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Healthy Diet Plans >>  Calories >>  Food Calorie Counter

Food Calorie Counter

A calorie is a unit of energy that the body uses to produce energy to perform any kind of physical activity. The calories come from the food we eat, the body breaks the food and uses the energy present in the food to enable the body to be active. Any bodily function requires energy even a sedentary activity like sleeping burns up calories. Most people get concerned about calories only when they realize that they need to lose weight. Counting the calories is considered to be an effective way of monitoring your weight.

The daily intake of calories can be checked with the food calorie counter. It is beneficial for people who want to lose weight, eat smart and healthy and be slim. Food calorie counters helps you know the number of calories that you need on a daily basis even with a regular routine for exercise and it will help you to compare the actual and required intake of calories. Measuring in general the calorie intake on a daily basis also helps you to know the amount of energy that is being consumed by you during the day, week and month. With particulars like age, sex, height and weight and rate of daily activity using a calorie counter would help you to maintain a food calorie counter chart to stay healthy. The counter would set a target for a daily diet with the correct amount of calories that are required. It is believed that the estimated amount of calories for breakfast is 350, 450 for lunch and 500 for dinner and maybe 50-100 in the snacks that you eat along with calculating this it will also calculate the caloric value of each food item according to the amount of food. Therefore it is best that as you embark on this attempt of counting and monitoring calories it is best to get a food calorie count list from your local weight counselor or dietitian or these are even available to download. This list will help you to know the amount of calories in each kind of food that you eat and the size of the serving that you should eat. You could also try to get a fast food calorie counter, which will be able to tell you how many calories are there in each type of fast food. As you keep check on the food you eat it is also good to keep a fast food calorie counter handy so that you know how much of what to eat.

After you know how many calories you require to attain your desired weight, you should know how many calories are in the food that you eat. Apart from natural foods, most of the processed foods have nutrition labels and you should learn how to interpret them so that you are aware of the number of calories in these foods. Also as you try to stick to this kind of a diet it is best to maintain a record of all kinds of foods that you will be eating and the amounts. For that you will have to have a list of foods and calories per gram, a food scale and measuring cup, and a calculator to measure the amounts of food and calculate the calories. You may find it a little annoying at first as you constantly need to check up on the calorie content of each ingredient in the dishes you prepare; however, in time you will start to remember the calorie value of each food item. It is important to stay motivated during the early stages of your diet as this is when you are most likely to quit. Treat yourself to a small helping of low fat ice-cream for every day that you stick to your diet in the first two weeks.

Submitted on January 16, 2014