What Is A Calorie Anyway ?
More and more confusion in trying to loose weight comes from our knowledge of Calories and counting them. Some ill informed people say not to count calories while the other extreme are those who treat it like a bookeeping job. They are hyper attentive to any changes in the number of calories they take in or loose from their body. A process that can make loosing weight even more "work" than it need be.
The term calorie refers to a non-SI unit of energy, where SI is “The International System of Units (abbreviated SI from the French phrase, Système International d'Unités”). There are two common but different meanings: one is used in food and nutrition, the other was formerly widely used in chemistry, and a food calorie represents 1000 chemistry calories. The food calorie is sometimes capitalized as Calorie to distinguish it from the chemistry calorie; however, this capitalization is rarely observed in practice.
The Nutrition Calorie
Nutritionists measure the energy content of food in "calories" (sometimes capitalized and abbreviated as Cal or sometimes C, or abbreviated kcal as if small calories were being used), where each food calorie represents 4,186 joules. This is equivalent to 1000 of the calories used in chemistry, and thus the food Calorie would be called a kilocalorie if small calories were being used. However, in chemistry calories have been deprecated as a scientific unit of measure in favor of joules, and therefore in common modern usage the word "calorie" usually refers to a food calorie.
This situation provides two ways of talking about the amount of calories in food which look quite different but that express the exact same amount of energy. One may say that dietary fat has nine kilocalories (kcal) per gram, while proteins and carbohydrates have four kcal per gram, or, one may say that fat has nine Calories per gram while carbohydrates and proteins have four Calories per gram.
The amount of food energy in a particular food is measured by completely burning the food in a bomb calorimeter, a method known as direct calorimetry
Dieticians recommend counting calories to avoid obesity. The government of the United Kingdom recommends consumption of no more than 2000 Calories (2000 kcal) by women each day and 2500 Calories (2500 kcal) by men each day.
The Physics and chemistry calorie
In physics or chemistry, a calorie (abbreviated cal) is a unit of energy that equals the amount of heat necessary to raise the temperature of one gram of water by 1 degree Celsius, at a pressure of 1 atm. This amount of heat depends somewhat on the initial temperature of the water, which results in various different units sharing the name of "calorie" but having slightly different energy values:
· the 15 °C calorie,
· the 4 °C calorie,da
· the mean 0 °C to 100 °C calorie,
· the International Steam Table calorie,
· the thermochemical calorie,
The slight variations in these units can be seen if you convert them to joules. For example, one 15 °C calorie is the amount of heat necessary to raise the temperature of 1 g of water from 14.5 °C to 15.5 °C. This is approximately equal to 4.1855 J or 3.968×10-3 Btu. The International Steam Table calorie is approximately equal to 4.1868 J and the thermochemical calorie 4.184 J.
Of these various units, what is most commonly meant by calorie in contemporary English text is the 15 °C calorie. The nutritional Calorie represents 1000 of these 15 °C calories.
Your weight loss journey is not going to be completed overnight. Unfortunately, weight loss is much harder than weight gain. Weight Loss is an attainable goal, for most people, but it does require a certain amount of self-discipline combined with a long term strategy. Keep going and stay active.
For more information and help reaching your own Weight Loss goals please go to Weight Loss Help Today
If you are looking for ways to relax and stretch on your journey to a lean thinner you or if what might help is the inner peace that a person can be afforded by practicing Yoga regularly. There is a vast amount of instruction and information at A Better Me Now. A site we have devoted strictly to Yoga.
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