It has been said that life is all about balance and in many ways it is a true statement, especially when it comes to our diet. One of the biggest health concerns for people is weight management, which is all about balancing the number of calories we eat with the amount of calories we use or “burn” on a daily basis. The concept of caloric balance asks us to imagine a scale. One one side is the amount of calories we burn each day and on the other is the amount of calories we consume each day. If we take in more calories than we burn, those extra calories end up being stored as fat for later use and we gain weight. If we burn more calories than we eat, our bodies end up pulling from our stored fat energy and we lose weight.
Let’s take a step back. We use food for energy so it is important to know how much energy is contained in the foods we eat. A calorie is a unit of measure for how much energy is in the food we eat. When we do not burn more calories than we eat each day, we store those extra calories as fat. No matter what nutrient the calorie comes from- fat, protein, or carbohydrate, all excess calories are stored by our bodies as fat.
If your goal is to lose weight in a healthy way, then you’ll want to slowly create a calorie deficit. The CDC recommends that people who are trying to lose weight not lose more than 1-2 pounds per week. A pound of fat has 3,500 calories in it, so 1-2 pounds means you need to burn 3,500-7,000 more calories than you consume each week. This may sound like a lot, but remember, adults burn 1,500-2,000 calories in the course of daily living. For more information, check out the CDC’s recommendations for caloric balance.