I have heard that a calorie is a calorie, no matter what. So, why does it matter if we get calories from an apple or a candy bar? I understand that an apple has other nutrients, but I just want to know about calories. Are there good/bad calories...or are they all the same?
I think it very much matters where that calorie comes from... is that calorie made up from fat, sugar, carbs? Fiber? It really does make a difference... your calories should be balanced and healthy... everyone should have a certain amount of calories from fat, carbs, fiber, protein, etc. Now how many each person should have is pretty individual... but yes, it makes a big difference as to where they come from... I'd love to eat candy bars all day, but I also like being able to fit through my door! LOL!!!!!
Where your calories come from matters a great deal. If you have a 300 calorie candy bar, that's lots of simple sugar which will enter your bloodstream very quickly. If your blood glucose gets too high, insulin will move the glucose into fat cells. If on the other hand you have a 300 calorie protein bar, it takes longer to digest and in the absence of carbs, 58% of the protein will be converted to glucose. Fat is another concern. There are good fats and bad fats. You want monosaturated fat which is why fish is recommended. What you don't want is saturated fats like you find in candy or fast food. The main point here is that you want to be conscious of where your calories are coming from cause you want to control blood sugar. If it gets too high, then you'll gain fat and it won't matter if you're counting calories. Calorie counting is only the first step in weight management. It's not the bottom line. Anyone who tells you it's that simple is oversimplifying things.
Yes, 1 calorie equals 1 calorie. BUT there are a few things to consider. If I ate 1200 calories at McDonalds that wouldn't take much to do (maybe a big mac, lg fries and a milk shake). Ok..so that's my day. For sure I'll be hungry again.
OR..I could eat a huge salad, 2 chicken breasts, some wheat toast, an apple, brown rice, some chick peas, tuna fish, and some strawberries throughout the day.
Seems to me the latter would be a whole lot more satisfying.
There's a book I want to get and I beleive it's called Picture Perfect Diet. It shows you (in pictures) stuff like you could eat this one little bag of potato chips OR you could have All this Other food for the same ammount of calories.
At its most basic, if you eat exactly the number of calories that you burn and if you're ONLY talking about weight, the answer is yes -- a calorie is a calorie. A protein calorie is no different from a fat calorie -- they are simply units of energy. As long as you burn what you eat, you will maintain your weight and as long as you burn more than you eat, you'll lose weight. If you eat 1000 calories of chocolate or 1000 calories of broccoli it will be the same if weight is the ONLY thing you're talking about. Eat too many calories and you store it as fat.
But if you're talking nutrition, it definitely matters where those calories originate.
Originally posted by Lindarella: At its most basic, if you eat exactly the number of calories that you burn and if you're ONLY talking about weight, the answer is yes -- a calorie is a calorie. As long as you burn what you eat, you will maintain your weight and as long as you burn more than you eat, you'll lose weight.
This is wrong. If my body needs 1800 calories and I eat 6 slices of pizza at 300 calories each, one every 3 hours, I will still gain weight. Why? Because a person's metabolism has been conditioned to burn more glucose earlier in the day, so if I have that pizza slice in the evening, there's a greater chance of excess carbs which means I'll gain weight.
If you eat 1000 calories of chocolate or 1000 calories of broccoli it will be the same if weight is the ONLY thing you're talking about.
If I eat 1000 calories of chocolate, my bloodstream will be flooded with sugar. Since it can't use that much sugar at once, insulin will store the excess as fat. If I eat 1000 calories of brocolli, the high fiber content means not all of the calories will be absorbed and because it takes longer to digest, glucose will enter my bloodstream at a slower rate, giving my body time to burn the glucose and less chance of there being excess and therefore, less chance of gaining weight.
meily, it is not complicated. Calories, carbs, fat, protein, fiber, sugar. That may seem like a lot of variables, but just think how many variables there are when you manage your money. Bank accounts, credit card balances, 401K, IRA, stocks, bonds, pension funds, mortgages, car loans, student loans. A person's health is just as important as their career or their finances, if not more, and yet we put more effort into those things than we do our health. I blame the education system in this country. We don't spend enough time teaching young people how to manage their health so that by the time they're adults, they know don't know what to do. If kids learned this stuff at an early age, it would not seem so complicated when they were adults.