Know your calories!

All of us eat food, mostly because we love to pamper our taste buds and to nourish our body with vital nutrients. Though energy is the first and foremost nutrient we need from the food we eat, but lately, the word calorie has certainly become the forbidden term. Read on to know how to maximize the nutrition from the food we eat.

If consumed in controlled portion we end up nourishing our body with the food we eat. Particularly, the right food choices in correct portion help to keep our body weight within the expected weight for age range. Calories derived from all food sources are different and have various effect on our body. Healthy foods offer limited calories along with some really vital nutrients that are required to attain good health.

Calories alone as a nutrient has a pretty neutral effect on our body, irrespective of the food source. That means calories as such has the same effect on our body weight whether it is supplied by junk food or the healthiest of food sources.

However, the type of food source determines if we are consuming good calories or bad calories. For starters, it is important for us to recall that there are three main nutrients that provide energy to us: carbohydrates, proteins, and fats.

Carbohydrates are the most important and main source of energy for our body. While this is the most vital nutrient essential for our survival, we must clear out that it the excessive consumption of carbohydrates that lead to weight gain, not the calories from carbohydrates. There are two types of carbohydrates: simple and complex. Simple carbs are considered unhealthy as these are digested quickly and metabolized fast by our body, leading to frequent hunger pangs. To satisfy the hunger, we end up eating more frequently and thus increasing the overall calorie intake. Meanwhile, complex carbs are the healthier food choices as these are digested and metabolized slowly by our body, leaving our bellies full for a longer duration, restricting our food intake, and thereby resulting in fewer calorie consumption. Proteins are made up of amino acids and these amino acids are required by our body to carry out many vital functions, including the growth and repair of our body. It is recommended that we eat a balanced portion of complete and incomplete sources of proteins, to nourish our body with healthier alternatives of essential and non essential amino acids. Fats are of three types: saturated, unsaturated, and trans fats. Calories derived from trans fat is the worst and consumption of trans fats should be restricted, and include only a limited portion of saturated fats in the diet. As saturated and trans fats are known to rais8e the levels of cholesterol in our body and lead to heart problems and stroke. So, try to include healthier types of oils such as the unsaturated fatty acids, but only in limited potions.