Fitness Friday| Not all calories are created equal

Today's post is kind of following on from Wednesday as I’m going to talk more about calories. Now I don’t normally talk about calories on here as I didn’t like to restrict myself to calorie counting as I find it to be quite boring. However if you are new to losing weight or trying to learn about nutrition then I would recommend it, as it is a great way to figure out exactly what is healthy and nutritious and what isn’t.

I have recently started calorie counting again for the next couple of weeks just to make sure that I am in fact eating right and not eating things that I didn’t know were high in calories, because it’s quite surprising at what is high in calories of sugar. Food and beverage companies know that health and diet related products sell, so they try to badge up as many of their good as possible knowing people will buy them thinking it will help them lose weight, but if you actually inspected the nutritional value on “healthy” cereal and bars you would be surprised! However I will save this for another post.

Todays post is my attempt to help those who are attempting to calorie count and don’t have a clue where to start. One of the biggest things I have to say is please never ever eat less than 1200 calories at day! Any lower than this means your body has to use your muscle as fuel. 

Onwards from the lecturing, many people calorie count and it does work for them, however one of the biggest complaints with calorie counting is “oh my god I’ve eaten all my calories and its only half way through the day!” “Oh my god 1200-1500 calories is not a lot!” This is a lie! As the title suggest, not all calories are created equal, the picture above demonstrates perfectly that if you eat nutritious and healthy food 12000-1500 calories is a lot more than you would think.

The biggest thing that calorie counting has taught me is how to fuel your body correctly, yes if I ate 2 slices of toast with butter and jam for breakfast, a sandwich and bag of crisps for lunch, a chocolate bar as a snack, I could already be nearing 1200 calories before I even sat down for my dinner (estimate that breakfast- 250cal + lunch 500 cal = snack 250 cal = 1000) However if you make simple changes and chose healthier lower calorie options, then you will have enough calories to eat throughout the day and still feel full. I’ve found that filling up of fruit and veggies as we should all be doing is a great way to feel full and not exceed your calorie count. Experts say that every meal we have should be half filled with vegetables. Perhaps this isn’t realistic for breakfast, but for your other meals it’s very easy to do.

Do you calorie count? How do you find it? Any other tips on how to keep your calorie count down?

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