One of the issues that bodybuilders and people who want to control weight and improve their physique need to pay attention to first is Calories. Understanding exactly what Calories are and their importance to health will help you build a scientific menu. This helps improve body shape and weight effectively. Refer to the following article, My Auris will help you get more necessary information.
What are Calories?
According to experts, Calories are the unit to calculate energy level. The amount of food we eat every day, also known as Calories. This is a concept often mentioned in sports practice or nutrition. All foods provide calories from filtered, purified water. In fact, each type of food is prepared differently, so it contains different calories.
The biggest difference is that Calories are used a lot in Vietnamese culture (understood as energy in nutrition). Calories are used a lot in American culture, while in the UK we will use Kcal.
The Calorie content in each type of food is different, calculated depending on the amount of protein, fat, and starch. Fat is often higher in calories than other nutrients. Specifically:
- 1g of starch (carbohydrate) contains 4 Calories
- 1g protein gives 4 Calories
- 1g of fat provides 9 Calories
The role of Calories in the body
When you understand what Calories are, you can see that they play an important role in the body. Each person needs to calculate calories if they want to achieve their desired weight. Normally, when we eat, energy from foods will be absorbed by the digestive system. Next, it is converted into Calories for the body to use for 3 main purposes. Specifically:
Sustaining life
65 to 75% of the calories consumed in the body each day are used to maintain life. This activity includes maintaining the heart beat, breathing reflexes, and regulating the system. hormones, as well as operating the process of anabolism – catabolism, milk contains cells,…
Digestion of food
5 to 10% of the calories consumed each day are used to digest food. This is why the human digestive system is considered a “second brain”. Because they have the ability to operate intelligently, thanks to chemical signals without “direction” from the central nervous system.
Physical activity
15 to 30% of each Calories intake is used for physical activity. This process includes repetitive activities such as random labor (housework, walking, personal hygiene,…), thinking or planned movement such as playing sports, jogging, exercising. yoga,…
Instructions for calculating daily calorie needs
To help maintain your body’s energy, you need to take in an appropriate amount of calories every day. However, to avoid a lack or excess of calories, leading to negative health effects. At this time, you need to calculate your own calorie needs to have an appropriate plan, diet, and exercise.
If you want to calculate the amount of calories your body needs during the day, you can use the Harris-Benedict formula get:
- BMR: Metabolic rate (conversion of Calories and oxygen into energy) at rest BMR is the minimum energy level that the body needs to maintain life.
- BMR when multiplied by a certain index will yield AMR – active metabolic rate. It represents the number of calories you need to absorb each day to maintain your current weight.
Harris-Benedict formula includes 2 step:
Step 1: Calculate your BMR
| For women | BMR = 655.1 + (9,563 *weight in kg) + (1,850 * height in cm) – (4,676 * age in years) |
| For men | BMR = 66.47 + (13.75 * weight in kg) + (5,003 * height in cm) – (6,755 * age in years). |
Step 2: Calculate AMR
AMR value – active metabolic rate, calculated by multiplying BMR by an index representing different activity levels. This index ranges from 1.2 to 1.9.
- Little or no exercise: AMR = BMR * 1.2
- Light exercise, exercise 1 to 3 days/week: AMR = BMR * 1,375
- Moderate activity, exercise 3 to 5 days/week: AMR = BMR * 1.55
- Active, exercise 5 to 6 days/week: AMR = BMR * 1,725
- Very active, exercise 6 to 7 days/week: AMR = BMR * 1.9
ARM shows the number of Calories you need each day, to maintain your current weight. If you want to lose weight, you need to increase your physical activity level or reduce your calorie intake. On the contrary, if you want to gain weight, you need to increase the amount of calories you intake.
The importance of calculating Calories
What are Calories and how to calculate Calories is very important Importantly, this is the only way to know how much your diet needs to be increased or decreased. This will help you achieve your desired weight goal.
Eating the wrong way – whether eating too much or missing calories compared to plan, causes the body to have an energy imbalance. This leads to failure in the goal of improving physique. Specifically:
Harmful effects of excess calories
When the body absorbs a lot of calories, the excess calories are converted into fat, gradually accumulates in the body. This causes serious overweight and obesity. In men, excess fat tends to accumulate in the chin, face, neck, chest, etc. Meanwhile, in women, fat often accumulates in the biceps, lower abdomen, thighs, buttocks.
The increased amount of excess fat will gradually increase in volume and invade the internal organs. Gradually you have a high risk of fatty blood disease, fatty liver disease,… On the other hand, it also causes diabetes, cardiovascular disease, respiratory failure, stroke, high blood pressure, cancer,…
Besides Therefore, excess calories over a long period of time also reduces the body’s resistance, makes it easier to get infections, infections and often suffer from minor illnesses, muscle, bone and joint pain.
Harmful effects of lacking calories
Lack of calories will cause you to lose weight. Abstinence will cause your body to gradually “erode” from the inside, due to lack of minerals and vitamins. When you lack too many calories, the body begins to save energy by reducing the functioning of some organs. From there, the body becomes tired, weak and lacks concentration.
When you lack calories for a long time, the biggest harm you are at risk of is malnutrition, causing impaired memory, decreased mental capacity, weakened immune system, etc. This makes you an “ideal” target for many life-threatening pathogens.
Above is information to help readers better understand what Calories are and their role in health. Absorbing the right amount of Calories is essential to ensure stable health. Apply the method of calculating the amount of Calories your body needs every day. From there, build a complete diet to help supplement the necessary amount of Calories to keep your body healthy. On the other hand, you should see a nutritionist if you need advice on how to supplement nutrition for your body. can.
Yen Nhi
