Calorie Counting - Food Intake

This is a follow up post to my previous post on Weight Loss. As mentioned previously, diet and exercise are paramount to any weight loss program. No less important to dieting and exercise is calorie counting.

Basically, 1 calorie = 4.18400 joules. In English, this simply means that calories are a metric unit of energy. However, when dieting, weight loss and exercise is involved, we normally use a metric of kilocalorie or Calories (with the capital C).

Why is Calorie Counting important then? It's pretty simple actually - and it's also has all to do with diet and exercise. Basically, Calorie Counting is about examining how much energy you consume in your diet against how much you expand in your exercise.

To lose weight, you need to simply expand more energy in your exercise, and reduce how much you consume. Specifically, you need to:

1. Understand your dietary habits (in terms of what you consume and how many calories they contain)
2. Know what food is low in calories and tailor your dietary habits accordingly
3. Work out regularly and with enough intensity to ensure enough calories are "burned"

Cutting back on about 3,500 calories would equate to losing about 1 pound, or 2.2kg. To give you a general idea, women are advised to consume about 2,000 Calories per day, and men 2,500 Calories in the UK. In Asia, I guess that's probably slightly less. Just to give you a clearer picture, I'll list out some pretty common Singaporean foods and how many calories they contain, as well as some general activities, and how many calories they burn. I got this from a helpful site here:

Foods (1 serving of each)
Rice - 242 Calories
Mee Pok - 432 Calories
Char Siew Pau - 212 Calories
Char Siew Rice - 600 Calories
Sliced Fish Soup - 349 Calories
Carrot Cake - 467 Calories
Plain Prata - 122 Calories
Egg Prata - 289 Calories
Nasi Bryani tops the list at 873 Calories.

To put things in perspective, here's a list of some common activities / exercises, and how many Calories they burn. Heavier people tend to expand more energy doing the same activities as those who weigh less, so for the same activity, they burn more calories. Also, obviously working out at a higher intensity would burn more calories too.

Will write more about Calorie-burning activities in a separate post later :)

Live well!
Tim