What are Calories?

Calories Are:

-Units of energy your body uses to fuel its functions and activities.

-Created from proteins, fats and carbohydrates (termed as macro nutrients) found in foods and beverages.

-Necessary for the basic body functions like keeping the heart, brain and lungs functioning (also known as basal metabolism)

-Essential to fuel activity – from the smallest hand gesture to a 5km run

What is Metabolism?

Metabolism basically refers to all the chemical processes that take place in the body in order to sustain life – allowing you to breathe, pump blood, keep your brain functioning and extract energy from your food. When you hear the term metabolic rate more accurately called basal (or resting) metabolic rate that refers to the number of calories your body at rest uses each day, just to keep all your vital organs functioning.

The number of calories that you burn every day is directly related to your body composition. Think of your body as divided into two compartments. In one compartment is all the body fat; in the other compartment is everything that isn’t fat (e.g., bone, fluid, tissue, muscle) – that’s the fat-free compartment.

The size of your fat-free compartment determines your metabolic rate, with every one pound of fat-free mass is burning about 14 calories per day. Since the fat-free compartment contains muscle tissue, one of the best things you can do to boost your metabolic rate is to strength-train to increase your lean muscle mass and supply enough protein to your body in all your meals. Remember muscle tissue burns more calories than fat tissue.

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