Calories

A calorie is a unit of energy. In general, it is the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water from 0 to 1 degree Celsius.

Food calories are actually 1,000 of these small calories, or kilocalories. In this website, food calories will simply be referred to as calories.

How do calories connect to body mass?

The number of calories a person requires depends on their activity level and metabolic rate. If a person is maintaining their weight, they are in a caloric balance. If they are losing weight, they are likely in a caloric deficit, and if they are gaining weight, they are likely in a caloric surplus.

NOTE: Weight naturally fluctuates, which is largely due to varying water balance in the body. This is where the “likely” comes in; the average adult’s body weight can fluctuate by up to 5 pounds in a single day! [4]

There is nothing inherently better about consuming "low-calorie" foods. Low in calories simply means low in energy.

Different types of macronutrients have different numbers of calories per gram.

Here is a more in-depth video of how calories work:

Obsessively keeping track of your daily caloric intake can dramatically decrease the quality of your relationship with food.

This is because listening to calorie-tracking apps and other tools instead of your body's personal needs causes you to focus more on numbers and equations than how you feel. Further, it creates a mindset of scarcity, which, along with the stress of being hyper-vigilant about your caloric intake, activates a stress response in your body. This physiological response negatively impacts digestion and appetite. Continuing to track calories will naturally worsen mental and physical stress, which may worsen your relationship with your eating and hunger cues.

As award-winning speaker and educator Dana Suchow puts it,

"Food is so much more than calories in calories out. Food is history, culture, family, gratitude...It's so much more than a nutrition label."

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