Monthly Archives: August 2011

Calories do Count

I am a Lifetime Member of Weight Watchers, so I count points and not calories.  But that doesn’t mean that calories don’t count – they do!

The definition of a calorie is the energy it takes to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water 1 degree Celsius.  We tend to ignore this definition because we don’t know what it means!  So in simple terms that we can understand and remember, a calorie is a unit of energy that burns (like gasoline in a car) and makes our bodies go.

We’ve heard the term “calories in, calories out” as a way to gauge how to lose weight.  Again simply stated – if you want to lose weight, you have to  take in fewer calories than you use, so you can either eat less or burn off more in the form of exercise.  Whether you want to count points or count calories, the only thing that will help you to lose weight is that – eat less, exercise more.  There’s no getting around that formula!

To figure out how many calories you should be taking in each day, multiply your weight by 11 .   That’s how many calories you should eat to maintain your present weight if you are not exercising.  A 150 pound woman would need to consume 1,650 calories a day.   If you exercise, you are using up more calories than if you are sedentary.  Different exercises use different amounts of calories.  Brisk walking burns approximately 300 calories per hour.  Doing housework like vacuuming or washing floors burns about 150 calories per hour.  Jogging – 675 calories per hour, and sleeping – 45 calories per hour.

So you need to count calories and count exercise and if you want to lose weight, the exercise needs to add up to more than the calories.  Simple, huh?  Calories do Count!