What are calories, exactly?
Calories measure the amount of energy in a food.
The food you eat has different calories, with some foods more caloric than others.
Depending on the type of calories, your body will also use and absorb them differently.
Carbohydrates and proteins contain four calories per gram, fats contain nine calories per gram, and alcohol contains seven calories per gram.
All calories consumed in excess of what your body needs for energy— whether in the form of carbohydrates, proteins, fats, or alcohol—get stored as fat.
Fat tends to make you feel full for a long amount of time, but its effect on overall health is to clog arteries and cause weight gain. The former problem is a big issue because heart disease can often be a silent killer. Being overweight is more obvious, but also tough to deal with, since it only takes 2,000 calories to gain a pound, but 3,500 to lose one.
Carbohydrates, also referred to as carbs, can give you a fast fix of energy, but sugary foods can lead to insulin resistance and diabetes, and tend to leave you prone to all sorts of food cravings and bad eating habits.
In our next article we will look at carbs more closely.
