One Mother Rambling Through Life

Rantings, Ravings, Strange thoughts, a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and a lot of ME!


Soooooo "Calories"... Hmm? What can be said about Calories that does not end with screaming and running to the hills. From the dawn of man we have been obsessing about Calories... Wait not that is not right. More recent than that but it often feels like it has been a never ending OCD (esp for the more feminine crew) forever! Take me back to basics Captain!

Dictionary.com lists the definition of "Calorie" as: "cal·o·rie   /ˈkæləri/ Show Spelled [kal-uh-ree] Show IPA –noun
1. Thermodynamics .
a. Also called gram calorie, small calorie. an amount of heat exactly equal to 4.1840 joules. Abbreviation: cal
b. ( usually initial capital letter ) kilocalorie. Abbreviation: Cal
2. Physiology .
a. a unit equal to the kilocalorie, used to express the heat output of an organism and the fuel or energy value of food.
b. a quantity of food capable of producing such an amount of energy."
Oh my gosh?!?! Did any of you understand that cause this is not basic enough for me let me see what else I can find...


Word Tutor has it defined as "A unit for measuring the energy that food supplies to the body."

Of course there are a couple from Urbandictionary.com that are pretty interesting: "1.The thing that makes food yuumy. The more there are the yummier it will be. Its just the law.
2. Super bad and stuff."

Whatever definition you prefer it comes down to the science that we should only have soooo many of these per day and that depends on many many many factors! If you are shorter you need less than when you are taller. If you are fatter you need less than super model stick girl down the street that you loath each morning as she runs past scarfing that bagel that you are not allowed to have. If you have an active job you need more than the paper pusher. If you are one of those people who has energy to work out after work you need more than those of us that think passing out is the best decision after work.

If those rules weren't enough to make your head spin there is also the fact that there are good calories and bad calories. Generally in the four letter D-word world the bad calories are dubbed empty calories (which are generally yummy and fit with the UrbanDictionary defninition). These are like soda, chips, candy, processed foods, etc etc to the ends of the world and whatever color of M&M that is currently rumored to cause cancer... These are foods that we are told by people more degrees than us who know that Nicolas Clement discovered them in 1824 (Thanks Wikopedia, I hope it is accurate) that make us hungry sooner and help with that fat gain along with their evil pals TRANS-FATS and COMPLEX CARBS. (insert screams) Way way way too much to know and my brain processes that I am hungry and need to search for food.

So we know that the basic model D-word is based on a 2,000 calorie intake daily. At this if you are the correct body type, age, activity level etc you should maintain a steady weight. But since we already know that 2,000 does not fit all throw that out the window... Literally write "2,000" on a piece of paper (preferrably red to highlight how evil it is) and throw it out the window. If you feel as strongly as I do you can spit on it, burn it, what not, but just know that thinking about the evil 2,000 base will just make you more confused. Soooo where do we start... We start with free resources online to find out just how many we need to stay where we are, loose, or if you are among the lucky few gain. My favorite resource is at Livestrong.com in their DailyPlate section. A basic Membership is free and really unless you want to be obsessive, which we are trying to get away from, it works. In that section you type in daily habits, weight loss goals, etc and it does the math for you (Thank you) and spits out a number that should be your goal that is not the evil 2,000. From there you tweak as you need. ALSO!!! You can use the Daily Plate to track foods and basically their site has just about every food on it and you will rarely find a food that has not been added.

If you want something to feed into your social media Facebook.com has a similar app called CalorieStory Food Diary. It is newer and has less foods but it is on FB for easy access. I use this in combination with Livestrong due to the limited foods on CalorieStory currently. This should change the longer it is out because people are adding foods daily. Did you catch that last part "people are adding foods daily"? That is something to remember because people are falible and well you need to watch and avoid those too good to be true man I wish it were true calorie numbers and double check on more trusted sites. CalorieStory automatically starts with 1300 daily but you can change it basically the same way with less sophisticated means. Livestrong is more detailed because it asks activity level etc whereas CalorieStory does not. Use what is out there and check both out.

So my E-V-I-L D-word journey has begun. I will enlighten when possible about my steps and if my lazy day wishing that the evil yummy super bad law measures of heat that make my head spin Calories would simplify where I could just eat works out we can all rejoice! Or I can rejoice and you can look at me like I am nuts. Either way. Here is wishing you all fat bank accounts and slim bodies... One day!
Correction from CalorieStory: User can add their own foods and calories but they are unique to the user and cannot be used gloablly by other users of the app. The crew at CalorieStory is working on adding new foods daily to beef up what is available on their end.

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