Calories, Fat & Exercise

Do you know what happens if you take in more or less calories than your body burns? You will either gain or lose fat, respectively. An accumulation of 3,500 extra calories is stored by your body is equal to 1 pound of fat increase in your body. On the other hand, if you can burn 3,500 more calories than you eat, whether by doing exercise or eating less, your body converts 1 pound of its stored fat into energy to make up for the deficit.

One thing about exercise is that it raises your metabolic rate. Your metabolism takes time to return to its normal pace. It continues to function at a higher level and your body burns an increased number of calories for about two hours after you've stopped exercising.

Lots of people wonder where their calories come from. If we eat exactly the number of calories that we burn and if we're only talking about weight, the answer is no -- a calorie is a calorie. A protein calorie is no different from a fat calorie -- they are units of energy. As long as you burn what you eat, you will maintain your weight; but if you burn more than you eat, you'll lose weight.

But if we're talking nutrition, it definitely matters where those calories originate. Carbohydrates and proteins are healthier sources of calories than fats. Although our bodies do need a certain amount of fat to function properly -- an adequate supply of fat allows your body to absorb the vitamins you ingest -- an excess of fat can have serious health consequences. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommends that a maximum of 30 percent of our daily calories come from fat. So, if you eat 2,000 calories a day, that's a maximum of 600 calories from fat, or 67 grams of fat, per day. However, many doctors and nutritionists now set the maximum number of fat calories at 25 percent of our daily caloric intake. That's 56 grams of fat per day for a 2,000 calorie diet.

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