Calorie Controlled Diet: How to Count Calories for your Nutrition Goals

Many people understand that a good calorie controlled diet is imperative to success in reaching weight goals. Whether you are trying to lose weight, or even trying to gain weight and muscle, knowing how to count calories can be important, to ensure that you are eating the right foods. Many people dismiss counting calories, as it seems like to much work, but the more you do it, the easier and more automatic it becomes, and if you regularly eat the same foods you only need to calculate the specific calories once.

Using a little Maths

Nearly all foods should contain a small label on the packaging displaying the nutritional content. Some labels contain the total calories already, but most foods you will need to work out yourself. There are some simple maths to help with this. Simply look for the grams of protein, grams of carbohydrates, and the grams of fat, . These are the three most important numbers you need for getting a fairly accurate count of the calories. What you need to do, is multiply the protein by 4, multiple the carbohydrates by 4, and multiply the fat by 9. Add these totals together, and you have your total calories of the food in question.

Use Calorie Counting Software

It sounds a little tedious to have to use maths every time you want to eat or buy food, right? Well the good thing is that there are many calorie counting web sites and software you can use, where you can record the numbers once, then recall them when needed. Many of these web sites actually contain large databases of pre entered data of the foods you eat, so much of the work has been done for you already. Some sites also allow you to track the percentages of each, and help you to calculate your total calories per day. It is up to you to use this software, or perhaps even good old pen and paper, to track and record your foods, enabling you to calculate your caloric intake. There are even mobile applications available for devices such as your phone, where you can count your calories on the run.

How Much Do I Need Of Each

How much protein, carbohydrates and fats you need, depends on your nutritional goals, and its important to have a goal ratio in your calorie controlled diet. There are many recommended intakes for, example the US Recommended Daily Allowance is 10-20% protein, 30% fat, and 60% carbohydrates, but these numbers can differ depending on your goals. Trying to stick to good balanced ratio like this will help keep track of things, and make sure for example there isn't too much fat creeping into your diet.

How Many Calories Do I Need?

Knowing the amount of calories in your food is one thing, but knowing how many calories you actually need is another. Thankfully, with a little calculation, this is also easy to determine. Firstly you need to use a formula to calculate your BMR, or your base metabolic rate, which takes into account your age, gender, height and weight. With this number, you use another formula, called the Harris Benedict Equation, which takes into account your activity levels, to calculate how many calories you burn each day. These formulas are available on various web sites, simply search Google for 'bmr calculator' and you will find web sites allowing you to enter your data into a forms to calculate these numbers for you. One such web site is http://www.bmrcalculator.org.

The number of calories you burn each day is the important number, as from here you can figure out how many calories you need to either gain or lose weight. If you are looking to gain weight, simply add more calories onto your total burned calories to ensure you have an excess of calories, or caloric excess. Similarly if you are trying to lose weight, take away calories from the total calories you burn throughout the day. Remember though, that you have to be eating the right types of food.

After a while, you build up a thorough caloric database for the foods you generally eat, and the process becomes very easy, allowing you to conveniently track your nutrition. A calorie controlled diet is a great way to ensure that you are eating the right foods in the right amount for your weight goals.