Weight gain and Calories

If you consume too many calories, your body stores them as fat – so it’s important to only take in as many calories as your body needs.

One pound of fat equals 3,500 calories, so if you get that many above and beyond what your body needs, you put on weight. That may sound like a lot, but if you have just 100 extra calories a day (found in about one tablespoon of butter, one egg, one slice of bread or one, big savory bite of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream!, for example), you’ll gain a pound every five weeks – or just over ten pounds in a year!

If your goal is to lose weight, experts recommend that you do so at a slow rate:

Specifically, aim for no more than a pound or two a week. Since, as explained, a pound of fat equals 3,500 calories, you simply need to aim for 500-1000 fewer calories each day than the calorie needs you determined for yourself above.

In the 25-year-old male example, if he ate between 2331 and 2881 calories a day – rather than the 3331 required to maintain his weight – he would lose 1-2 pounds a week. Clearly, this is still quite a lot of calories, and since he’s getting plenty of exercise, there’s little danger of the body going into conservation mode.

You need to get 45-65 percent of your daily calories from carbohydrates, 20-35 percent from fat, and 10-35 percent from protein.

Why should you be shooting for these ranges? First, they collectively provide virtually all your caloric energy (specifically: 1 gram of carbohydrates has 4 calories, 1 gram of protein has 4 calories, and 1 gram of fat has 9 calories), and you use all three, in varying degrees, to fuel your basic physiological functions, as well as your exercise. Your metabolism is cranking along – and you’re burning calories – even when you’re at rest. During those times, your body gets slightly more than half of its energy from fats and most of the rest from carbohydrates, along with a small percentage from proteins. When you’re exercising, the mixture of fuels is modified – and the amounts of each one used depend on how long and how hard you’re working out, as well as the sort of shape you’re in (how well you’re conditioned to be doing the activity you’re doing).

But there’s more to it than energy supply. While carbohydrates primarily function in this manner and are your most efficient source of energy, protein is not only used for energy, but is broken down into amino acids and reassembled into whatever proteins your body needs to make muscles, bones, skin, hair and all the connective tissues that literally keep you from falling apart. Certain amino acids found in protein are considered essential, meaning your body can’t make them; you can only get them from foods you eat. And then there’s fat, which isn’t all bad – no matter how awful the word may sound to you. In fact, in addition to providing you with energy, fats help your body to make cell membranes and certain hormones and to absorb the fat-soluble vitamins A, E, D and K. And like amino acids, some fats are also considered essential and can only be obtained from specific food sources.