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How To Count Calories – Using Calorie Counters

Counting calories is now easier than ever. Not so long ago the only way to record how many calories you had consumed was to use calorie tables in books and then manually calculate how many calories you had taken in. Today there are many computerized calorie counters. While there are many tools on the Internet, there also seems to be a new smartphone application each week, with tools for iPhone, Android and tablets.

The wonderful thing about modern calorie counters is that all you need to do is input the amount of food you have eaten and the computer will take care of the rest. Some will provide an estimation of nutrient intake too.

iPhone Apps

MyFitnessPal - claimed to be the easiest app to use on the iPhone to track your diet and fitness. It has a huge database of over a million foods and a user friendly food and exercise log to help you keep track of what you are eating and doing.Calorie Tracker, this is a free app which calculates fat, protein and carbohydrate intake as well as calories. This is a clever app as it will display the proportion of fats, proteins and carbohydrates that you are eating so that you can attempt to stay within the idea zone for each. It supports both scientific and standard values.

Android Apps

Fast Food Calorie Counter this specifically records calories from fast food meals.Calorie Counter by FatSecret - this app displays full nutritional facts for a huge range of foods and meals.Absolute Fitness a simple user interface provides easy diet logging and management. You can export the data too

How Many Calories Do You Need to Reduce By?

This is a general guide to the amount of calories you need to be in deficit to lose a specific amount of weight:

If you are in a deficit of 500 calories per day you will lose approximately 1 pound per weekA calorie deficit of 750 calories will help you lose about 1.5 pounds per weekA carlorie deficit of 1000 calories will help you lose about 2 pounds per week (about 1 kg weight loss per week)To lose 20 pounds in a year you will need to eat 200 calories less per day than you were eating when your weight was stableTo lose 20 pounds in 1 month you would need to eat 2400 calories less per day. This is why very overweight people who have been eating around 4000 calories per day can lose weight quicker than lighter people, as they can reduce their intake by 2400 calories per day and still eat enough to sustain themselves

Simply Eating Less Does Not Work

OK, simply eating less will work, but not as effectively as eating less and exercising. When you consistently eat less food than you need you are in an energy deficit and you will lose weight, but your metabolism with slow down, i.e. your resting metabolism rate will reduce.

This means that you will burn less energy throughout the day, which reduces your requirements even more, so you stop losing weight. Then you have to eat even less, and the cycle continues until a point where you are not receiving enough nutrients and vitamins to maintain a healthy body.

By exercising while dieting you keep your metabolism high and you build new muscle tissue which requires energy. By keeping your metabolism high you can more easily adjust your diet slightly to make changes to your daily energy deficit.

1500 Calories a Day With Exercise

So if your aim is to lose 1 pound a week until you reach your 100 pound weight loss, then you should eat around 1500 calories a day and exercise on a regular basis.

Your diet should be healthy and balanced. That means you should avoid sugar and saturated fats, and instead eat mostly low GI vegetables, fresh fruits, lean meat, fish and drink mostly water, tea and coffee.

For exercise you should aim to walk for a minimum of 15 minutes every single day. Plus also perform a 30 minute workout 3 times a week, or as you get fitter you can do a shorter but more intensive workout 5-6 times a week. This helps you to maintain a higher metabolism and so burn more fat.

It is important to see your doctor before you start a weight loss plan that will see you losing so much weight. If you have not done any exercise for many years then it is wise to get some professional medical advice. Generally a walking program is suitable for most people that are very overweight

What to do if you are 100 pounds over weight

Most people that want to lose weight only have 20 or 30 pounds to lose. However, as obesity rates continue to rise, more and more people need to lose up to, and often over, 100 pounds of body fat to reach their ideal, healthy weight.

100 pounds (or 45kg, just over 7 stone) is a huge amount of weight to shift. But it is certainly not impossible. In fact, Anthony Hopkins lost 80 pounds over a 2 year period just by walking and eating a low calorie but healthy diet. Sir Anthony only lost 2/3 of a pound a week, so following his 1800 calorie a day diet could take up to 3 years to lose 100 pounds.

To lose 100 pounds within a 2 year period requires you to average 1 pound a week. This is possible by consuming approximately 500 calories a day less than your daily requirement.

When you are so overweight, losing weight is actually easy, in theory. All you need to do is consume less calories than the average person of your age requires to sustain their current weight. However, as you carry so much excess weight, you should actually lose weight quicker than normal to start with. The secret to successful weight loss is to stick to the plan.

For example, an average 50 year old woman that is sedentary (never exercises, hardly walks) requires around 1800 calories a day. If you are 100 pounds overweight you are probably eating at least double this every day. So the first step is to reduce your diet down to 1800 calories a day, but make sure those 1800 calories are all healthy foods – fresh fruits, vegetables, salads, lean meats, fish and dairy.

As soon as you start doing some moderate exercise, say walking everyday plus some structured exercise 3 times a week, your daily needs increase to 2000 calories. Anthony Hopkins consumed 1800 calories a day, which is certainly not a very restrictive diet.

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

How to loose weight using calories count?(calorie deficit)

Calories restriction work really well when they are followed properly. An average adult require approximately between 1,800 -2000  calories per day.However, there are two problems we encounter when using this method, People often overestimate the amount of food that they require, and People underestimate the amount of restriction that is required, and healthy.

In weight loss studies carried out by health scientists, women that ate 1000 calories less than their daily requirement lost around 2 pounds per week. This is considered a healthy and sustainable level of weight loss. The same rule applies to men. So, how many calories should you be eating?