Calories : Your friend or foe ?

What exactly are Calories and are you afraid of them?

One can admit now that during the lock down everyone has started eating way too much. It’s just that we don’t have much to do and we are bored, we visit our favorite place of the house: The kitchen (way to heaven) very often.

Now putting in so much of extra kcal (kilo calorie) and no exercise makes us...ummm, how should I put it in good words? A chubby person. It isn’t wrong to be a fat, what ones concern should be is that being fat invites a lot of laziness along with unwanted chronic diseases.

Now speaking about calories: There are good calories and bad calories.

If one can get the difference between choosing the right kind of calories to eat I assure you, you are one lucky fella. When one gets the difference of eating the correct food one can definitely enjoy eating as much as he/she wants without the fear of getting overweight.

Are you afraid of calories?

 I often hear people say, “I am on a strict diet” or “I am eating less in order to lose weight”.

I mean, how can one eat less and lose weight (not fat, people). The concept itself is wrong.

You need to lose fat and not weight. There is a slight difference but a huge impact.

What you need to understand is: Let’s consider, you are a car, whichever you like, A Mercedes?

So, you are a Mercedes-Benz, now you fill in your tank with petrol and go off for a long ride. As soon as the meter starts blinking for low fuel you fill it again. That is what exactly our body needs and works on the same principle. So your calories are your fuel and the daily chores you do are your ride (calorie expense). You need to give the right amount of petrol (calories) to your body in order to perform at your best. The less calories (petrol) you give the less you could perform.

So, stop believing the less we eat the more we lose weight and start believing the less we eat the more we lose our productivity and efficiency.

We get calories from the nutrients that we eat daily. These are Carbohydrates, Proteins and Fats. 1gram of Carbohydrates and proteins provide 4kcal (kilo calorie) each. While 1gram of fats provide you 9 kcal.

It does matter but doesn’t make as much difference of how much kcal you consume on a daily basis. Yes, one can argue about the intake of kcal on the basis of their weight however, I mean to say 100kcal from milk ain’t the same you get from 100kcal of soda/ any sugar based drink. Period.

There are a lot of factors to be considered here and a lot of theories in the market. In Layman’s term treat good calories as your friend and bad calories as your foe.

Stay tuned for more updates.

Anay Kabra