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Books and online counters have similar characteristics. They show the number of calories for each type of food in an easy to use format.
Books are handy for keeping track of your calorie intake on the go as you can carry them with you easily.
Online calorie counters have several benefits: There is a wider variety of counters online so you don't have to rely on the information from just one source. You can cross-check an item on different counters for accuracy, and if an item isn't listed on one counter it can usually be found on another. A good calorie calculator is included in the Resources section.
Labels on food products are also calorie counters. While they lack the versatility of multi-item calorie counters, labeling has one benefit the other counters do not: accuracy. While a type of food can vary in values from one brand or package to the other, the label on each food item is accurate for that particular item. - No matter which calculator you use, or if you use a combination of types, they will all have the same information. Pay particular attention to serving sizes for each item. It doesn't matter how religiously you track the calories and nutrients of an item if you eat more than is allowed without multiplying the values.
- Along with calories, each counter will have information on the breakdown of each item including: carbohydrates, fat, protein, all of the vitamins, sodium, potassium, and cholesterol levels. This information is vital to ensure that the calories you eat have food value for your body. Since a calorie is the same whether it is good for you or not, it doesn't make sense to fill your diet with empty calories.
- Calorie counting is only effective if you understand the concept behind food intake vs. calorie expenditures. There are 3,500 calories in a pound, so you have to burn 3,500 calories more than you consume to lose 1 lb. of body weight. If you want to maintain your weight, you have to eat enough to replace what you burn in a day. Everybody has a BMR (basal metabolic rate). That is the number of calories a day your body uses just to survive. Even if you never get out of bed, you use calories to complete normal body functions. Once you determine your BMR, you must calculate the energy you burn during exercise, or other daily activities. Most people at the proper weight burn between 2,000 and 2,500 calories a day during normal activity. Adding exercise to those numbers increases the need for additional calories.
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Your BMR will change (decrease) as you lose weight if you are dieting and it is necessary to keep track of the numbers as they go down so you can adjust your calorie intake. You should recalculate your BMR each time you lose 10 lbs. or more.
The formulas for calculating a basal metabolism rate are slightly different for men and for women. This is because of their differing metabolisms and fat ratios. Both are equally easy to calculate using the following formulas.
For women, BMR equals 4.35 x pounds of weight + 655 added to 4.7 x inches in height subtracted from 4.7 x age (in years).
For men BMR equals 6.23 x pounds of weight + 66 added to 12.7 x inches in height subtracted from 6.8 x age (in years).
Because the number of calories burned for each exercise depends on several factors including the type of activity and your own actual weight, as well as other variances for particular types of exercise (level of weight, incline levels, speeds, resistance) it is not possible to accurately gauge the number of calories used in a general calculation. There are excellent automated calculators online to give you a good idea of what you are using during extra activities. One "calories burned" calculator is included in the Resources links.
