Weight Loss Diet - The Concept of Calorie-In Calorie-Out

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Think of your body as a complex machine, it doesn’t matter that it is a biological machine or a mechanical machine, it is still a machine. Its main purpose is to keep the human in motion to gather food and sustenance to keep itself alive. In order to keep going it requires fuel just as your car’s engine requires fuel to run. However unlike cars which can only take gas or diesel, our human bodies are able to digest many different types of biological foods to gain energy, the range of foods that our bodies can cope with is quite exceptional but its important to understand that all this food that we eat is to keep our bodies maintained and provide fuel for our daily activities. That’s it, the food doesn’t do anything more.

The main gauge of how much energy a certain food provides is to look at its caloric figure. This is a perfect gauge to determine how much energy a food provides to your body. The great thing is that calories can also be converted directly to the amount of energy that you expend a day on normal metabolic processes and exercise activities. You can then calculate the difference between the total calories that you have consumed over the day (calorie-in) and also the number of calories that you have expended (calorie-out).

If the difference is a negative, meaning you expended more calories than you consumed it then a situation called a calorie deficit. If the opposite is true and you actually have a positive figure that means you have a calorie surplus. It is these two conditions that determine if you gain weight or lose weight. If you have a net calorie deficit you will lose weight and be on a slimming diet, if you have a net calorie surplus you will gain weight and be on a fattening diet. The equation really is as simple as that.

As mentioned earlier the body is simply a complex machine, if you feed it less fuel but still run it at the same level of performance as before you body will start to run on its own fuel which could either be the fat that you have stored or even your muscle if you’re not careful. Your body can not magically run on no fuel and you maintain the same weight even if you reduce your caloric intake. It is simply physically impossible. To lose weight you simply need either to put in less fuel (mean eating less) or exercise more so that your caloric output is higher. If you constantly have a caloric deficit you will be guaranteed weight loss eventually.

The New England Journal of Medicine just published an article that really set the ball straight for anyone looking to lose weight. The concept that they researched and proved to be 100% true is calorie-in and calorie-out principle. They have rightly concurred that every type of food that you consumer has a caloric value attached to it regardless if it is fat, protein, carbohydrate or even fiber. The calorie rating is a measure of energy and thus can also be used to measure effort. The published journal article states that if your effort exceeds you caloric intake you will lose weight, if you effort is less than your caloric intake then you will gain weight. This is almost a 100% confirmation of the science of weight loss.

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