Everyone has heard of them; you know you are supposed to count them, whatever that means; you know they have to do with food but you just aren’t sure exactly what, most of us are trying to cut back on them to lose weight and frankly you are quite sick of hearing about them. But, what are these little guys and why do they seem to affect our lives so much in terms of how much we weigh? For years now they have been all the rage, in the news, on people’s minds. Now it is time to find out exactly what they are and what they do.

In its most technical terms a calorie can be defined as a unit of measurement that is used to indicate the potential amount of energy provided to the body by a particular food. Also known as kilocalories (= 1000 calories), which the amount of energy that is needed to raise the temperature of 1 kilogram of water 1 degree Celsius. In its simplest form, a calorie can be considered just a unit of energy. In most cases we associate calories with food but the truth is that they can apply to anything that contains energy. An example of this is gasoline. There are approximately 31,000,000 calories in 4 litres (gallon) of gasoline. This is equal to eating roughly around 64,000 Big Macs from McDonalds.

A calorie is equal to approximately 4.2 joules of energy, a common unit energy used in the science world.

In our society we often think of calories in terms of their relation to food. Such as “This chocolate bar has 300 calories.” In actuality the calories that are located on food packaging are actually kilocalories. So this “300 calorie” chocolate bar contains 300,000 regular calories or 300 kilocalories. In a similar fashion, when dealing with exercise and burning off calories, when someone says “You burned off 100 calories doing that exercise.” they are talking about kilocalories.

Now that we have some idea of what calories are, let’s take a look at what they do. As humans we rely on energy to survive. We need energy for every function we perform; even breathing, and for pumping blood as examples. And the energy we use for this we acquire from food, in the form of the almighty calorie. When you think of food in terms of calories, always remember that this is a representation of the amount of potential energy that food possesses. Both Carbohydrates and Proteins contain 4 calories per gram and Fat contains 9 calories per gram, meaning that fat has more energy per gram. These three building blocks are what making up food and if we know how much of each is contained in what we are eating we can easily convert this to how many calories, or energy, we are consuming.

Too often, calories are only thought of in a negative way. If we did not have them we would not be able to survive as human beings let alone function on a daily basis. The problem with calories occurs when we simply consume too many of them. Weight gain and weight loss come down to a simple formula of calories consumed vs. calories lost on a daily basis. Think of it as a teeter-totter, if one side is heavier, for example, calories consumed, than we will gain weight; if both sides remain even than the teeter-totter will remain balanced and so will your weight. So if you want to lose weight cut back on your calories, the amount of energy you in-taking, and leave the amount of calories you burn at the same level. Or you could leave the amount of calories you in-take at the same level and you could increase the amount of calories you burn on a daily basis. Everyone in the world is different and so is there recommended daily caloric intake. But in general terms the average calories/day for a woman is aroud 2000 and for a man are 2500. Exercise and your metabolic rate are two great ways of burning off calories.

This is a quick view into the world of calories but hopefully it will shed some light on this topic for you.