What Calories Mean
Calories are a measure of energy, but what does that really mean for us when we’re trying to just lose some weight? What that means is, is that if you consume more calories than you burn off in a day, those excess calories will get deposited as tissue somewhere in the body.
What do I mean by tissue? Well, there’s two types of body tissue that are relevant when it comes to calories: muscle tissue and fat tissue. So if you consume more than you burn, a certain percent will distribute out as fat tissue, and another will as muscle tissue.
Just focus on this concept as we are going along…my goal for this topic is to help you understand the role of calories in meals so that you can use this information to help you make better diet and eating choices for yourself!
Let’s get started…
Which Calories Do You Count?
The short answer is: you count all of them! Whether they come from fats, carbohydrates, or protein, every calorie counts. Now, there are slight differences which affect how the calories get processed and distributed, but to get started, just know that every calorie counts!
So what are those differences? Well, the body needs energy to process calories, and it turns out, calories from certain macronutrient sources take more energy to process than do others.
It goes roughly like this: fat takes the least amount of energy to process in the body, therefore when you consume calories from fat, you are taking absorbing the highest percent of those calories. Carbohydrates take a bit more energy to get stored as tissue (like fat or muscle), but you still absorb the majority of them.
Protein is the most energy-consuming macronutrient to process. For every 4 calories of protein (1 gram of protein = 4 calories) that are consumed, the body uses up 1 calorie in the process. What does that mean for you? That means that calories from protein take the most amount of energy to burn, so include more protein in your diet!
Plus, not only that, but protein tends to be more satieting in general compared to some of the other macronutrients out there (like fat, which is jam packed with energy, which means more calories stored = bad for weight loss goals!).
Calories vs Macros
So we know what calories are…they are units of energy that come from macros, or macronutrients. Macronutrients in our diet are composed of fats, carbohydrates, and protein. Each of these macronutrients contains a certain number of calories per gram’s worth.
Protein and carbohydrates contain 4 calories per gram, while fat contains a whopping 9 calories per gram! That means that out of all the macronutrients, fat is the most dense. What does that mean for us? Well, one thing it indicates is that it’s probably easy to overconsume just based on how dense it is and how many calories we get from it, so try to be mindful. This is one of reasons eating out is such a challenge for weight loss — a lot of the foods are heavy in fat because it helps with the taste, so we get a lot of calories for not a lot of food volume wise!
Calories vs Sugar
Ok, so we know that over consuming calories is bad, but what about sugar? Isn’t sugar the bad thing in our diets that we have to avoid if we want to lose weight? How does sugar play a role in the whole “calories are what matters” formula?
Well sugar is just another way of saying carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are sugar, and sugar is carbohydrates. All forms of sugar are a form of carbohydrates. The sugar from candy and the sugar from bread are both sugar (as well as forms of carbohydrates). The difference is that one is a simple sugar while the other is more of a complex sugar (or carbohydrate). This just means that one is already in its simpler or simplest form (i.e. glucose) while the other is in a more complex form. But the latter will still get processed and broken down once consumed.
So what is the relationship between calories and sugar? The relationship is this: carbohydrates (or sugar) within calories are just one part of the calorie make-up, with the other two parts being fats and proteins. All three macronutrients make up what we consume as calories, and all three can make us fat if we eat too much of them. So if you eat too much sugar, you’re probably over consuming calories, which means that you’ll gain weight (if you consumed more calories per day than you burned per day).
Can you lose weight while just eating primarily sugar or carbohydrates? Technically you can, because it comes down to calories, but that means that your other macronutrients (fats and proteins) will have to be quite low to compensate for all the calories you’re ingesting from the carbohydrates.
Calories or Keto for Weight Loss?
You may be wondering what about Keto or the ketogenic diet? Doesn’t that diet dispel the notion of calories dictating weight or fat loss? No, consuming less calories than you burn is still the driver of fat or weight loss (or should I say tissue loss).
So why do some people do well on the keto diet? One big reason is when you cut out carbs, it frees up a lot of calories. Because carbohydrate rich foods are easy to overeat on and packed with energy, when people stop eating so many, the calories drop, and they start losing weight. So less carbs means less overall calories, and you see a weight change.
Can you gain weight on the keto diet? Yes, you can — all you have to do is eat more calories per day than your body breaks down. So if you eat high fat cheeses and meats and overconsume on fat and protein, you’ll gain weight.
Calories Don’t Matter on Keto! (Right? Read ahead..)
They do, like I said, it’s just harder to stay overweight on a ketogenic diet for some because they end up cutting so many carbohydrate rich foods from their diet, that’s it’s bound to happen.
You may have heard of or experienced a rapid weight loss when beginning a ketogenic diet. This isn’t because you’re simply shedding bodyfat. The primary reason is because you’re flushing out stored water. Now, that doesn’t mean you’re not losing fat…you can be losing fat (especially if you used to consumed a lot of calories from carbohydrates), but it’s not due to some special properties of the ketogenic diet that overrule the role of calories.
It’s because the diet helped you manage your over-consumption of carbohydrates. Now that you’re eating less of them, your calories are lower, which means you’re slowly starting to use reserve tissue (your bodyfat) to give your body energy — and the result being fat loss!
Calories vs Hormones
So what about hormones? What role do they play in our bodyweight? Do our hormones make us fat? The answer is that hormones can dictate things like our metabolism or hunger levels, and these things can affect how many calories we consume or burn off in a day.
Let’s start with an example — say you have an under-active thyroid, and it’s making you fell lethargic. You go to the doctor, they prescribe you medicine to correct your deficiency, and all of a sudden your weight starts dropping. So was it the thyroid hormone that was to blame? Sort of yes…but only because it led to a decrease in metabolic functioning and energy levels, which means that your body was burning less calories, and you were more likely to pack on weight. If you consumed less calories, you would not have had as much of a gain in bodyfat.
What about insulin? Isn’t that the fat storing hormone that makes us gain all this weight? Insulin plays a role in fat gain, but it also plays a role in muscle gain. We need it as a delivery system to help shuttle nutrients, yes. But without the nutrients part, insulin wouldn’t have anything to shuttle anywhere! So insulin doesn’t make us fat, it just helps shuttle nutrients to different parts of our bodies.
Where Are Calories Stored?
Hopefully the previous snippets answered this question. Calories get stored in our body tissue. The “tissue” is primarily either fat or muscle.
With that in mind, a better question may be — how are calories distributed? That is dependent on a variety of factors, such as the macronutrients in your diet, and what kind of activity you put your body through. For example, if you are looking for better “nutrient partitioning” (having more of your nutrients go to muscle tissue vs fat), putting stress on your muscle tissues through activity like weighted exercises is a good way of ensuring that.
Another factor for calorie distribution is the type of macronutrient you’re consuming. You know how you need protein to build muscle? Well the reason is because it’s more of muscle-building macronutrient compared to the others (like carbs and fats)! But with that being said, once your muscle tissue reaches a certain threshold (how much nutrients they can absorb per day), the rest will spill over into fat storage. So yes, if you ate too much protein, the amount that your muscle tissue can’t use up will spill over as fat.
Conclusion: Why Calories Are Not the Same
I hope this article helped clear up some ideas on calories and different diets for weight loss like the ketogenic diet!
To wrap things up, calories are not the same in the sense that some calories (such as those from protein) take more energy to store, so our bodies will burn some in the process of storing the rest. But calories are the same in the sense that there is nothing special about carbohydrates or sugars that can make us fat. The reason they tend to do so is because they are very easy to over eat on. The benefit of a diet like the ketogenic one is that it eliminates a class of foods that we tend to eat too much of if we’re not paying attention.
But you don’t necessarily need to follow a certain diet to lose weight, you just need to make sure that you’re not eating more calories than you burn in a day. Over time, this should lead to gradual weight loss!
I hope this article helped to clear up some confusion on dieting and calories!
