In the second part of this series we looked at the question “What is Metabolism” and laid some of the groundwork for having a good understanding of the process that a lot of people talk about when they talk about weight loss and metabolism. The next step is to understand how calories and fat are related.

It’s Not the Calories Fault

At its essence, the calorie is simply nothing more than a unit of measure. That’s all. Like the inch measures a distance between two points, the calorie simply measures a fixed amount of energy. So the next time you talk about “evil calories,” understand you’re talking about nothing more than a unit of measure for energy.

The body simply doesn’t care where the energy comes from, although there are going to be differences between the types of food you choose to eat. Let’s talk about this a little bit more, because it’s very important to understand how certain food choices can boost metabolism, and therefore increase the rate at which you burn calories. Here are a list of fat burning foods to get your started.

Go into your local grocery store sometime, and you’ll see how much choice there is. We have dozens if not hundreds or even thousands of varieties of food choices to choose from. We know in general what “good” and “bad” food differences are, such as “junk” food versus nutritional food.

That is, most of us don’t need a book or a website to tell us that in general, whole fruits are good foods, while potato chips are generally a bad food.

They taste good, of course, but most people who are fit and healthy don’t sit down in front of the television and consume an entire 8-ounce bag of potato chips in one sitting. That’s obvious, but what does that have to do with energy and calories?

You and I can generally agree that an orange, for example, is a “good” food choice (or source of energy), while the potato chips are a bad food choice. Both provide energy, but the potato chips have little nutritional value, while the fruit has a lot. But here’s the thing: Your body doesn’t know the difference. Your body doesn’t really care where this energy comes from. Energy is energy. It takes what it gets, and it doesn’t know that foods are “good” or “bad,” nutritious or junk food.

For example, let’s day that you eat an orange and it gives your body 60 calories. Your body has to accept those 60 calories. The same holds true if you eat the potato chips (which are a concentrated calorie source) and get 1000 calories. Your body has to do something with those 1000 calories.

Click Here and End Diet Frustration

Let’s take a look at that in the context weight loss and metabolism. When the body gets a calorie it has to do something with it and can only do one of two things: metabolize through anabolism, or metabolize it through catabolism. In other words, it will convert the calories into cells or tissue, or it will use the energy right away.

Although your body doesn’t necessarily want to store fat it has to do something with any extra calories you ingest. Your body figures out that if you can’t use the extra energy you have provided it with for things like exercising, digesting food and breathing, then it can store those extra calories for later use as fat.

In other words, excess weight gain is really about consuming more energy (more calories) than you can use up during you normal everyday activities. Weight loss, then, starts with consuming less energy than you use up and burning off the stored energy you have on your body.

Now you should have a better understanding about the connection between weight loss and metabolism. In the next article of this series we are going to change gears and start talking about the ways to increase metabolism.