.
8. Intense exercise. Work up a sweat and get out of breath at least twice a week for 30 minutes. It will help your body work better, elevate your mood and energy levels and make your body burn fat.
9. Don’t ban snacks – it’s too hard to fight your hunger signals all day every day. Allow yourself a snack when you are genuinely hungry. I don’t mean bored or depressed. I mean when your tummy is growling. Don’t snack on crisps or chocolate though, a few nuts or a piece of fruit are enough.
10. Eat protein. Protein signals to your brain you are full and turns off the hunger messages. If you don’t eat enough protein you will overeat on other foods – so eat plenty of chicken, fish, chickpeas and lentils.