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Everyday Fitness
with Pamela Peeke, MD, MPH, FACP
Living life to the fullest is all about striving for a mind-body balance every day. Achieve a mental, nutritional, and physical transformation for life with tips from wellness expert Pamela Peeke, MD.
Monday, March 7, 2011
How to Become a Calorie Master
“Oh, NO! Don’t make me count calories. Can’t I just eat healthy foods and be OK?”This is one of the frequent responses I get when I mention the importance of knowing how much you’re actually eating each day. I also get the “I’ve done that before. It didn’t get me anywhere and it was such a pain. Just one more thing I’ve got to do.” Since just about everyone’s been on some kind of “diet”, many people feel like they’ve been there and done that with calorie counting. For that matter, it’s almost un-American not to have counted calories at some point in your weight management journey. And presently, some people in the nutrition community even avoid the topic of calories altogether, focusing instead on “healthy eating”. Is calorie counting a throw-back to the dark ages of weight management? Or is it your key to achieving your optimal weight? Do you really have to count calories?
Yep, but with some qualifiers.
Beginners need to take the time to learn how many calories they’re eating. As you achieve success and become more experienced over time, there’s less of a need to count every calorie. So, the great news is that with baseline learning, practice and success, you can one day graduate and become a calorie master. So, for those beginning on your journey, or those who’ve plateaued and want to get back on track, here are some calorie basics to help guide you.
I’m a real advocate of promoting caloric literacy. Most people are clueless about what they’re putting in their mouths. So I’m going to make this easy to understand.
A calorie is a unit of energy. It’s the currency of weight management. There are:
4 calories in every gram of protein4 calories in every gram of carbohydrate9 calories in every gram of fat
If you ate some random food that had 10 grams of fat, 10 grams of protein and 10 grams of carb, you’d be consuming 170 calories— (10×9) +(10 x 4) + (10 x 4) = 170.
If you’re good with the concept of a financial budget, you’ll be fine with caloric budgets. The way you handle your bank currency is the same as how you’ll manage your calorie currency. This is why I have a problem with people who advocate winging it and thinking they don’t have to have at least some basic understanding of how much they’re eating each day.
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