What is a Calorie?

If someone were to ask you to define the word calorie do you think you could?

I asked my wife one day, “Do you know what a calorie is?”

She said, “The only thing I know about calories is that they’re not my friends.”

I find that most people think they know what a calorie is, but when you ask them to define it, they can’t. Calorie is a word that is so often used that people think they know what it is even though no one has ever defined it for them. They only know they count calories when dieting.

I’ll give you the dictionary definition, then I’ll explain it so you can understand it.

A calorie is the amount of energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 kg of water by 1 degree Celsius.

Huh? What does that have to do with dieting?

Simply put, a calorie is a unit of measurement for energy. Just like we can talk about gallons of water, we can talk about calories of energy. Food does not actually contain calories. The calories on the food labels are the approximate amount of energy your body will get from that food when your body digests it.

If you know you need 2,000 calories a day, and what you are eating will give you 200 calories, you know that it provides 1/10th of the energy you need for the day.
I’ve known people who keep cutting back on calories and wonder why they are so tired. They believe that to lose weight they must cut back on calories.

But cutting back on calories means cutting back on energy. Calories are the fuel for your body. It’s like planning a trip in your car, but not putting enough gas in it to get to your destination.

The fact is, cutting back on calories may even cause you to gain weight. In my next post, I’ll explain why that happens.