How Many Calories in Carbohydrates, Protein and Fat?

How Many Calories in Carbohydrates, Protein and Fat?

If you are counting calories to aid weight loss, then knowing how many calories are in carbohydrates, proteins and fats can help you to calculate how much you need of each of the main food groups (macronutrients).

Protein has 4 Calories per gramCarbohydrates has 4 Calories per gramFat has 9 Calories per gramAlcohol has 7 Calories per gram

At first glance you may think that the best way to create an energy deficit is to eat more carbohydrates, but not all carbohydrates are equal. To lose weight while eating carbs you need to eat low GI carbohydrates (effectively they contain less sugar) which tend to have higher fiber content, which means that you do not absorb so much of the energy.

All food that you consume is either used immediately as energy by the body or it is stored as fat for the future. So, you put on weight when you eat more than you burn, you maintain your weight when you eat as much as you burn, and you lose weight when you eat less than you burn. Understanding this is the key to losing belly fat and losing weight.

If you look at the calories in fat, it quickly becomes obvious why there has been such an emphasis on eating low fat foods in recent decades. Fat has more that twice as many calories per gram than carbohydrate or protein. A healthy and well balanced diet will have adequate macro-nutrients and still allow weight loss to occur.

So swapping fatty food for carbohydrate or proteins means that you can eat the same weight in food and take in less calories. Unfortunately the health food industry has taken advantage of this basic fact and produced many foods that are low in fat but far higher in sugars than traditional home cooked meals ever were