CONTROLLING YOUR CALORIES INTAKE

Weight loss is about controlling your calories intake versus the calories you burn or use up. In simple terms, calories are the units of energy contained within any food. When we consume food the energy within the food is released and is either used up or stored in your body as fat. The body needs certain amount of fat reserve to survive or the body can not function properly (in extreme cases it can even be fatal). Therefore, it is important to balance the calories you take in against the calories you burn. A a safe weight loss diet will almost always cater for the ratio between calories intake and the amount used.

How do you count the calories you eat or drink? 

Counting calories is important to any effective weight loss diets. Most foods we buy from supermarkets have their calories per 100g shown on their packaging (whether it is meat, chicken, duck or bread etc.). So there really is no excuse for over consumption of excess calories.

If, however you tend to purchase raw foods or vegetables that do not have their calories displayed on them, then you can either visit Calorie Calculator, or, there are plenty of books in the market that detail exactly how much calories each raw ingredient contains. On average women and men's calories intake should be 2000 for women per day, 2500 for men per day.

So, as you go about your daily routine, you will be burning either 2000 or 2500 calories per day (depending on your gender). Therefore to achieve an effective weight loss diet, you would need to make sure your daily calorie intake is less than either 2000 (if you are female) or 2500 (if you are male).

However, if you are exercising (for example jogging for weight loss, swimming for weight loss or just normal walking to help you loose weight) then you will need to increase your daily calorie intake slightly more than the recommended daily calories intake stated above.

For a weight loss program to be safe, your daily calories intake should only slightly be less than the daily calories you burn (about 200 calories is ideal). If you create too big a gap between the calories you burn and the calories you take in then you will ultimately either harm your body and/or would more than likely put the weight straight back on as soon as you are off the diet!

Also, do not be tempted to achieve the "calorie deficiency" in your body by starving yourself. Weight loss achieved through too great a calorie deficiency in your body will result in some serious health consequences. A drastic deficiency in calories will have the following consequences:

a. The body's metabolic rate slows down to conserve energy (and its for this reason that wrong weight loss diets will actually cause you to put on weight as soon as you come off them). Once your metabolic rate slows down then as soon as you eat any food, a large amount of the food's energy will be stored as body fat! This is because the body is trying to safe guard itself from the stages listed below.

b. Your body will then start to "cannibalize" its muscles, any carbohydrate in your body and the stored fat to sustain its normal function.

c. Then the body will drastically reduce the supply of nutrients to non-essential organs and parts (such as nails, hair etc).

If the calorie deficiency is still too great for the body to cope with, it will then start to shut down more vital organs to ensure that the critical organs can at least survive for a little longer. So the body will sacrifice organs such as liver or kidneys to sustain the heart and the brain.

Ultimately, it will not have enough energy to sustain the heart or the brain either, and they too will eventually fail to function. This is exactly why people who are anorexic are at risk!