Benefits of Counting Calories
The amount of calories consumed by the body has a major impact on its functioning and whether weight would be gained or lost. A lot of people gain lots of weight due to the fact that they do not control their regular intake of the foods and drinks that they consume. If there is too little exercise or none, there can be even greater weight gain. Obesity is natural unless there are some alterations in lifestyle.
When you have exact knowledge of the amount of calories that you are consuming per day, you can have an understanding of what you should do for weight loss. In case your weight is ballooning, you have to lower the amount of calorie consumption or raise your level of exercises until your body attains a proper balance and a stable weight is achieved.
By counting calories, you can easily find out how much you are having each day and whether it is proving to be more than necessary. You can reduce the amount of food that you consume as well as increase the level and intensity of your workouts to make the excess pounds go away.
Counting the calories can also be beneficial in other ways. It can be highly assistive for you in understanding what the body requires in order to be strong and work to its maximum potential. You can also get a lot of worthwhile info on the ingredients in the foods that you eat everyday and which of them are making you fat and affecting your physical performance. Once you come to know about such things, you can be more informed about the best way of eating and staying healthy for as long as you live.
How to Count Your Calories?
When you think of how to count calories, the first thing that you need to do is to determine the amount of calories that you require for maintaining your present weight. After you have done this, you can easily determine how much you need to eat in order to reduce your body fat with every passing week. You can find many online and offline resources that can assist you in doing this and most of these are available completely free of cost.
You should determine the amount of calories that are present in the foods that you consume each day. It is a good idea to keep a journal of the foods that you eat, including various snacks that you consume from time to time. This is one of the easiest ways to count calories. While doing this, you need to be very accurate and careful as even the smallest foods provide your body with calories and have to be kept track of so that the method can work effectively.
Ways to Count the Calories
Books – You can find lots of books both online and offline, which can assist you in calculating the amount of calories contained in the foods that you consume. Lots of people benefit from the use of these resources. Books as reference materials prove to be very useful as they can be taken along while shopping for food items. These can help you avoid buying foods packed with calories.
Online reference materials – The internet is replete with loads of useful information on how to count the calories and lose weight. You can get all the information that you want once you go through these resources. Whether eBooks, websites, health forums or blog posts, you can get useful data from them. You should invest some time and energy in going through these resources and make sure that you cross-check varied sources before using them for reference.
Apps – Earlier, it was extremely difficult to keep track of the amount of calories consumed and one had to carry a pen and piece of paper all day to make a note of everything that he ate or drank. There are many apps available over the web which can be installed into smartphones and used for counting calories. You can just take out your phone and press on a few buttons to note down the amount of calories that you have consumed. There are many calorie counting apps available for free that can help you to change your dietary habits. Regular use of this type of tool can be extremely beneficial for weight reduction purposes.
Harris-Benedict principle – This is a basic formula which can be used to determine the BMR, or basal metabolic rate. It is used very widely for making calculations about calorie requirements and determining how many calories are needed by an individual on the basis of average calculations. BMR is actually the amount of energy that is needed by the body for proper functioning. The human body is burning up calories continuously and burns greater amount of calories when various activities and workouts are performed. There are various factors that influence the Basal Metabolic Rate, such as age, weight, height, activity level and gender. When you use this formula, you can easily calculate how many calories you need to consume in order to function properly and yet lose weight.
Now that you know how to count calories, you need to use it and improve your overall health. You can provide your body with the amount of calories that you need instead of just supplying it with empty calories, such as the type that is present in junk foods. By keeping an account of the calories consumed, you can make the best dietary changes and notice a positive impact on your weight.
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