How do calories control my weight

There is a scientific theory that your body has a set point weight. This is a predetermined weight that suits your body. However you can change it. Because of this stabilising mechanism, your body can increase your metabolism to burn off excess calories. It can also lower metabolism when fuel is scarce to maintain this set weight.

Excess calories, regardless of their source, will be stored as fat. A fat-free diet won’t guarantee fat loss if there’s no calorie deficit. (More in than out!) For example, Lesley, a gym instructor, ate sugar free Weetbix for breakfast. Low in fat? Yes, but as for being non-fattening…not when you eat 12 at a time! Starving your body of fat and replacing it with an excess of low-fat options doesn’t cut it for fat loss. On the subject of starving, depriving your body of energy doesn’t work in the long-term either.  You do need to burn more energy (or calories) than you consume, but you also have to ensure your total energy intake is adequate for basic body functions.

The amount of energy your body consumes just to maintain life is termed basal metabolism, or basal metabolic rate. An average rate for women is 1500 calories per day and1800 calories per day for men. If you’ve been dieting for a long time your basal metabolism is probably lower than these rates. Remember the set point theory and how your body adjusts up and down depending on energy intake. On low energy diets you lose both fat and muscle mass.  The less muscle tone you have, the lower your metabolic rate becomes. This is the reason low energy dieting doesn’t work.

Yo-Yo weight loss

In reality, restrictive diets are very difficult to maintain without succumbing to hunger and bingeing. On goes the weight and because you have less muscle, you have a lower or slower metabolism. You are burning fewer calories, thus more fat is retained and weight increases. The fatter you get, the more you want to diet, the more you diet the lower your metabolism, the more you binge and so goes the cycle of yo-yo weight loss.

By this stage you’re probably confused about the whole energy intake (what you eat) issue. Don’t be. Just try to become familiar and comfortable with the appropriate amount of energy intake for you. Be aware of your body and your feelings.

Practice makes a natural habit. Once you have worked out what your basal metabolism should be (or close to) and you get used to eating the quantity of food that will provide you with that amount of energy, it will become second nature.

Dieting has taken away from us the ability to recognize when and how much to eat. Long-term denial practices can leave you unaware of when you are really hungry and when you are full or satiated. You have to re-learn these signals with sensible healthy eating and then counting calories becomes a thing of the past.