The surest way to lose weight or About the mechanism for gaining calories

Have you ever wondered why an apple makes us less fat than a chocolate bar, although their weight is almost the same? It's all about the principle of the energy value of products and in order to maintain or acquire beautiful body lines, you need to approach the choice of products competently.

What is a “calorie”? Our body is like a large complex plant. For its constant and harmonious functioning (growth, maintenance of strength, cell renewal) energy is required. This energy, expressed in kilojoules or kilocalories, is supplied to the body only through nutrition. In turn, each product consists of different proportions of nutrients (proteins, fats and carbohydrates), which make up the energy value.

Nutrients such as vitamins, minerals and trace elements, water and dietary fiber do not contain calories. For example, 1 gram of protein = 4 kilocalories, 1 gram of carbohydrates = 4 kilocalories, and 1 gram of fat = 9 kilocalories. This explains why a product that contains a lot of fat has more calories than one that contains more carbohydrates or proteins.

Eating more calories than the body needs (for a woman, on average, 1,800 to 2,200 calories per day) causes weight gain.

What foods are low in calories? To know this, you need to calculate the energy value of the product based on its weight of 100 g. This takes into account the composition of the product in terms of the amount of proteins, fats and carbohydrates, as well as the content of water and dietary fiber, which, although they do not contain calories, are reflected in weight and volume.

Thus, butter, which is 100% fat, is 900 kilocalories per 100 g of weight, while the energy value of zucchini, which contains 90% water, 2.5% carbohydrates and 1.4% fiber, is only 13 calories per 100 g, that is, almost 90 times less!

In general, we can say that the more a product is rich in water and dietary fiber, the lower its energy value. Conversely, the more fat a product contains, the higher its calorie content.

Based on the number of calories in 100 g of product, you can create a table of products: from less nutritious to more nutritious.

Product category: from lower-calorie foods to higher-calorie foods

Fruits and vegetables: green salad, cucumber, tomato, champignons, pepper, strawberries, carrots, orange, potatoes, corn

Grain products: whole grain bread, muesli, white bread, croissant

Dairy products: skim milk, yogurt, cottage cheese 0% fat, cottage cheese 20% fat, Mozzarella cheese, Russian cheese, Radomir cheese

Meat: chicken, veal, beef, pork

Fish: flounder, cod, salmon, smoked salmon, trout, tuna, herring

But why do we need to know this? The advantage of foods with low energy value is that we can eat them in large quantities without gaining many calories. In addition, most often, saturated with water and dietary fiber, they are very filling. Lightness and saturation: these are the qualities of products that we need to achieve our goal, namely a good figure.

To create a diet in which the body will receive all the necessary substances, in the absence of excess calories, you need to remember that there are so-called rules of nutritional balance. The energy composition of food should consist of approximately 10-15% protein, 30-35% fat and 55% carbohydrates. In this case, the daily diet should contain 600 g of vegetables and fruits and any 3 dairy products. Meat, fish, starch- and fat-containing products should also be present, but the whole secret is that you need to choose the least calorie ones from each category.

But it’s better to forget about such time bombs as cakes, chocolate bars, glazed cheeses and semi-finished products: most often they are just a useless combination of fat and sugar.

With or without fat?

Isn't the best way to stop your attention?